{"id":6152,"date":"2011-09-26T21:57:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T12:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haakondahl.com\/blog\/?p=2066"},"modified":"2011-09-26T21:57:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T12:57:15","slug":"uncomfortably-numb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/uncomfortably-numb\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncomfortably Numb"},"content":{"rendered":"
In our dark moments, we wonder: If this is freedom, what\u2019s the big deal?<\/address>\n

China<\/h3>\n

China is undergoing its most significant upheaval since becoming a communist state. \u00a0Any communist revolution is by definition an attempt to deny and suppress the spirit of man. \u00a0The current transition will be both more important and more successful than the revolution there, because this move has been anticipated for thousands of years–it is led by reality, rather than the other way around. \u00a0China, long famous for deprecating any knowledge or influence from barbarian realms, is becoming oriented beyond its own borders.<\/p>\n

While we dither and kowtow by re-forming NASA into the North African Space Administration (with a mission to make Muslim countries feel proud of their accomplishments, no less), the Chinese are pushing into deep blue water and deep black space. \u00a0Black and blue is a wonderfully apt memory aid for describing our begging and pleading approach toward those tyrants.\u00a0 We still owe the butchers of Beijing a porchful of their own bloody and broken teeth for what they did at Tiananmen.\u00a0\u00a0Now Iran and Syria replay Tiananmen, Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia (again) and we call Assad a “reformer”.\u00a0 Sure, those remarks have been walked back and our compliant media raise no issue–but it was wrong at the time and obviously so.<\/p>\n

China has demonstrated the ability to shoot down a satellite, and\u00a0the willingness to do it, showers of space debris be damned. \u00a0The real message was not that they could do it, but that even for a test, they care so little about the environment in orbit.\u00a0 Our technological advantage is now highly dependent upon unopposed use of space, but only a fool would assume a lack of opposition now.\u00a0 It is a vulnerability of ours which the Chinese\u00a0do not have. \u00a0<\/p>\n

[pullquote]We once put a man on the moon.\u00a0 Now we can’t build a fence.[\/pullquote]The shoot-down event created\u00a0thousands of trackable bits of space litter travelling at ludicrous speed. \u00a0Recall that in response, we moved the International Space Station into a higher orbit so that folks there wouldn’t get killed by a chance encounter with something no bigger than a AA battery going incredibly fast.\u00a0 The ISS, by the way,\u00a0was supposed to be an American project called Space Station Freedom.\u00a0 It is difficult for people now to remember that we used to have the ability to do these things on our own.\u00a0 We put a man on the moon to show the Soviets that our missile technology so far ouclassed theirs that they had better not try anything.\u00a0 Now we can’t muster the willpower to build a fence.<\/p>\n

Obama<\/h3>\n

Note how, as a bus-sized satellite fell to Earth last week, nobody made the obvious Carter\/Skylab comparison to Obama\/UARS. \u00a0Heck, I thought it would be all over the place, but it looks like even our humor is becoming fatigued. \u00a0Not a good sign. \u00a0People are profoundly tired of President Obama. \u00a0Perhaps his biggest advantage is that we are too tired of him to listen to his inane speeches. \u00a0He now has a marvellously self-selecting audience of sycophants and barely-restrained bolsheviks. \u00a0His surroundings now consist of those who pull him to the left, and those whom he pulls, but they all go willingly. \u00a0Obviously, this will all end badly for him as he is overtaken by what I call “Michael Jackson’s disease”, in which a shifting baseline of “normal” provided by well-paid parasites and fellow-travellers leads the host to his doom.<\/p>\n

[pullquote]People are waking from a nightmare of fire and embracing the frying pan[\/pullquote]If Obama does not retain the Presidency in 2012, that does not mean that the Democrats won’t. \u00a0People are waking from a nightmare of fire and embracing the frying pan, a merely socialist Hillary campaign vs the full-blown Marxism of Obama. \u00a0I have posited Mary Landrieu as a real surprise, one which would generate real buzz, not recycled Clintonism. \u00a0Rick Perry has the advantage of coming from hardy Democrat stock, which could be a doomsday weapon in the general election. \u00a0Unfortunately, he is hemorrhaging conservatives in the primary, which is how not to get to the general. \u00a0 Landrieu has opposed President Obama about half of the time, which similarly positions her toward the center but unlike Perry, without necessarily giving up anything on the base.<\/p>\n

A Democrat victory with a “moderate” i.e., non-Marxist President taking office in 2013 would be in many ways worse than an outright Obama victory.\u00a0 It would deflate much of the criticism by laundering the image of the wrenching changes currently being stomped down our throats.\u00a0 America is in the middle of a lost decade, which will become a lost generation if a moderate democrat steps in.\u00a0 A moderate would be able to secure the “ratchet effect” for items which will be rolled back if the Republicans win, or at least fiercely opposed\u00a0in the unthinkable event of an Obama re-election.<\/p>\n

America<\/h3>\n

Several of\u00a0the President’s\u00a0speeches individually would be enough to scare the crap out of anybody who understands the Constitution. \u00a0Taken together, however, they form a\u00a0smothering patchwork of detachment\u00a0which will kill us if we let it.\u00a0 In the nineties, thoughtful people scratched their beards in coffee shops and pondered “donor fatigue” as charity events seemed to proliferate and blur.\u00a0 Now even our own survival is of passing interest, something that we will pay attention to only if kicked hard enough.\u00a0 In our dark moments, we wonder: If this is freedom, what’s the big deal?\u00a0 We become a nation of neither wolves nor sheep, but of Eeyores.<\/p>\n

Our policy toward China has been one of ever increasing appeasement and surrender since Nixon was President, with rare and welcome exceptions.\u00a0 The Clinton Presidency was the low point, with the satellite shoot-down capability that currently exists coming directly from the Clinton-era “technology transfers”.\u00a0\u00a0 We fought and died, invented and built for literally decades of Cold War to amass a huge technological lead over our nearest competitors.\u00a0 Clinton gave much of that away while breaking our military, which has never recovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[pullquote]For America, the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, but not for the Communists.[\/pullquote]The complete abandonment of strategic thought at the “end” of the Cold War will hurt us for a very long time.\u00a0 Rumsfeld’s Defense Transformation to re-constitute the military along new lines was a great project, rudely interrupted by September 11.\u00a0 The threat from radical political Islam is real and will continue, but the Communists are already conquering our institutions and agencies.\u00a0 For America, the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, but not for the Communists.<\/p>\n

We are being eaten alive by parasites here and scourged by our adversaries abroad, and\u00a0under the chloroform of political correctness, we find it distasteful to resist.\u00a0 We must get over it, or that numb feeling will become permanent.<\/p>\n

China is winning.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div>
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our dark moments, we wonder: If this is freedom, what\u2019s the big deal? <\/p>\n

China<\/h3>\n

China is undergoing its most significant upheaval since becoming a communist state. \u00a0Any communist revolution is by definition an attempt to deny and suppress the spirit of man. \u00a0The current transition will be both more important and more successful than the revolution there, because this move has been anticipated for thousands of years–it is led by reality, rather than the other way around. \u00a0China, long famous for deprecating any knowledge or influence from barbarian realms, is becoming oriented beyond its own borders.<\/p>\n

While we dither and kowtow by re-forming NASA into the North African Space Administration (with a mission to make Muslim countries feel proud of their accomplishments, no less), the Chinese are … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[234,244,251,260,266,269,1],"tags":[273],"class_list":["post-6152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-politics","category-freedom","category-marxism","category-society","category-tea-party","category-u-s-foreign-relations","category-uncategorized","tag-mainfeed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}