Adoring Crowds, the underside

The other side of the Adoring Crowds 

Barack Obama’s style of leadership provokes the gathering of thousands who scream praises for him and shout his name in nothing less than adoration.  These are powerful events, that remind us of the adoring crowds that Mao, Mussolini, Peron and others managed to put together.  Large adoring crowds are not rational, they find support on the fanatics of the group, which makes reason, measure and other balancing forces, superfluous.

As in most crowds reactions, there is no real message delivered to them, or expected.   A deep sense of any message given to them by the leader is not what elicits the blind obedience an adoration, but the way the message is delivered, by who, in front of whom, the initial and instant roaring approval and the most simplistic ideas being delivered.

The initial crowds and reactions to the leader, are always paid or forced. People are paid or offered a meal to ‘seed the square’, others will invariably follow, consistent with the herd mentality of all crowds. This is true in North Korea and in mainland USA.

Argentina (where I grew up) had General Peron, who could gather a crowd of a million at a moment’s notice.  The often repeated message that awakened the most fervor was ‘Our best asset is our People’ (lo mejor que tenemos es el pueblo’ This was adoration in reverse, since ‘the people’ is meant to point back to the adoring crowd, who was always too happy to celebrate the ‘recognition’ by their leader, in fact cheering themselves through Peron.  Peron had another favorite saying: ‘in Argentina, the only privileged are the old and the children’.  This is both a self-evident statement that is hard to argue, and a falsehood, as Peron and his friends made themselves enormously rich, while the people suffered.  This is the way of the demagogues that draw their power by fooling large crowds of mostly the young and uneducated into believing that he is in their side.  This is an abuse of the same system (Democracy) that they destroy, as they get elected by the votes of the uninformed and those who want the rewards of the work of somebody else.

ACORN collects those crowds, votes, and drives them to vote for Obama.  We saw ‘this movie’ before, and it is not a good one.  Things eventually get back to normal as most people feel disappointed, but it takes generations.

One very important indicator is Obama’s policy to do away with the secret vote by workers on union matters, including joining a labor union.  This should not be overlooked.  This is doing away with the democratic expression of the individual worker’s decision, and allowing the union bosses, bullies and mafia to in fact force the workers to vote the interest of the union.  Then, once elected ‘democratically’, they don’t need to ‘ask’ anymore, they can force their will by changing rules, laws, etc.

With a majority in both houses in Congress, this is exactly the power that Obama will get.  This is a mirror image of what happened in Argentina and other unfortunate nations that democratically elected a radical, leftist, ‘community organizer’.

Just as Peron and other dictators did, they do not practice what they preach.  Obama propitiates ‘sharing the wealth’, yet he lives in a 1.5 million mansion.  He could lead by example, sell his home, move to a more modest $200,000 apartment and share the wealth with another seven families who lost their homes.  Mr. Buffet could follow suit, and be consistent with their proclaimed philosophy and policy, but they don’t.  And the mass media does not call them on that.

Obama is not on the side of the crowds, he uses the crowds to gain power.  In his life, everything has been a stepping stone to the next level of power, and so will be the presidency.  Senator Obama is mad at America, and he decided, early on, that he was going to do something about it, and he is in the blink of success.  Once in power, he will change the rules and nullify the democratic checks and balances to a degree that will take generations to undo the harm.

Obama does not believe in the Democratic process, only uses it for his own designs.  When an Anchor from an Orlando TV station posed questions that were too close to the truth (calling his policies ‘Marxism’) he silenced that entire TV station from any further contact with his campaign.  This is as close as censure as it comes, another strong marker of tyrannies.

People do not vote for this kind of leader based on track record, facts or even clear evidence.  They are manipulated, the ‘believe’ and/or  ‘like’ the candidate, and go for it.  They don’t just disregard the evidence, they make fun of the fact that they just vote for ‘the guy’ because they ‘like’ him.  That is a huge bet based only on the most basic, elemental and untested way of selection.

Indications of what Obama is really all about, and what he will do to this Country are all over the place (his associations, his declared policies, his failure to keep his word on his written commitment to campaign finance, etc.) but they mean nothing to an adoring crowd.

As for the average American, who is legitimately and rightfully proud to be an American, please note that ‘cowboy Capitalism’ is what made America the country they so much love.  Senator Obama has declared his war against every single principle on which America is built on, including the most basic of individual responsibility, enjoyment and reward for the individual’s success or failures.

History shows that ‘collectivization’ of rewards for initiative, effort and work, do not work.  Pooling all the money together and letting the government distribute it, is incompatible with our human desire to improve our conditions.  Look no further than the Soviet Union and North Korea (compare with ethnically and geographically identical South Korea).  This ‘ideology’ is dead on arrival, but nevertheless Obama and his followers want to revive it.

Another highly destructive consequence of Obama’s policy is the ‘class war’ it proposes, by antagonizing, differentiating and denouncing the rich, against the poor.  America is a highly mobile society where people are not required to be descendents of the Pioneers or the Mayflower passenger list, to succeed.  This is not the case in many countries, where you are stuck in the social strata where you are born into.   In America, the waiter serving you at the restaurant can be the son of a millionaire; people do move up and down according to their intelligence, efforts, initiative and courage.  We do not see people with lower income as pariah (or lumpen proletariat), but as people either on the way up, or who do not care to enrich themselves.  ‘Only in America’ we like to say, one can be poor one day, a millionaire the next, and maybe poor again later on.  You can make it in America!.  There is no hate for the rich, but mostly admiration.  There is no class warfare in our Nation, but Obama is creating one by pointing out differences if not opposition between ‘the rich and the poor’, as if those are permanent labels, perennial membership to one group or another.

Socialism in America

Very simply put, resulting from a combination of effort, talent, vision and courage, some people become entrepreneurs and build enterprises.  They eventually reap the benefits in the form of riches.  Some others admire and learn from them, some don’t care and yet others resent them.  The later outnumbers all the other sectors, and instead of bettering their skills, work harder and earn their own fortunes, they organize to use their larger number (called ‘masses’) to revert this natural order where everyone got (and enjoyed) what they earned. 

This is called a revolution and the activists that lead them are called ‘community organizers’, agitators or leftist revolutionaries.

Community organizers (people of great charisma and expert speakers) working inside unions extracted concessions from automakers which are unrealistic, unsupported by the local or global market, and unfair.  Management gave in to these demands under duress of strike or worst.

Community organizers using our legal system forced the banks to stop ‘discriminating’ and grant loans to people could buy houses they could not afford.

The story is the same, people who did not make the money, use the power of the masses to take it from those who earned it.  Eventually, they run the companies (and countries) to the ground and everyone losses.

The epilogue:  the new leaders forget their commitment to their base, live in million dollars mansions, fly private jets and surround themselves with riches like the people who earned it in the first place.

Yes, we are in the final stage (consolidation) of a true Socialist revolution in America.

Loans and Unions

By forcing the banks to give loans to those who could not repay them, they created a huge artificial demand for homes, inflating the price of real estate to the point t when legitimate buyers could not afford them.

These new buyers could not afford the payments, putting so many homes back in the market due to foreclosure and walkouts that the bubble burst, decimating the home prices and the lenders; and with them, our entire financial system.

The same community organizers encouraged the autoworker unions to demand unreasonable high salaries and benefits, which are unsustainable.  Now they are asking that we bail (the unions) out.

Adding insult to injury, during the TARP negotiations, they demanded billions for the community organizers under ACORN.

There is a common element to all of this, and other maladies of our economy and everyone can connect the dots, leading to the same group of people, lead by our President elect.

Barack Obama not only wants to unionize every untapped source of support for him, hence his proposal to eliminate the secret ballot on union/non union votes, where workers can be manipulated, if not intimidated, to vote union.  Obama set as a condition to pass a trade agreement with Colombia (one of our very few allies in Latin-America), to the internal ‘working conditions’ in that sovereign nation.  He wants to ‘organize’ and unionize the world.  I don’t think we have seen yet the true dimension of Obama’s ambitions. 

Universal Healthcare

 

 

Universal Healthcare Coverage inspires a love-hate reaction from most of us.

On one side, we would like to see everyone covered.  People should not have do die or live in agony due to diseases or as a result of accidents, simply because they can’t pay the doctor.  Not in America.

On the other side, we don’t wants to spend money to heal a person who is doing everything possible to get sick, or who does not care about his/her own health.

On the first case, we have the responsible individual who got sick or got into an accident.  Most of us will agree to chip-in to bring him/her back to health with our tax dollars.

On the other, we have the smokers, morbidly obese, drug users, alcoholics or those having unprotected sex with multiple partners.  Once they get sick, taxpayers money should not be used to temporarily bringing them back to health.   Add to this category those who being able to work (or contribute) to pay for their healthcare, chose not to.  We should not all pay to cure deliberate self-inflicted sickness, or those who don’t care.  It is an issue of taking responsibility for one’s own wellbeing.

I suggest that to be covered with taxpayer’s dollars, any applicant needs to visit the doctor once every three years.  The doctor can then give them a clean bill of health responsibility, meaning the person does not fall into the categories mentioned above.  We all want to help that person.  If they fall short, the person would have advice on how to ‘clean up and straighten up’, and go back for a clean bill in a few months.

If someone is doing everything possible to hurt themselves, choosing a lifestyle that almost but warranties that they will get seriously or chronically sick, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money, just to continue to hurt themselves a little longer, we should not be burdened with the bill.

Why pay to bring back to health somebody who is getting sick on purpose?  I.e.: why provide a new liver to an alcoholic that will ruin the new one, at our (enormous) expense?

This should reduce the number of tax-insured individuals to about half.  We can pay for that.

This is also an incentive for people to live responsible lives, a tenet of our American Way of Life.

.

 

 

 

Failure is a Treasure

 

 

 

Failure is a treasure not to be wasted.

Capitalism can be explained as ‘letting the natural consequences of your acts take their course’. 

The building blocks of Capitalism are entrepreneurs: people who develop an idea and risk their time, money and efforts to see it through.  Except for the very lucky ones, it takes several tries, to succeed.  Each try has the potential to fail.  Those who succeed, reap the benefits, growing our economy and creating employment for themselves and others in the process.  Those attempts that fail, carry with them a fundamental lesson, which entrepreneurs will use to learn and improve their processes and have a better chance at success the next time.

It is said that no one can consider her/himself and Entrepreneur until they went bankrupt a couple of times.  By failing, they learn essential lessons on market realities, perseverance, focus, negotiation and technical skills, market perception, needs and fluctuations, discipline, etc.  These fundamental lessons can’t be learned in any other way, as they bridge the gap between information (education, instruction, training, etc.) and reality, in a world of human actions and reactions.

A bailout robs Society of the benefits of this fundamental lesson on reality. 

Bailing out means getting in the middle (tinkering) between the actions of someone (Entrepreneur, Corporation, Society, etc.) and the natural consequences of their actions.  The opportunity to learn, grow, truly succeed, is sorely wasted.

A culture of shifting responsibility, entitlement, whining and living of welfare, replaces the concept of responsibility, accountability, self-respect and adulthood.

Bailout replaces a temporary setback, a stepping stone towards greatness, with dependency.  Growth stops, entrepreneurship is replaced with begging, conformity and stagnation.

Failure is a temporary setback, an indispensable lesson, not a curse.  The individual and collective economy is cyclical, like everything else in the natural world.  Attempts to ‘stabilize’ it just prolong the valleys, delaying the recovery and causing real harm.

At every cycle, if allowed to flow naturally, each part of the economy becomes stronger and wiser as a result of the lessons learned.  Room is made for new generations of creative entrepreneurs and some who got used to unrealistic perks, have an opportunity to ‘catch up’ with reality, learn and come back better and stronger.

Government intervention, as a big nanny, interrupts that process and spoils the benfits.  While apparently helping, they only do so temporarily, as it prevents Society form learning important lessons.  They can ‘contain the water’ for so long, and then we pay a price that is much higher than the original and natural consequence.  Eventually, both paths meet at the same point of reckoning with reality: one is just much longer and painful thanks to the ‘help’ from the Government.

Capitalism is basically a philosophy of responsibility, accountability and opportunity to grow.  Accountability in this context does not mean ‘finding whom to blame’, but the opportunity for all to see the consequences of one’s plans in the context of the existing market conditions, and fully learn from them.   Socialism, under the guise of ‘compassion’ does not understand this concept, removes the principle of responsibility (replacing it with blind obedience), regressing everyone to the stage of infants, and disrupts the natural cycles of try, error, learn, try again till success.

Socialism, the antithesis of Capitalism, has proven time and again not to work.  Socialism bails you out, Capitalism holds you responsible.  Capitalism incentives the individual to succeed because it allows the inner need to grow to function, and allows the individual to benefit from his/her own efforts.  Socialism teaches the individual to reap the benefits of somebody else’s work.

Those attempting greater government control, promoting bailouts, forcing the ‘equalization’ (wealth redistribution, etc.) still believe that Socialism could work, which at this stage in history is truly magical thinking, or irrational faith.  This is not consistent with their other core beliefs.  Inconsistency is a constant in the Socialist schema.