No, Obama is not the Puppet Master

but he does represent the ruling class "hive"

Is Barack “Obama the Puppet-Changer," the “true power behind the throne in America? That’s what Scott McKay writes at The American Spectator.

Or are we dealing with what Bob Tyrrell, founding editor of the Spectator, used to call the “Hive.”

I prefer the Hive narrative. I think that humans are social animals and instinctively know what “people like us” are thinking.

Take the emergence of Barack Obama into national politics. He was served up at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a virtual unknown, to give a speech, when he was running for Senate. Who did that? Who got together with whom to elevate Obama into national politics?

Here’s what I think, and it follows from the remarks of a nice liberal lady friend after the 2008 presidential election that elected Barack Obama president. Isn’t it wonderful, she said at lunch. The first black president. You see, to her it was a transcendent moment, a culmination of years of devoted effort by evolved and educated people to bring about “change.” It was what liberals had dreamed of, for decades.

What I thought, but did not say, was that of course America can elect a black president. That’s what liberals have been fussing about for decades. So of course, it’s going to happen. If not this year, than next time or the time after that. The same goes for the first woman president: only not Hillary Clinton, thanks very much.

The joke is, of course, that if America has really risen above its racist past then electing a black president is a nothing-burger. Of course a country that doesn’t discriminate against people of color can elect a black president. And a woman president and a gay president: whatever. If you make a “thing”about electing a black president then you are a racist. Or an anti-racist, which is the same thing, according to Hegel. (And actually, going back all the way to the Greek pre-socratics, who believed that the thing was the same as its opposite.)

But it is the conceit of liberals that, but for them, America would still be living in the dungeon of racism. They are right, of course. Their anti-racism — with its quotas and affirmative action and diversity and DEI — is as racist as racism. Only nobody is allowed to tell liberals that.

So I don’t think that Obama is the puppet master. I just think that he is the Mascot of the inner circle of the ruling class, and he advocates what everyone else in the inner councils advocates: bigger government; more regulation; more DEI; climate change; Palestinians as victims.

Yes, that’s a bit of s problem right now, because the promotion and indulgence of Palestinians as victims runs into the core beliefs of America’s Jews, that Israel is the home of the Jews and they have a right to have their own nation state in the land of Judah. So when Obama is saying “we are all complicit” over Gaza, he is really saying that all you peasants are complicit. Because it stands to reason that people like him are above all that.

Not only that. Israel really does have enemies, people that want to eliminate Israel, “from the river to the sea.” It needs an army and soldiers and leaders with the cojones to defend it. Our liberal friends have to cook up enemies, like the “oppressed” — Palestinians, gays, transgenders: take your pick. Because there are no Nazis or Commies any more. And there is no politics without an enem.

I’ve been reading Newt Gingrich’s series on “American Despotism.” Which is about the despotism of our liberal friends. The latest episode is about the Great Society / War on Poverty programs and how our rulers changed in three years in the 1960s from promoting civil rights to promoting gubmint handouts. How did that happen? Did President Johnson issue an edict? Did liberal intellectuals get together and agree on a change in strategy?

Not really. If you believe as I do, that our rulers rule with a political formula where they the rulers fight for the oppressed, then it makes sense that up until you have a handout program you are fighting for “rights,” for a seat at the table. But after you have delivered “rights?” The only thing that politics knows is handing out loot. So fighting against the bigots for “rights” turns into the “right” to free stuff.

I was reading a piece by Jeffrey Tucker attacking the sneaky program the banks now have of closing the accounts of people with suspicious transactions. But I don’t think that there is some master plan at work. I just think that people in government bureaucracy. people in government-adjacent activist groups, just naturally come up with new ways to regulate and control. Just like the consumer product regulators are always coming up with new ideas for low-flushing toilets and more efficient dishwashers and banning gas stoves. And bike lanes and EVs and wind farms, and phasing out fossil fuels. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s just the “Hive” of our liberal rulers buzzing away coming up with new ideas to make the world a better place and confirm their virtue.

So when the Democrats nominate Joe Biden, it isn’t Barack Obama doing it; it’s the upper ruling-class “hive” buzzing that they mustn’t nominate Bernie Sanders. And right now we have our rulers buzzing that Houston We Have A Problem with the re-election of Joe Biden in 2024.

You know why you have a problem, you ruling geniuses? It’s because you are doing stupid stuff, from climate change to endless regulation and endless one-size-fits-all gubmint programs. Government is for fighting enemies, not for day to day making and buying and selling and working out disagreements. Government cannot get away from the need to fight enemies and to give its supporters free stuff.

There really aren’t many enemies, apart from street thugs and drug dealers. And the more you hand out goodies to your supporters the closer you get to the day when you run out of other peoples’ money.

And the end of the regime.

The next regime? I would like it to be a regime that trusted the people to take care of business. And worried about nothing less than an alien invasion, for which the only solution is to give Elon Musk more money so he can Occupy Mars. Just in case.