SNAKE OIL
Don Fredrick
Karlyn Borysenko attended the massive Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on February 10. At Medium.com she wrote,
“I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. But this experience made me realize how out-of-touch my party is with the country at large.”
She concluded,
“I think the Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens, because they’re existing in an echo chamber that is not reflective of the broader reality. I hope it’s a wake-up call that causes them to take a long look in the mirror and really ask themselves how they got here. Maybe then they’ll start listening. I tend to doubt it, but I can hope.”
I certainly recommend her article. The sentence that most caught my attention was this:
“I’ve seen almost every Democratic candidate in person and noticed that their messages were almost universally one of doom and gloom, not only focusing on the obvious disagreements with Donald Trump, but also making sure to emphasize that the country is a horribly racist place.”
That is a crucial comment. Emphasizing “doom and gloom” is a technique the Democrats took from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. No matter how well things are going (a rising stock market, record low unemployment, growing consumer confidence, increased productivity, stable prices, no major wars, etc.), the Democrat candidate tries his best to tell people in his audience their lives are monumentally miserable and declare that they are extraordinarily powerless to do anything about it. Their only salvation is to vote for him, and he will ensure that the government addresses all their problems with additional bureaucrats, more rules and regulations, and higher taxes.
The campaign technique used by Democrat candidates is to emphasize everyone’s problems—and even invent them if there are none. If you are a black voter and you are living a good and prosperous life, you will nevertheless hear from the Democrat candidate that you are actually miserable and are quite likely to get pulled over and shot by a white cop for no reason. If you have student loan debt of about $25,000—an amount that is hardly unmanageable and less than many new car loans—you are nevertheless told you will be eating ramen noodles in a studio apartment for the rest of your life. If you wear a coat in the winter and shorts in the summer, you are told the world will end in 12 years unless the world stops drilling for oil (as envirosocialists write endless articles about the threat of “climate change” on keyboards made of petroleum-based plastic).
The Democrat candidate makes everyone in his audience believe he is a victim. He blames someone else for making the voter that victim. He manipulates the voter’s emotions. He makes the voter believe his only hope is to elect him, and that he alone can address all his problems with bigger government—and pay for those fixes with someone else’s money. That is the Democrat game, and they have become masters at playing it.
That is how Hitler rallied the Germans and came to power. The lives of German citizens were certainly made difficult because of the harsh financial penalties imposed on their nation after World War I, by the spread of America’s Great Depression, and by the counter-productive Smoot-Hawley tariff bill that helped intensify and extend that economic misery. But explaining that is complicated—and it also involves placing blame on governments. You cannot sell big government remedies by noting that the problems were caused by big government. You must instead select and demonize a bogeyman.
Hitler blamed Jews for most of Germany’s ills, such as rampant price inflation. It was, of course, the printing of money that caused prices to increase, but if Hitler merely explained that reality, he could not gain power. Instead, he blamed the Jewish businessmen. “How dare they raise prices and make your lives difficult!” But they had to raise prices to stay in business, because their suppliers had raised prices. Every business raised prices because the value of the German currency had declined—as a direct result of running the printing presses around the clock. It was not that products and services were worth more; it was that the paper money was worth less. (The same can be seen today in Venezuela. Printing money that is not backed by gold or some other real commodity necessarily results in price increases.)
Hitler shifted the blame from government to the Jews. It was an easy thing to do, as Jews were in the minority. The tactics used by Hitler were repeated in Alinsky’s book, which was devoured and memorized by the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, et al. (Clinton’s senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, There is Only the Fight, was about Alinsky. In 1968, Alinsky offered Clinton a job, which she declined—probably because she saw no quick money in “community organizing.” Obama’s oft-repeated line about “the world as it is and the world as it should be,” over which his future wife swooned and which she repeated twice in her 2008 speech to the Democrat National Convention, came from chapter two of Alinsky’s book.) The only Democrat politician who has not read Alinsky is probably Joe Biden—unless it was perhaps published as a picture book.
As I wrote in Volume 1 of The Complete Obama Timeline,
“Obama learns from the Alinsky crowd the method for getting people to support radical change they would ordinarily not be willing to accept. ‘They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.’ Thus, just as it has been the unstated theme of most Democrat presidential campaigns over the last 40 years, so it later becomes Obama’s: ‘Everything is terrible and headed in the wrong direction, your lives are in shambles, greedy capitalism is at fault, and you need to trust a bigger government and my plans to solve all your problems. Business is your enemy and government is your friend. Just trust me to deliver hope and change.’”
Alinsky wrote that community organizers (called “poverty pimps” by some critics) are primarily agitators, who must
“Fan the resentments of the people of a community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression—he must search out controversy and issues… An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontentment… He knows that values are relative… Truth to him is relative and changing.”
Unlike Hitler, the Democrats might not directly blame Jews for everyone’s problems (because they want their votes and their campaign donations), but they do so indirectly by blaming Wall Street and the “one-percenters”—which, to many non-thinking and prejudiced voters, means Jews. Most Democrat candidates also blame Israel for half the world’s problems. That readily gains them support from Muslim voters and from others who irrationally hate Jews. It also gains them support from Jews who hate Israel, and even Jews who hate Jews. (There are a surprising number of them.)
The Democrats eagerly blame whites for the problems of blacks, whites for the problems of Hispanics, men for the problems of women, straights for the problems of gays, managers for the problems of workers, and police for the problems of law-breakers. The Democrats blame rising prices on greedy businessmen rather than on Congress and the Federal Reserve, poor schools on everything but the poor teachers, student debt on everyone but the greedy university bureaucrats and the naive students, overcrowded prisons on everyone but the criminals, murder on guns rather than the murderers, and hot days and storms on power plants and SUVs. To a Democrat politician addressing a rally, every problem of every person in his audience has been caused by someone else. Further, no one in his audience can resolve his own problems. Only more government can do that! The candidate is the savior who can bring wonderful things to everyone—and always at someone else’s expense.
While conservatives seek freedom to, leftists seek freedom from. Conservatives seek to fix government, while leftists seek to fix people. As a result, the Democrat politician primarily offers the voters two things: relief from accountability and relief from responsibility. The voter is hypnotized into believing, “Everything is someone else’s fault, so it surely cannot be my fault!” and “The government will fix everything, so I do not have to do anything!” That no-accountability and no-responsibility message is an enticing drug. It should be no surprise that tens of millions of otherwise reasonable people fall for the sales pitch, and when everyone else is eagerly buying the magic potion from the traveling salesman it is difficult to avoid getting caught up in the excitement. The Democrat candidate is the Professor Harold Hill of politics. The only difference is that Hill eventually saw the error of his ways. The Democrat will continue to sell band instruments and uniforms for the rest of his life—or even afterward, from a “charitable foundation.”
But Donald Trump got between the shifty-eyed, smooth-talking pitchman and the potential buyers of his snake oil. Trump reminded the voters that the snake was indeed a snake. Trump does not tell his audience their lives are interminably dreary, or that their nation is irredeemably evil. In fact, he tells them their lives are pretty darned good. He tells them they, not government bureaucrats, can solve their few problems by themselves—and that they can do it more effectively and more efficiently. He reminds them that they are capable of anything they choose to do—if the government would mostly just get out of their way. He emphasizes that the majority of their problems will not be solved by government, because most of their problems were caused by government. (Ronald Reagan effectively told his audiences the same thing, but Reagan generally failed to act on his promises to get government out of the way. Reagan was right but ineffective. Trump is right and effective.)
While the Democrat politician makes rally-goers feel bad about themselves, Trump makes his rally attendees feel good about themselves. While the Democrat tells the voters they cannot possibly solve their own problems, Trump reminds the voters that they have the power within themselves to achieve greatness. While the Democrat tells the voters that half the people they cross on the street are their enemies, Trump tells the people that all Americans working together can accomplish anything. While the Democrat tells the voters the United States of America is merely one sinful country among 190 others, Trump tells the voters that their nation is the greatest on the face of the earth, that they should not be ashamed of that greatness, and that they are capable of even more astounding accomplishments in the future. Voters leave a Democrat rally with fleeting faith in big government. Voters leave a Trump rally with fearless faith in themselves.
Borysenko is correct. The Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November.
Don Fredrick
February 15, 2020
https://gen.medium.com/ive-been-a-democrat-for-20-years-here-s-what-i-experienced-at-trump-s-rally-in-new-hampshire-c69ddaaf6d07
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Obama-Timeline-August-March/dp/1503132587/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419372391&sr=1-1&keywords=don+fredrick
“I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. But this experience made me realize how out-of-touch my party is with the country at large.”
She concluded,
“I think the Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens, because they’re existing in an echo chamber that is not reflective of the broader reality. I hope it’s a wake-up call that causes them to take a long look in the mirror and really ask themselves how they got here. Maybe then they’ll start listening. I tend to doubt it, but I can hope.”
I certainly recommend her article. The sentence that most caught my attention was this:
“I’ve seen almost every Democratic candidate in person and noticed that their messages were almost universally one of doom and gloom, not only focusing on the obvious disagreements with Donald Trump, but also making sure to emphasize that the country is a horribly racist place.”
That is a crucial comment. Emphasizing “doom and gloom” is a technique the Democrats took from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. No matter how well things are going (a rising stock market, record low unemployment, growing consumer confidence, increased productivity, stable prices, no major wars, etc.), the Democrat candidate tries his best to tell people in his audience their lives are monumentally miserable and declare that they are extraordinarily powerless to do anything about it. Their only salvation is to vote for him, and he will ensure that the government addresses all their problems with additional bureaucrats, more rules and regulations, and higher taxes.
The campaign technique used by Democrat candidates is to emphasize everyone’s problems—and even invent them if there are none. If you are a black voter and you are living a good and prosperous life, you will nevertheless hear from the Democrat candidate that you are actually miserable and are quite likely to get pulled over and shot by a white cop for no reason. If you have student loan debt of about $25,000—an amount that is hardly unmanageable and less than many new car loans—you are nevertheless told you will be eating ramen noodles in a studio apartment for the rest of your life. If you wear a coat in the winter and shorts in the summer, you are told the world will end in 12 years unless the world stops drilling for oil (as envirosocialists write endless articles about the threat of “climate change” on keyboards made of petroleum-based plastic).
The Democrat candidate makes everyone in his audience believe he is a victim. He blames someone else for making the voter that victim. He manipulates the voter’s emotions. He makes the voter believe his only hope is to elect him, and that he alone can address all his problems with bigger government—and pay for those fixes with someone else’s money. That is the Democrat game, and they have become masters at playing it.
That is how Hitler rallied the Germans and came to power. The lives of German citizens were certainly made difficult because of the harsh financial penalties imposed on their nation after World War I, by the spread of America’s Great Depression, and by the counter-productive Smoot-Hawley tariff bill that helped intensify and extend that economic misery. But explaining that is complicated—and it also involves placing blame on governments. You cannot sell big government remedies by noting that the problems were caused by big government. You must instead select and demonize a bogeyman.
Hitler blamed Jews for most of Germany’s ills, such as rampant price inflation. It was, of course, the printing of money that caused prices to increase, but if Hitler merely explained that reality, he could not gain power. Instead, he blamed the Jewish businessmen. “How dare they raise prices and make your lives difficult!” But they had to raise prices to stay in business, because their suppliers had raised prices. Every business raised prices because the value of the German currency had declined—as a direct result of running the printing presses around the clock. It was not that products and services were worth more; it was that the paper money was worth less. (The same can be seen today in Venezuela. Printing money that is not backed by gold or some other real commodity necessarily results in price increases.)
Hitler shifted the blame from government to the Jews. It was an easy thing to do, as Jews were in the minority. The tactics used by Hitler were repeated in Alinsky’s book, which was devoured and memorized by the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, et al. (Clinton’s senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, There is Only the Fight, was about Alinsky. In 1968, Alinsky offered Clinton a job, which she declined—probably because she saw no quick money in “community organizing.” Obama’s oft-repeated line about “the world as it is and the world as it should be,” over which his future wife swooned and which she repeated twice in her 2008 speech to the Democrat National Convention, came from chapter two of Alinsky’s book.) The only Democrat politician who has not read Alinsky is probably Joe Biden—unless it was perhaps published as a picture book.
As I wrote in Volume 1 of The Complete Obama Timeline,
“Obama learns from the Alinsky crowd the method for getting people to support radical change they would ordinarily not be willing to accept. ‘They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.’ Thus, just as it has been the unstated theme of most Democrat presidential campaigns over the last 40 years, so it later becomes Obama’s: ‘Everything is terrible and headed in the wrong direction, your lives are in shambles, greedy capitalism is at fault, and you need to trust a bigger government and my plans to solve all your problems. Business is your enemy and government is your friend. Just trust me to deliver hope and change.’”
Alinsky wrote that community organizers (called “poverty pimps” by some critics) are primarily agitators, who must
“Fan the resentments of the people of a community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression—he must search out controversy and issues… An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontentment… He knows that values are relative… Truth to him is relative and changing.”
Unlike Hitler, the Democrats might not directly blame Jews for everyone’s problems (because they want their votes and their campaign donations), but they do so indirectly by blaming Wall Street and the “one-percenters”—which, to many non-thinking and prejudiced voters, means Jews. Most Democrat candidates also blame Israel for half the world’s problems. That readily gains them support from Muslim voters and from others who irrationally hate Jews. It also gains them support from Jews who hate Israel, and even Jews who hate Jews. (There are a surprising number of them.)
The Democrats eagerly blame whites for the problems of blacks, whites for the problems of Hispanics, men for the problems of women, straights for the problems of gays, managers for the problems of workers, and police for the problems of law-breakers. The Democrats blame rising prices on greedy businessmen rather than on Congress and the Federal Reserve, poor schools on everything but the poor teachers, student debt on everyone but the greedy university bureaucrats and the naive students, overcrowded prisons on everyone but the criminals, murder on guns rather than the murderers, and hot days and storms on power plants and SUVs. To a Democrat politician addressing a rally, every problem of every person in his audience has been caused by someone else. Further, no one in his audience can resolve his own problems. Only more government can do that! The candidate is the savior who can bring wonderful things to everyone—and always at someone else’s expense.
While conservatives seek freedom to, leftists seek freedom from. Conservatives seek to fix government, while leftists seek to fix people. As a result, the Democrat politician primarily offers the voters two things: relief from accountability and relief from responsibility. The voter is hypnotized into believing, “Everything is someone else’s fault, so it surely cannot be my fault!” and “The government will fix everything, so I do not have to do anything!” That no-accountability and no-responsibility message is an enticing drug. It should be no surprise that tens of millions of otherwise reasonable people fall for the sales pitch, and when everyone else is eagerly buying the magic potion from the traveling salesman it is difficult to avoid getting caught up in the excitement. The Democrat candidate is the Professor Harold Hill of politics. The only difference is that Hill eventually saw the error of his ways. The Democrat will continue to sell band instruments and uniforms for the rest of his life—or even afterward, from a “charitable foundation.”
But Donald Trump got between the shifty-eyed, smooth-talking pitchman and the potential buyers of his snake oil. Trump reminded the voters that the snake was indeed a snake. Trump does not tell his audience their lives are interminably dreary, or that their nation is irredeemably evil. In fact, he tells them their lives are pretty darned good. He tells them they, not government bureaucrats, can solve their few problems by themselves—and that they can do it more effectively and more efficiently. He reminds them that they are capable of anything they choose to do—if the government would mostly just get out of their way. He emphasizes that the majority of their problems will not be solved by government, because most of their problems were caused by government. (Ronald Reagan effectively told his audiences the same thing, but Reagan generally failed to act on his promises to get government out of the way. Reagan was right but ineffective. Trump is right and effective.)
While the Democrat politician makes rally-goers feel bad about themselves, Trump makes his rally attendees feel good about themselves. While the Democrat tells the voters they cannot possibly solve their own problems, Trump reminds the voters that they have the power within themselves to achieve greatness. While the Democrat tells the voters that half the people they cross on the street are their enemies, Trump tells the people that all Americans working together can accomplish anything. While the Democrat tells the voters the United States of America is merely one sinful country among 190 others, Trump tells the voters that their nation is the greatest on the face of the earth, that they should not be ashamed of that greatness, and that they are capable of even more astounding accomplishments in the future. Voters leave a Democrat rally with fleeting faith in big government. Voters leave a Trump rally with fearless faith in themselves.
Borysenko is correct. The Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November.
Don Fredrick
February 15, 2020
https://gen.medium.com/ive-been-a-democrat-for-20-years-here-s-what-i-experienced-at-trump-s-rally-in-new-hampshire-c69ddaaf6d07
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Obama-Timeline-August-March/dp/1503132587/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419372391&sr=1-1&keywords=don+fredrick