by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Were We Podded in Our Sleep?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think I went to sleep about a year ago, just woke up, and realized that either I or the world has been changed, snatched as it were. [1]<\/p>\n Cars Were Once Just Cars\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Like most Americans on the West Coast I began buying Japanese cars after a host of mishaps with American brands \u2014 chronic alternator failures on a Chevy S-10 pickup; a Chevy Malibu whose brakes lasted about 10,000 miles, and whose air conditioner went out every six months; a Dodge Dakota whose electrical system failed three times, twice on mountain roads \u2014 once in a rain storm, the other at night \u2026 and so on. Like millions of others, I reluctantly started buying either Hondas or Toyotas.<\/p>\n But suddenly in this new pod world, I am noticing cars are now becoming political statements \u2014 and buying them a political act. Toyota has been demonized over what empirically seems to be an isolated accelerator problem. The subtext, however, is that the now number one automaker threatens U.S. union jobs and the now federal GM brand. Indeed, buying a GM product is becoming patriotic, at least more so than Ford, which did not participate in the federal bailout. Indeed, the evil GM Corporation of Michael Moore\u2019s fantasies within a year has transmogrified into something akin to Social Security or Medicare.<\/p>\n What will Palo Altoans or Carmelites do with those Priuses? A year ago, they were signatures of environmental caring, replete with Obama bumper stickers and fading \u201cNo blood for oil\u201d slogans. Now, however, are not they anti-American, anti-union, anti-Obama administration, anti-consumer, pro-corporate greed fetishes?<\/p>\n Borrowing from Uncle Sam<\/strong><\/p>\n Student loans will never be the same again. Apparently unnoticed in the healthcare fight was that the Obama administration simply absorbed the multibillion-dollar student loan program. Students will be delighted to see their interest rates, in a low interest market, perhaps go down a point or so \u2014 unconcerned that the resulting waste and inefficiency will in the long term devolve into something like Freddie and Fannie (e.g., the minister of student loans will now become a plum sinecure for retiring apparatchik politicians in the manner of Franklin Raines; yes, maybe the retiring NEA or NEH or Education head will accept a Student Loan czardom for the duration?)<\/p>\n An Empty Mailbox<\/strong><\/p>\n Suddenly there are to be no more Saturday mail deliveries. The Postal Service is broke; unquestioned is any substantive move to freeze union salaries or lay off large numbers of employees. I doubt FedEx cancels Saturday service. The cynical public wonders whether, with 1\/6th less service to the public, we can expect either a budget 1\/6th smaller or a work force comparably reduced? No, of course not; it would be lunatic to think that. Did we all just sleep through no more private student loans and no more Saturday service?<\/p>\n The Evil Private Healthcare Insurer<\/strong><\/p>\n I expect both my Blue Cross and Health Net medical HMOs very soon to send me some sort of letter, either advising me about new tax exposure, advising me about new rate hikes, or advising me about reduced coverage. And in time I imagine the number of private physician groups will shrink, and the number of public clinics will expand. I\u2019ve used both, and can attest in the former people are happy and competent, and in the latter more likely to be demoralized and going through the motions. In one a doctor wants to build a practice by expert care; in the other a doctor knows that whatever he does, he is still paid the same \u2014 survival, not competence, being the formula for promotion and pay raises. (And soon suing a GS15-Step-10 Dr. for malpractice is no John Edwards picnic)<\/p>\n And just as California DMV employees now wear to work purple SEIU T-Shirts with \u201csolidarity!\u201d emblazoned on one side and \u201corganize!\u201d on the other, so too I expect that expression of progressivism with millions of new healthcare bureaucrats and loan officers. The only mystery is whether, when the bodysnatching process is over, the new alien healthcare plan\u2019s outward stationary, cards, and logos will still look and sound like Blue Cross and Health Net?<\/p>\n The New Rules of Racial Tolerance<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a new racial tension not present a year ago, one having nothing to do with the election of the nation\u2019s first President of partial African ancestry. Instead, never in my experience have officials of the federal government, both in the campaign leading up to their governance and once in office, so deliberately chosen to polarize the country along racial lines.<\/p>\n In retrospect, it seems a sort of nightmare these now serial outbursts of our officials \u2014 \u201ctypical white person,\u201d \u201cclingers,\u201d \u201ccowards,\u201d police who \u201cstereotype\u201d and act \u201cstupidly,\u201d \u201cwise Latina,\u201d \u201cwhite polluters,\u201d framed by the President\u2019s pastor and once spiritual Audacity-of-Hope mentor screaming \u201cGod D\u2014 America,\u201d bookended by hyper-racial comments of a Harry Reid or Joe Biden about Negro accents and cleanliness.<\/p>\n And, of course, soon followed the slurs and smears of those in the media accusing almost every opponent at sometime of being a \u201cracist,\u201d a word that now has as much currency as a German Mark around 1929.<\/p>\n Opposition to healthcare, cap and trade, illegal immigration, everything I think soon, is being reformulated as antipathy to some sort of Civil Rights issues akin to the legislation of the 1960s. Almost daily now a major media columnist writes an essay alleging someone is racist, or there are subtle racist thoughts behind a type of opposition or protest. \u201cRacist\u201d is a 1950s sort of allegation, an instantaneous judge\/jury\/executioner\/no-appeal condemnation. How Orwellian that the most racist members of American society, who built entire careers of fabricating evidence and defaming opponents \u2014 an Al Sharpton, for example \u2014 have become go-to national referees of suspected bias. How weirder that one just pledges allegiance to the new agenda, and suddenly one is both more likely to say something racist in Reid- or Biden-fashion, and yet it is not racist at all.<\/p>\n Israel \u2014 We Hardly Knew Ye?<\/strong><\/p>\n A year ago, I thought Israel was a trusted ally. What happened? Did racists and bigots suddenly emigrate there? It used to be that both Democrats and Republicans supported the uniquely pro-Western, capitalist, democratic, and tolerant society surrounded by radical Islamists, autocracies, and terrorists. The rest of the world calculated oil, fear of Islamic terrorism, 300 million in the Middle East, and anti-Semitism; we alone valued consensual government, an enlightened society, and freedom as the basis of our support for a tiny state in a very hostile world \u2014 and protected the democracy against its countless enemies (there was a Holocaust once, after all, as the world slept).<\/p>\n But suddenly the U.S. government sends friendly videos to a theocracy that promises Israel\u2019s destruction while snubbing the Prime Minister of the Jewish state? If a Middle East state leader wished to be courted by the United States by reverential protocol, an occasional bow, or kind words, then should not he be Iranian or Syrian, with the blood of American soldiers in Iraq on his hands? It is almost as if all the multicultural \u201canti-Zionist\u201d campus and U.N. rhetoric of the 1970s and 1980s is now reified in Washington.<\/p>\n A year ago I had a vague idea that abroad to be democratic, pro-Western, capitalist, and friendly to the U.S. \u2014 a Britain, Colombia, Czech Republic, Honduras, Israel, or Poland \u2014 was considered good. And to be authoritarian, anti-Western, statist or communist, and anti-American was worse: a Cuba, Gaza, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, or Venezuela was considered, well, in the words of Robert Gibbs, \u201cproblematic.\u201d No mas.<\/p>\n New Words, New Ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n A year ago I had never heard of \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d (what possibly could that mean?), much less \u201cmanmade disasters.\u201d (Power failures? Overfishing? Oil spills?). And before January 2009 I thought Khalid Sheik Mohammed was an enemy monster, who had planned the murder of 3,000 Americans, beheaded Daniel Pearl, and promised more mayhem if let loose \u2014 not a civil rights, water-boarded symbol of suffering, to be tried in a civilian court a few yards from the scene of his mass murdering.<\/p>\n From Subversion to Thank God We Have All This<\/strong><\/p>\n A little over a year ago, I think I had it straight: an evil Bush and the nefarious Halliburton puppet Cheney destroyed the Constitution by wiretapping, intercepting, the use of rendition, tribunals, Predator assassinations, and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I knew this to be true because of serial Hollywood movies, outbursts at televised awards ceremonies, novels, documentaries, comedy routines, constant expos\u00e9s in the media, the provocative rhetoric (\u201cif they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun\u201d) of statesmen like Barack Obama, and outbursts from the likes of Sen. Durbin that our own soldiers at Guantanamo were akin to Nazis or Pol Pot\u2019s monsters.<\/p>\n But then I woke up and suddenly all of these anti-terrorism protocols, founded in such crime and hatred, had now evolved into necessary tools to keep us safe. Iraq is now good and the greatest achievement of the administration. Predator target killings have quadrupled; tribunals and renditions are legitimate. Afghanistan is no longer lost. We won\u2019t see another Rendition or Redacted from Hollywood (Iraq movies now win Academy Awards!). Justice Department officials who sign off on targeted assassinations are still former sober and judicious Ivy League Law Deans and Professors.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0no longer leaks information about our criminal government\u2019s anti-terrorism efforts, and surely does not headline with IED of the day stories from Afghanistan. Wow, what a difference a year makes.<\/p>\n Go to Sleep, Wake up a Pod<\/strong><\/p>\n I am catching on to this new year-old society; I think I am at least. Paying an underwater mortgage is sort of what wealthy and dubious people do; defaulting on one is proof of legitimate victimhood. There is no more immigration law \u2014 unless you are a foolish German, Russian, or Aussie who overstays his visa without claim on a proper -ism.<\/p>\n Budgeting for your private health care plan is proof of privilege; a maxed out credit card is better proof of corporate conspiracy. And paying no federal income taxes is evidence that you belong to the good 50% of Americans \u2014 or are mega-rich, savvy, and able enough to pay on your income instead at the capital gains rate.<\/p>\n There is no more interest on your meager passbook account; just on your mortgage: you pay the bank 5% for a house loan; they pay you a tenth of that at .5% for having $10,000 in your savings. They are dubbed \u201cevil\u201d by Washington and given more perks and latitude than ever before. You are to pay higher local, state, federal, payroll, and heathcare taxes, with the assumptions that you will not help to pay down the debt and you, the greedy bastard, should pay even more taxes than you do.<\/p>\n Wake up, and get with it, reader: either you are a pod now \u2014 or everyone else is.<\/p>\n [1] Some things, of course, never change. The filibuster is always bad when a party is in power; good when out of power. Recess appointments in power are necessary antidotes to the shanghaiing of Congress; when out power, proof of anti-constitutionalism. Street protests are subversive when in power; and grass roots democracy when out.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Were We Podded in Our Sleep? I think I went to sleep about a year ago, just woke up, and realized that either I or the world has been changed, snatched as it were. [1]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[608],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-sa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1410,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-weird-sort-of-depression\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":0},"title":"A Weird Sort of Depression","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Bad and Not Bad Economic statistics paint a pretty grim picture: annual growth coming out of a recession at an anemic 2.4%; unemployment rising at 9.6%; and foreclosures again on the rise. Here in California the jobless rate is 12.5%. And where I live\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3521,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/charge-it-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":1},"title":"Charge It, America!","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Bush's current approval ratings are about 32 percent. Only one in four Americans approves of the Democratic-controlled Congress. So why are we so upset with our political leadership? Despite the housing slump, it is not the worst of times. After all, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1704,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-all-the-wounded-fawns\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":2},"title":"Why All the Wounded Fawns?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Why are charges of racism and political extremism suddenly in the air? Party politics is always the norm, but what is unusual this time around is the juxtaposition between the once-soaring Obama unity rhetoric of the past and the hardball Chicago politics of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2929,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-funny-sort-of-depression\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":3},"title":"A Funny Sort of Depression","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Are we headed to something like the Great Depression? There is clearly much to be worried about. Most of America's private retirement 401(k) accounts have significantly decreased in value since last autumn's crash. Home equity has plunged. The unemployment rate is above 7\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3024,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/try-a-little-honesty-in-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":4},"title":"Try a Little Honesty in 2009","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The country is still divided over the government bailout of the Big Three automakers. Mostly Democratic supporters cited the need to save jobs and ensure that a hallmark manufacturing industry remains healthy and American. Mostly Republican opponents complained that taxpayers were asked to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3398,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-doctrine\/","url_meta":{"origin":1746,"position":5},"title":"The Obama Doctrine","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Obama Doctrine is simple: Proclaim a utopian policy, and then pray that most of the people who hear it are Neanderthals who will ignore it. Having said one thing, doing quite another is not only thereby okay, but also absolutely essential. Keep\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "First Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"First Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/first-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1748,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions\/1748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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