Saturday, April 04, 2009

Thursday talk radio update

Glenn Beck admitted he has been wrong: Obama isn't out to make us all socialists, after all. Well, not exactly wrong, just shortsighted. Obama is making us all socialists, but that's just a way station: The real goal is fascism.

Evidence for this amazing claim? Hard to say exactly because Beck, like Mark Twain, has enormous respect for the truth and therefore uses it sparingly. I think the hardest piece of evidence he offered was the disturbing fact that Mussolini's symbol for fascism appeared on the Mercury dime, which appeared in 1916, which means it can be blamed on Woodrow Wilson, which means it can be blamed on progressives, which means it can be blamed on Barack Obama. The fact that Mussolini was still a corporal in the Italian army, not a fascist leader, when the dime appeared didn't seem to figure into Beck's calculations. Those progressives hate America so much, they can betray it years in advance.

The other evidence for fascism appeared to be that Obama fired the CEO of General Motors. I don't quite get that. I can see why people might oppose entanglement with GM for economic reasons, or even for ideological reasons. But I don't see how it's a step toward fascist dictatorship. After all, before Obama stepped in, GM basically had two choices: It could shut its doors, or it could declare bankruptcy. After Obama stepped in, GM still had those two choices plus one more: It could take more government money under conditions opposed by the government.

Not a pretty choice, but even GM seemed to think Obama's offer looked better than its other options. I know that if Obama called me up and offered to pump a billion bucks into The Outpost on condition that I resign, I would have exactly one question: Which door do you want me to leave by?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

But what if Obama stepped in and gave Lee Enterprises a handout, because their paper is failing?

Would you like them propping up your competitors?

Picking & choosing who to give Government money to is halfway to socialism.

David said...

Anonymous,
Good point, but it doesn't really apply to automakers since they are all in trouble and since they have no domestic competitors.

Kirk Dooley said...

GM is in the mess they're in because they made crappy cars, period. My dad worked at Frontier Chevrolet for almost 20 years before he retired in 1987, and he always referred to any car not made by GM as a "foreign" car.

Well, for the last 8 years, I've been driving a "foreign" car -- a 1999 Mercury Tracer. In that time, I've only had to have the engine and the brakes worked on once each. (And this car was assembled in an American plant, not in Mexico like some GM and Chrysler cars.)

As for the company that was saved from the abyss by Lee Iococca so very long ago, Chrysler was making some very good cars back in the early 1990s (remember cab-forward design?). Then they merged with Mercedes Benz in a so-called "merger of equals." Within a few years, the Boys from Stuttgart took things over, and Plymouth and Eagle were gone, and Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge were building tanks (which the Germans are very good at; I often refer to BMW's as "Bavarian Edsels," because that's what they look like). Now that the Daimler people have bailed out (leaving Chrysler to a vulture-capitalist outfit that wouldn't know a car if it bit them in the behind), the government it telling Chrysler that it must merge with Fiat (in a "merger or equals"). Has anybody seen a Fiat, lately?

And even Ford -- which is in better shape than the other two of the "Big" Three -- has gotten away from good design and is building clunky looking cars, something the Japanese are not doing (with the exception of the Scion SUV and the Honda Element, a/k/a "the four-wheeled toaster"). Until American car companies create innovative autos, throwing money at them is like flushing it down a toilet. (Especially GM, which is so bloated with middle-management that it would not surprise me to find that Buick has a vice-president in charge of lugnut development.)