Glenn Kessler on His Presidency's "Class Jujitsu"

According to our old friend Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post, Obama wasn't engaging in class warfare when he repeatedly mentioned corporate jets in his press conference. No, this was way more sophisticated:

.... In a bit of class jujitsu, the president six times mentioned eliminating a tax loophole for corporate jets, frequently pitting it against student loans or food safety. It’s a potent image, but in the context of a $4 trillion goal, it is essentially meaningless.  The item is so small the White House could not even provide an estimate of the revenue that would be raised, but other estimates suggest it would amount to $3 billion over 10 years.

Meanwhile, student financial assistance, just for 2011, is about $42 billion. So the corporate jet loophole — which involves the fact that such assets can be depreciated over five years, rather than the seven for commercial jets — just is not going to raise a lot of money. It certainly wouldn’t save many student loans.

Yeshiva Son spent quite a bit of time in martial arts growing up, so I happen to know what jujitsu is. Even so, I checked Wikipedia to make sure.

The word Jujutsu can be broken down into two parts. "Ju" is a concept. The idea behind this meaning of Ju is "to be gentle", "to give way", "to yield", "to blend", "to move out of harm's way".

"Jutsu" is the principle or "the action" part of Ju-Jutsu. In Japanese this word means science or art.

Hullo?

These techniques were developed around the principle of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it.

 

Obama's direct opposition to business, to free market principles and to certain industries and certain players in those industries is in fact the opposite of jujutsu. He is the aggressor not the defender, and he uses brute force - of the classic Alinsky-Chicago variety.  Barging into the private sector, he chooses winners and losers, handing out patronage on the one hand and punishing rivals (or any opposition, for that matter) on the other.

* * * * *

 

The old cliche is that we'll believe it when we see it.  This is the conservative worldview in a nutshell.  The "progressive" worldview is aptly summarized by Alinsky in the very last sentence of his Rules for Radicals book:

"... we will see it when we believe it."

 

So even as he's pointing out factual inconsistencies in Obama's offensive (in both senses of the word), Kessler can't believe it's anything so crass as class warfare.  It's got to be something more respectable, more cool, more spiritual.  Because Kessler is a believer.  

 

OBAMA CONVERSION STORIES

"Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus." -- Politiken (Danish newspaper)

"No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger."--Lawrence Carter

"Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama." -- Dinesh Sharma

"We just like to say his name. We are considering taking it as a mantra." -- Chicago] Sun-Times

"A Lightworker -- An Attuned Being with Powerful Luminosity and High-Vibration Integrity who will actually help usher in a New Way of Being" -- Mark Morford

"What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history" -- Jesse Jackson, Jr.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama

"Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?" -- Daily Kos

"He communicates God-like energy..." -- Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)

"Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul" -- Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times

"I'll do whatever he says to do. I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear." -- Halle Berry

"A quantum leap in American consciousness" -- Deepak Chopra

"He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century." -- Gary Hart

"Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence." -- Eve Konstantine

"This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament." | "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event."  -- Chris Matthews

"[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time." -- Toni Morrison

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves." -- Ezra Klein

"Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind." -- Gerald Campbell

"We're here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth." -- Oprah Winfrey

“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan."-- Bill Rush

 

 

I, on the other hand, just can' see it.

 

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Nice piece of semantic analysis, Yael. I'm not sure if Kessler is a true believer or just another sheep in the herd. Eric Hoffer, who knew as much about this subject as anyone, wrote that "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other" -- which is both a wonderful bit of irony and a wonderful bit of truth. To be a Leftie is to share in the herd mentality -- and that may be what Kessler is doing. Since all his fellow Lefties believe that Obama is too elegant, too refined, too elevated to resort to all-out no-holds-barred class warfare, Kessler naturally believes the same thing. Groupthink is always easier -- and more comforting -- than independent thought. Your Obama Conversion Stories are a perfect example. Once one or two people back in 2007 or 2008 began to talk about Obama in terms of transcendence and sublimity and exaltation, in no time at all everyone on the Left was talking that way. The herd mentality kicked in and -- in a twinkling -- all the sheep were baa-ing the same tune; an ordinary shlep had been transfigured into The One overnight. That so many of the sheep were and are "intellectuals" tells us just about everything we need to know about the current cultural climate in America. Thanks for another provocative piece of writing.

[Belstaff Jackets Sale]

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