OK, Friday night’s post was getting way too long with all the updates, but Obama’s latest faux pas (i.e., letting slip how he really feels about the rubes) is the gift that just keeps giving. Ace has a plea for help from the hinterlands (“Halp Us Brak, We Are Stuk In Small Town”), and a link to the latest non-apology apology: “I’m sorry you’re too stupid to understand what I meant.”

And Iowahawk has managed to milk it for another golden oldie: “The Heart of Redness.”

I should note that much of the media and the Democrats remain clueless as to why this was so offensive. First of all, few people, even bitter people, like being told that they’re “bitter,” though of course there are exceptions (no surprise that it’s a Democrat). They especially don’t like it when they don’t feel bitter at all, as is the case for most people, even most Reagan Democrats (which comprise many of the people who he was insulting). Of course, even if Keystone State Democrats are bitter, that’s not going to help him in the fall with the vast majority of Pennsylvanians who are not.

But beyond that, as I mentioned in comments yesterday:

He conflated being anti-trade, pro-gun, religious, and bigoted. Now that implies that these things are all similar in some way. They are either good traits, or bad traits, but the implication (and what it is clear that Obama, and much of the Democrat elite believe, based not just on this one foot-in-mouth incident, but many over the years) is that these are bad things. Now I happen to believe that bigotry and opposition to trade are wrong, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with gun ownership (and use) or being religious.

But now we know what the Democrats think of ordinary people in this country. The notion that these double-plus ungood thoughts are caused by economic deprivation are entirely beside the point. It was the bigotry of the elitist Democrats on display, and it wasn’t pretty. Now as it happens, Hillary believes this, too, but at least she’s savvy enough to lie about it, so she’ll be able to take big-time advantage of it.

Commenter “Bob”‘s amusing response to this was:

Obama never said or even implied that being anti-trade, pro-gun, religious, and/or being bigoted is bad (although of course everyone says that being bigoted is bad). He was saying that what those four traits have in common is that the Republicans have a lock on them! Now, lets pause, because saying that Republicans or their party has a lock on bigotry is controversial and argumentative (and untrue, in my opinion), but he was speaking to a partisan crowd.

In any case, Rand, I believe you misunderstood. Obama was making an argument for why people vote Republican. He was talking about the Democrat-Republican axis, not the Good-Bad axis.

Well, this might be salient if so many Democrats didn’t equate “Republican” with “bad.” But there’s a lot of truth to the old cliche, Republicans think that Democrats are foolish, and Democrats think that Republicans are evil. If “Bob” doesn’t think that there aren’t many elitist Democrats (and you can bet that that room to which Obama was speaking last Friday was chock full of them) who think that guns and gun owners are bad, and that religiosity (at least “right-wing conservative” religiosity) is “bad” (and “Republican”) then he must not get out much, and hasn’t been listening to very many speeches by them.

In fact, Iowahawk hilariously captured this kind of bewilderment with homo red-status and condescension in a spoof on a speech by Howard Dean a year and a half ago. Believe me, satire like this doesn’t work without an underlying truth. And it works brilliantly.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Barack Obama, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

I’m most of the way through Jonah’s book, and it really is an eye opener. While I was somewhat aware of the history that he describes, he ties things together in a very compelling way, and it’s quite clear that we have had a number of fascist presidents, going back to the prototype, Woodrow Wilson, who inspired both Mussolini and Hitler, and many of whose staff ended up in the Roosevelt administration. Interestingly, the president who was one of the least fascist of the twentieth century was probably the one at whom that epithet was hurled the most by the mindless left (at least until George W. Bush came along)–Ronald Reagan. I remember as a kid visiting California, back in 1967, and seeing bumper stickers out there saying “Hitler Is Alive And Living In Sacramento.”

But as JPod points out, it is the Obamites who are creating the personality cult, and it is Michelle Obama who is making demands of the citizens, something that Reagan never did, and would never have done.

[Update a couple minutes]

Here’s a comment from JPod’s post that I think is quite insightful:

Obama said that bitter middle Americans cling to guns or religion. What that actually means is that most Americans erroneously rely on themselves or their God to provide and protect them and not the collective state. And they do so not out of bitterness, but from a foundational belief that “We the People” form a more perfect union, not “We the State” form a more perfect people.

It’s not middle America that’s bitter but Obama. And since he clings to the power of the state to provide and protect him and wants middle America to do so as well. That’s the cynicism that Barak and Michelle Obama wants us to shed, our cynicism of the state as our protector and provider. And that’s why Michelle Obama is, for the first time in a long time, proud of America, because she stands at threshold of not only scolding Obama for not putting his socks in the hamper and the butter in the cupboard, but the rest of America as well.

Indeed.

[OK, (at least) one more]

Over at Reason, Michael Young nails it:

Obama’s approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.

For those who haven’t read Jonah’s book, I think that I can concisely summarize his (more benign) definition of fascism as a religion of, and worship of, the state.

[Yet another update]

Obviously, satire aside, I find this an important topic. Donald Sensing gets right to the nub of it as well, and why I could never vote for Barack Obama:

Let’s look at Obama’s laundry list of Pennsylvanians’ dysfunctions again:

• bitterness
• “Clinging to”
  • guns
  • religion
  • racism
  • chauvinism
  • anti-trade sentiment

Reading the full context of Obama’s remarks, it strikes me that he believes that all of these (presumed) symptoms spring from the fact that there is too little control of the economy by the federal government. Obama said that all of these dysfunctions began when the government let their jobs go away and then, through both Republican and Democrat administrations, did nothing to “regenerate” them.

It is the lack of regulation of the economy, Obama believes, that makes people bitter, racist, religious, hunters, patriotic or protectionist. All these things are bad, and they all result from free-market, democratic capitalism. I know that many of you reading this will think I’m over-reaching here, but I stand my ground: Obama’s remarks are in fact as clear a declaration of cleaving to socialism as almost anything he could have said.

…what I find especially disturbing in Obama’s remarks, that I have not seen in Mrs. Clinton’s ever, is the ideal of the “perfectibility of man.” This is the hoariest socialist doctrine of all, explicit in Marxism and later, Marxism-Leninism. This is an idea so utterly vacuous and foolish that not even the Euro socialist governments cleave to it, if they ever did, except in Eastern Europe, and then only when they were communist. Clearly implicit on Obama’s remarks is the idea that since racism, religion et. al., arise from the lack of government regulation, they can be expunged by more of it.

You see, we can all become virtuous if only the government controlled our lives.

Not only are Obama’s remarks a clarion call to socialism, they also objectify the people he refers to. He dismissed them as free, moral agents in their own right. Gosh, it’s no wonder those white people hate blacks and Hispanics, go to church and buy guns and feel angry – they can’t help it. The government has let them down. But with proper government regulation, intervention, activism (oh, just pick your own name), then they won’t be racists, religious, xenophobic, or own guns.

Emphasis mine. “Perfectibility of man” isn’t just a Marxist concept: it’s a fascist one as well.

[Early evening update]

The Obama prayer:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
hallowed be thy name;
thy election come;
thy will be done,
in the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
as we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
that trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
but deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

Amen.