"Beam me up Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."
Imagine you are in a spaceship landing on a strange distant planet and you find its population ruled by mob bosses who mirror Chicago's Al Capone. This is exactly what happened (Episode 46) to Star Trek's Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise when he beamed down onto Iotia II and discovered a society with Tommy gun hits, kidnappings, "cement overshoes," and a punk kid demanding "a piece of the action." This gangster mentality throughout the entire planet all came about because many years earlier the Federation Spaceship Horizon landed on Iotia II at a time when the planet's population was becoming mechanized. One of Horizon's crewmembers inadvertently left a personal book behind (Chicago Mobs of the Twenties), prior to Horizon's departure from the planet, and the Iotians, known for their imitative ways, adopted the book as their (Machiavellian) bible. All this was verified a century later when Kirk, Spock and McCoy beamed down on Iotia II from the Enterprise and found a world full of gangster types running the planet, including the most powerful mob boss of all, Bela Oxmyx.
Chicago, Illinois, has always been the city that works (if you know how to work it). In many ways, the Chicago of today has not changed from the past. In Chicago, it is often difficult telling the politicians from the criminals. Council members wear wires, tote guns, have gangster nicknames and often end up serving time. One Governor is already in the penitentiary and another is probably going to join him in the near future. Chicago is strictly a one-party town (that rubbed out Republicans from its turf long ago).
Now imagine you are from a highly advanced planet and you beam down, from your spaceship, upon planet Earth's surface in the present-day capital city of the United States, Washington D.C. There you find a population ruled by a crime boss from Chicago. Now imagine that this Bela Oxmyx-type boss brought his syndicate with him, including a delightful assortment of hacks, thugs and tax cheats. Imagine these mobsters taking over the banks, running the car industry, printing their own money, and doing away with the Republicans, making it a one-party town. What would you do?
I know what I would do. I would take out my communicator and say, "Beam me up Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."
Barack Obama, Progressives, and Stockholm Syndrome
Everyone knows the story of the robbery of the Kreditbanken in Stockholm in August of 1973. In this case, after almost a week of captivity, the victims became emotionally intertwined with their captors, even to the point of defending said captors after being freed. The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery.
According to psychoanalysts, the tendency might well be the result of employing a similar strategy evolved by newborns to form emotional attachments to the nearest powerful authority figure, the idea being the enhancement of the probability that this authority figure will enable its continued survival.
Fast forward to the present and one can easily ascribe the above description of conditions to today’s major (and not so major) media outlets. From the ‘tingling’ traveling up the legs of news anchors, to outright accusations of racism leveled at anyone audacious enough to dare to criticize the Messiah. The media elite have abandoned all pretexts; broadcasting news programs from the White House, and preempting scheduled programming at the mere whim of the Oval Office.
Congressional democrats have always been cooperative with like minded chief executives, but the current crop of legislators has been bowing and bending backwards so quickly and so often that one begins to wonder if spinal removal is a requirement of office. If any previous administration had appointed so many czars, legislators from both parties would have been accusing the White House of bypassing congressional oversight by denying the confirmation process. But we hear nary a peep of protest from the 111th Congress. Legislation consisting of thousands of pages are drafted, voted, and signed into law within weeks; sometimes days.
Bank bailouts, auto manufacturer bankruptcies, and economic stimulus packages; not to mention major environmental legislation, and nationalized health care are all part of the President’s first 180 day agenda! Each of these items, taken on its own, would mean sweeping change of the contract the American people have with their government. Taken together, they amount to a complete rewrite of the terms and conditions of the agreement between the people and the government: And the ones charged with voting our best interests do not even bother to read the legislation. The order of the day seems to be “We must hurry! Pass something, anything; and we’ll fix it later. Promise!”
Investigations of the misuse of federal dollars are quashed and the investigating I.G.’s are dismissed. Questions of embezzlement of federal funds by community organizations friendly to the administration are denied; while democrats ‘eat-their-own’ in an attempt to compel the CIA to provide cover to the House Speaker.
Also covered under this umbrella are the legions of disciples, who even after six months, cannot be dissuaded from the idea that trillion dollar deficits, broken campaign promises, and continued economic malaise, are causes for the least concern. An $800 billion stimulus package has had absolutely no effect on economic conditions, and the administration not only continues to deny ownership of the economy, the followers among the public and the media allow it.
Reminiscent of toddlers ensnared by an abusive parent, they all nod vigorously, affirming any and all ideas put forth. The faction goes so far as to proclaim “At least this relationship is better than the last foster home we lived in!” people seem willing to go to any length to express unswerving support; as if they are frightened of the unwanted attention that disagreement may draw.
This is recipe for disaster. A narcissist in complete control of a cowering collection of sycophants.