Why are Obama's Critics so Mean?

I really enjoyed reading Andrew Sullivan's article "Why are Obama's Critics so Dumb?"

I would also have liked to see an article along the lines of "Why are Obama's Critics so Mean?" It might look something like:

After the Republican brand was so sullied after 8 years of Bush, the Republican Party was in an identity crisis and needed to find some way to rebrand itself in a way the public could swallow again. The Tea Party was one such attempt at rebranding but that was not enough, many, perhaps most republicans feel it is also necessary to sully the Democrat Brand, and in particular the Obama Brand.

Any intelligent person, democrat, republican, libertarian, etc. can see that Barack Obama is an exceedingly intelligent, incredibly articulate, and popular centrist with pragmatic ideas, as well as a man with little or no scandal in his background. In light of these qualities it is difficult to mount any kind of conventional political attack - in the sense of conventional politics that does not rely on lies, logical fallacies, demonizing, fear and hate mongering as well as "shock doctrine."

I would say that Obama's critics are NOT dumb at all - they assume the American population is dumb. They all know that negative campaigning is easier to mount and often more effective than positive campaigning. They all know that today's right-wing policies of the right are designed to benefit only the few and it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide this from the population at large - witness the Occupy Movement. Most of them are probably familiar enough with Machiavellianism to employ it effectively.

The basic point I would like to make is that 'being mean' is really effective. Can you remember being bullied in elementary or high-school, or any other time in your life? Can you remember a time ever being a bully? Did they get what they wanted - did you get what you wanted? To be sure ' mean' gets results.

Part of the problem is that 'the right' has waged a very successful class war - a guerrilla war - by making their overlords 'the incredibly wealthy' (aka the 1%) increasingly influential and powerful. Most people by now are familiar with the famous graph which charts the income of the 1% vs the income of the 99% over the last decades. Clearly this war has been very successful. Clearly this has been a guerrilla war for it to have gone on so long with so few people realizing it. According to Warren Buffett

People lobby to keep their estate taxes down. They lobby to keep their capital gains taxes down," Buffett said. "So, if this is a war - I wouldn't call it a war, I'd call it a struggle - but, if this is a war, my side has had the nuclear bomb.

The main reason this war went unnoticed for so long was the increasing availability and use of credit. While the incomes of the 99% were barely increasing, and in many cases decreasing against inflation, credit cards and borrowing against the equity in your home allowed most people to continue to enjoy the same standard of living they were used to (or wanted to get used to). When credit ran out for most people in 2008 then they became acutely aware their standard of living was not what they thought it was and was changing rapidly.

At the same time the progressive successes of the 20th century left the appetites of most well sated, leaving them relatively apathetic and too lazy to be vigilant of their new rights and opportunities. There is a saying "evil can only flourish when good people do nothing to resist it." In the late 20th century the new policies of the right began to infiltrate society like a latent cancer - most notably Reaganism. At the advent of the 21st century this process metastasized under the Bush era culminating in the global economic meltdown of 2008.

Even after the vectors of economic cancers were well understood and prophylactics were put in place to prevent this kind of disease again, the Financial Lobby and many on the right continue to vehemently protested these new regulations and relentlessly advocate for even fewer regulations and oversight.

• If you are a minority, especially if you are a very small minority, then democracy is your enemy. Democracy - by design - is intended to prevent a small minority from controlling a large majority.
  
• Democracy is the most popular form of governance in the world. If democracy is getting in your way, then you need to do something about it that will be very unpopular, and you need to do it very carefully to avoid becoming too unpopular yourself.
  
• If you are going to undermine democracy then you need to let go of popular morals and ethics - in short you need to be mean (among other things).

I hope these premises and logic are self evident - the reasoning is not complex. If you are indeed going to wage a guerrilla war against democracy then some of the following strategies, tactics and logistics are important.

1. Propaganda. In a guerrilla war propaganda cannot be overt - it must be covert - the people you are trying to influence and persuade cannot be allowed to know your actual agenda, you must get them to accept a different agenda.
2. Innuendo, Speaking in Code, Dog-Whistle Politics. One way to disseminate propaganda covertly is to use innuendo. Words like prosperity typify very specific codes that to the masses might imply 'prosperity for all' but to the cabal who invented the code it usually means 'prosperity for the few by exploiting the many'
3. Fallacy. If your agenda is to promote unfair policies then fallacious reasoning is a sine qua non. This can range from using improper premises by manufacturing false facts or even better by distorting known or well known facts, to straw-man, slippery-slope and other compelling arguments.
4. Repetition & Hyperbole. If you have to lie, then repeat the lie, get as many others to repeat the lie as often as possible. The more times anyone hears a lie, the more people they hear the same lie from, the more likely they are to believe the lie is the truth. The more you exaggerate a lie, the more extreme the lie becomes, the more likely people are drawn in the direction of the lie, whether or not they actually believe it.
5. Religion. Anthropologically speaking, religion likely evolved to allow humans to deal with concepts and facts that could not be known. It evolved even further into systems of morals and ethics that enabled societies to grow and flourish. Sadly, the fundamental core of religion - faith - is also easy to undermine and co-opt by those of bad faith. As tools go, religion can be the most effective one which allows a small minority of people to dominate the beliefs of the majority. Religion is so incredibly powerful is it the most important tool used to undermine science as science is often the enemy of special interests. Religion can be used to undermine what can be known and even that which can be proven.
6. Hate. If you need to win friends and influence people one of the best tools around is hatred. People easily identify with fear, anger and especially hatred. When combined with religion hate becomes incredibly compelling. Using hate and religion you can even get people to support policies and ideologies that conflict with their own self interests. When using hate be sure to employ innuendo, speak in code, and foster dog-whistle politics.
7. De-education. After the second world war the US government instituted some progressive legislation, called the GI Bill, which made it possible for many more people to complete higher education than ever before. This was a calamity for the right in that well educated people tend to be more aware and understanding of progressive ideals such as human and individual rights, fairness, compassion, collective goals, etc. Even more of a problem, well educated people tend to have better critical thinking skills which makes it harder to employ against them the strategies, tactics and logistics listed here. This begs the question, is the demise of educational scores in the US and increasing barriers to education a coincidence?

To be sure I am not trying to say that all republicans are morally bankrupt or evil any more than I am trying to say that all democrats enjoy a moral windfall and are saints - after all Barack Obama has more than his fair share of critics on the left. Ideally neither end of the spectrum should be more or less moral than the other. What has happened however is that both sides of the spectrum are infected by cabals that have evolved to serve special minority interests. These cabals have been fantastically successful in their agendas and profits. The problem with such success is that it can go to your head and often people lust for even more success and become increasingly reckless in their pursuits.

Obama's critics - on both the right and the left - are mean because they have to be in order to have any hope criticizing or defeating him. After the 2011 State of the Union address support for Obama's proposals reached 91%.

I speculate that Obama has pulled the perfect Rocky Balboa in that he has allowed his opponents to beat him up the last few years in order to make them more greedy, overconfident, and now reckless. Obama has saved his strength and studied his opponents in order that his punches at the end of match will be most effective, when his opponents are at their weakest.

Rocky Balboa: Yo, don't I got some rights?
Boxing Commissioner: What rights do you think you're referring to?
Rocky Balboa: Rights, like in that official piece of paper they wrote down the street there?
Boxing Commissioner: That's the Bill of Rights.
Rocky Balboa: Yeah, yeah. Bill of Rights. Don't it say something about going after what makes you happy?
Boxing Commissioner: No, that's the pursuit of happiness. But what's your point
Rocky Balboa: My point is I'm pursuing something and nobody looks too happy about it.
Boxing Commissioner: But... we're just looking out for your interests.
Rocky Balboa: I appreciate that, but maybe you're looking out for your interests just a little bit more. I mean you shouldn't be asking people to come down here and pay the freight on something they paid, it still ain't good enough, I mean you think that's right? I mean maybe you're doing your job but why you gotta stop me from doing mine? Cause if you're willing to go through all the battling you got to go through to get where you want to get, who's got the right to stop you? I mean maybe some of you guys got something you never finished, something you really want to do, something you never said to someone, something... and you're told no, even after you paid your dues? Who's got the right to tell you that, who? Nobody! It's your right to listen to your gut, it ain't nobody's right to say no after you earned the right to be where you want to be and do what you want to do!... You know, the older I get the more things I gotta leave behind, that's life. The only thing I'm asking you guys to leave on the table... is what's right.