Bourgeois bullyers
By Tom Quiner
I’d like to think that I have always been civil and compassionate.
The reality is, I haven’t. I think back to my college years and the mature Tom could give the young Tom some good advice.
Most of us are that way.
When we did dumb stuff back then, we can look back now and see it for what it was. Dumb. Insensitive. Even destructive.
Barack Obama sees it differently. Here is what he wrote in one his memoirs:
“When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling conventions. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.”
Like most college kids, he did some dumb stuff. But then he rationalizes it by saying he was alienated.
Destroying public property by grinding out cigarette butts in the carpet in dorm hallways isn’t being indifferent. It isn’t being careless or even insecure.
It’s okay, because he was “alienated.”
When he played his stereo so loud that other students couldn’t study in the adjoining dorm rooms, he wasn’t being indifferent. He wasn’t being careless or insecure.
He was simply “resisting bourgeois society’s stifling conventions” which regulated noise levels in public space.
My behavior wasn’t always stellar in those days. Perhaps yours wasn’t either.
But there’s something disturbing about a grown man justifying such uncivil behavior because of rules imposed on him by the “bourgeois.”
And what are the bourgeois? Why they are the folks in the middle class having self-centered, conformist, and materialistic ideals says my dictionary.
Barack Obama’s use of the word bourgeois reveals much. Such a man, should he become president, would bristle at having to conform to the laws imposed on him by the self-centered materialists who are the root cause of the problems in this world, in his view.
Such a man views himself as being morally superior to the bourgeois.
Such a man wouldn’t feel hamstrung to enforce laws he didn’t like, whether it was the Defense of Marriage Act or our immigration laws.
Ironically, the man who so bristled at the rules and regulations imposed on him by the bourgeois feels no such compunction on imposing his own on others. If we “bourgeois” resist the stifling liberal conventions being imposed on us, from gay marriage to Obamacare to Dodd-Frank, we won’t get off as easy as the young Obama.
Lack of compliance to the new world order being imposed on us by the new beltway elites carries with it fines and worse.
Don’t you dare play your stereo too loud with these guys around.
In 2008, it really didn’t matter who was running as the Democrat. They would probably have won. It was as much an anti-Bush vote as anything. My fear is if Romney gets in and does not perform miracles, then he will not see another 4 years and will will get stuck with another Democrat probably for the next 8 years, because let’s face it, Romney rubs people the wrong way and he will continue to do so.
As for apologizing, remember when it came out that Romney instigated a mob to hold down and shave the head of a fellow student? What bothered me the most was he claimed to not even remember he did it – like this sort of thing happened so often it was no big deal.
The Romney “hazing” story was distorted by the media, according to the sister of the victim of the so-called hazing incident. The Obama incidents I wrote about simply quote Obama’s own words. The media showed little interest in them. On the other hand, they worked overtime to distort Romney’s prank. We’re comparing apples to rotten tomatoes.
Unrelated to this topic, but historically cool to read about:
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/09/18/harvard-professor-identifies-scrap-papyrus-suggesting-some-early-christians-believed-jesus-was-married/dZJ1sIJCay8b8cra30wfQK/story.html
I like this paragraph from the above because it bolsters my views:
““It helps to remind us that practically everything that later generations told about Jesus was put together and edited by somebody well after his death, and represents the view of Jesus that they were trying to get across,” said Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and professor of ancient history at New York University, who helped King authenticate the papyrus.”