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Famed counterpuncher Chris Christie was ready and waiting when some Occupy protesters interrupted his speech in Iowa the other day.
He properly ridiculed them, and watched while they were escorted from the room.
Then, he offered an analysis of their emotional states.
Many stories about the incident have left out this part of the story, so I bring it to your attention.
Christie said: “Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused. He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.”
After calling them disillusioned and saying that he “feels bad” for them, Christie continued: “Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves.
They are not, in other words, sufficiently mature to take responsibility for their own actions, like voting for Barack Obama and thus, for being responsible for the current state of the nation.
I am adding, as a footnote, a link to an article by JoelKotkin. Therein Kotkin says that the best way to understand Barack Obama is not to see him as an ideologue, but to see him as a product of the corrupt political culture of Chicago and Illinois.
Obama is not trying to make America over in Europe’s image, but to make it look like one of America’s great failed states, Illinois.
It’s not just the high taxes, the power of unions, and the regulatory environment. Kotkin explains that Illinois excels at crony capitalism and the culture of corruption.
He concludes with a point that dovetails nicely into the point that Chris Christie makes. Chicago and Illinois politicians are incapable of taking responsibility for their mistakes.
Kotkin writes: “One might hope this disastrous record [of Chicago and Illinois] might make President Obama consider taking a different path to governing our country. Yet sadly it appears that acknowledgement of failure is not part of the ‘Chicago way’ — a denial that may cost us dearly in the years ahead.”
2 comments:
Obama is and was always an opportunist. This may be an intrinsic aspect of his nature, or perhaps he was -- as are so many people -- corrupted by the closest people in his life when he was most vulnerable.
As for the "occupiers", their timing is not coincidental. They did not protest involuntary exploitation because they embrace it. They do protest fraudulent exploitation because their dreams of instant gratification through redistributive and retributive change have gone unfulfilled.
Both forms of exploitation are causal corruptive influences. The first is fundamental, especially when it is progressive, while the latter is potentially exhibited by all people, as we share a common vulnerability. However, the latter is also corruption in the exception, and should be resolved with a suitably exceptional correction. The same cannot be advised for the former.
It's especially concerning that they do not recognize that dreams of physical and ego instant gratification are particularly corruptive of individuals and society. They seem to think that material corruption is exclusive, which is paradoxical, since they also embrace it.
That said, we must deal with fraudulent exploitation. It may simply stem from involuntary exploitation, but it is progressive, and is potentially equally corrosive.
It would be helpful if we could distinguish between cause and effect. It would be helpful to distinguish between instigators, conspirators, and opportunists. However, whatever the order may have been, it is undeniable that it did not occur and progress without, at minimum, consent of authoritarian interests, and that is where the correction must begin.
Truly a mess with extensive historical precedents.
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