Tomorrow night we shall find out if the new and powerful Media Class of the USA can select, promote and install its own candidate in the White House. We shall also learn if it has the power to put dangerous and foul-mouthed clowns like Al Franken in Congress. I am not optimistic about the future of the USA for in a modern democracy it is not necessary to fool all the people, only about 20% of them. Some 30% of the population has a vested interest in the growth of the State. Many are employed in the ever-growing public services and many are dependent on welfare and redistributed wealth. Another 10% are the perpetually discontented, often financially prosperous, who blame their inner unhappiness on Christians and their judgementalism. All these groups find expression on the Left. Those who make up the Media Class are a part of this group and their drenching propaganda in newspapers, magazines and on TV and cinema screens ensures that the 40% remain fired up, outraged, and militant.
On the other side is the 40% who are naturally conservative, patriotic and busy working, raising good citizens and not looking for a hand-out. In the USA, many go to Church and believe that the USA is exceptional. These people are naturally on the Right and increasingly they get their news and facts from the Internet.
To decisively win an election, the Media Class only has to mislead the 20% who pay little attention to politics, skim the headlines on the way to the sports pages and tune in to David Letterman and his comrades, unaware that they are being brainwashed. In this election, and particularly the Presidential race, the 20% have been deprived of the facts about Obama and fed propaganda about him, more boldly than in any previous election. Some may smell a rat at the last minute but I am sure the Media Class will succeed in fooling most of the ‘floating’ voters.
Let us forget for a moment that Obama has hugely benefitted from Media reporting that has hidden much of his radical history, has ignored his absence of achievement, camouflaged and buried his mistakes on the stump whilst at the same time it has belittled John McCain and trashed Sarah Palin. Let us set aside that Obama has been able to spout one thing in Pennsylvania and the opposite in San Francisco and in the Media never the twain shall meet. Let us accept philosophically that Obama has been able to gallop away from commitments on Town Hall debates and campaign funding with never a reprimand from the Media. There is a fundamental divide between the two candidates and their supporters and it is this. McCain and Palin believe that America and its people are exceptional. They attribute this exceptional thread running through American history to the fact that the early pioneers came in search of freedom, brought with them the most enlightened ideas of their time from British Protestantism and British Common Law, and in rebellion fashioned a Constitution that is unique in its wisdom. Because the new Nation’s Constitutional framework unleashed the energies and gifts of the pioneering people and has continued to do so, America has become the most prosperous and creative Nation in the world. As the world’s superpower, it has also been a force for good.
It is worth noting that though settlement of the harsh and vast North American continent only began in the 1600’s and was completed in the mid 1800’s, by the turn of that century the USA had become one of the world’s leading nations. Compare this to the settlement and evolution of Argentina (a land comparable in many ways), also by Europeans, and today we see a Nation that has stagnated. Only Canada, Australia and New Zealand can come near to the USA’s achievements.
Obama and his followers see a very different Nation and history. He has, both in this election campaign and previously, described the USA as a fundamentally flawed Nation that is in desperate need of a renunciation of its past and in need of a radical change of direction. His wife surely spoke for both of them when she said that only with his nomination did she become proud of her country. He has spent his political life amongst comrades who regard the USA as an evil force in the world. In so far as Obama has a cure for the Nation, it is in the redistribution of wealth through taxation and the growth of government. He believes that the US has to make amends with its enemies in the world and he will do what it takes to win the approval of a world of nations who in his mind are superior. No wonder the world, and especially its Media elites, pant for his victory. Yet he makes few concrete proposals. Is it because he fears that his intentions are best kept secret from the electorate until after Tuesday, or is it because he believes that he does not need policies?
His past associations suggest that he has a secret menu of socialist policies but I suspect that he is brimming with a misplaced confidence in his own personage. His rise to eminence has been so effortless thanks to his promoters in Chicago and in the Media that he believes he possesses magic powers. I am sure he truly thinks that fine words spoken from his mouth will captivate Mr. Putin, the inscrutable men in Peking, the mad mullahs of Iran and the psychopath in North Korea. He probably believes too that his greatness will restore the markets and currencies and that his grand domestic and foreign economic schemes will conjure up the necessary resources. When I hear him pontificate on how ‘new’ technologies (though as yet undiscovered) will more than compensate for the current energy sources he will penalize, I suspect we have a future leader who has yet to inhabit the real world. John McCain, who does inhabit the real world, believes that he will speak and act using America’s great powers that draw on its exceptionalism. Obama believes that he can reject America’s power and strengths and substitute his personality and glib words to take the Nation into a new future and dismantle its past.
We should not be surprised that a Media Class, with its roots in Hollywood and on Broadway, has chosen a man who speaks fine lines and then believes them. Tomorrow we will find out if a majority of the American people have rejected Christianity and put their faith in magic.