Yesterday the media was too busy drowning the country in the spectacle of the antics of a former Disney starlet at the Video Music Awards for a cable channel that no longer does music videos to report on the antics of a former community organizer who was busy sketching out plans for an illegal war that he had been on record as opposing.
Shamelessness is the quality that Barack Obama's antics in Washington and Miley Cyrus' antics in
Brooklyn have in common. Not merely a shamelessness that emerges out of a humiliating episode, but shamelessness as their fundamental attribute. A shamelessness that aspires to be cool because it appears to achieve the ultimate goal of coolness of not being bound by anything at all.
Miley Cyrus was once a Disney starlet. Obama was once anti-war. In 2007, he told voters that the president does not have the authority under the Constitution to unilaterally go to war unless there is an urgent threat to the United States. Now he's planning a second war in which the only urgent threat is to the military prospects of his Islamist allies for taking over another country.
Obama's shamelessness isn't incidental to his actions; it's their whole point. Like Cyrus, he is celebrating his liberation from any standard or value, triumphing over them through attitude alone. And in a world without morals or values, the only thing that counts is power and the will to use it.
It may be sex in Brooklyn and power in Washington, but both of the tawdry spectacles expose the elemental thing that is left behind when all virtues and values fade away. Without these things, the human animal becomes just that, a repugnant and irredeemable spectacle that attracts the like-minded and repels everyone else.
Without these virtues, why shouldn't Obama break his word and get his war on? Like every moral dilemma that most people face, it's only a dilemma if you have morals. If you don't, then it's no longer a matter of what the right thing to do is, but whether you can do it.
Or as Aleister Crowley put it, in between one of his bouts of Satanism and binging on cocaine, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
That is the cheerful maxim of our Aeon of Horus, our entertainment industry, whose products can be seen on display at the MTV Video Music Awards. MTV long ago dispensed with much of the music, to make way for the drama of reality television. Its real entertainment product is people doing what they wilt and becoming famous for it.
From 8 to 11 AM, it's MTV's 16 and Pregnant, carefully branded in case anyone confuses it with A&E's 16 and Pregnant or PBS's 16 and Pregnant. Then it's Teen Mom. In the evening there's more Teen Mom. And if you make it to 4 AM, tune in to AMTV RISE & GRIND. And at some point, Barack Obama or Michelle Obama will show up to tell everyone to exercise and eat healthy.
Miley Cyrus' performance embodied everything that MTV stands for; tacky, desperate for attention and in the real world, pregnant at 16. But the appeal of this enclosed media world is its cheerful amorality, maintained by invisibly huge amounts of money, that tells viewers that their own amorality will also not have consequences.
Bill Clinton was our first MTV president. Barack Obama is our second. The decline in MTV neatly matches the descent from Clinton to Obama, but what unites them is that cheerful amorality that can triumph over any crime. These are men whose creed is "Do what thou wilt" and like so much of our political and entertainment elites, they have been doing it. They have been getting their wilt on.
Obama has decided to get his war on. Again. Though really, France and then the UK decided that America should get its war on. And to be strictly accurate, Saudi Arabia and Qatar decided again that their financial puppets in the UK and France, licking their lips at a taste of their oil-fed sovereign wealth funds, should get their war on even while cutting their militaries to be the bone.
Formerly anti-war France is on its third war in three years. This will be the second war for its newly elected Socialist government in just this year. That's impressive for a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys who were supposed to be our role models in navigating the subtlety of international diplomacy. But France has always been renowned for its cheerfully amoral politics.
Role models don't hold up too well under fire. Just ask any of the parents who encouraged their daughters to watch Hannah Montana or any of the anti-war activists who thought that Obama would be different.
The man whose only calling card was the peace sign, is about to launch his second war. And if bombing Syria goes well, there's always Egypt. And if the Tunisian protesters follow their lead and dare to boot their Islamist masters, they might get a few cruise missiles headed their way in Operation Caliphate.
Obama's premature gift of a Nobel Peace Prize has become one of the more absurd footnotes in his career. Like Cyrus gyrating on stage, he seems to be doing his best to leave behind his old anti-war reputation. Now he can hardly wait for the UN inspectors to finish their job in Syria before squatting at a table and nodding cluelessly while being told where the bombs will fall first.
If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucauld said, our elites have decided to dispense with the tribute. Not only will there be no more virtue, but the dealers in vice will not even bother with the hypocrisy. If the balance of our society has been tilted forcibly from virtue to vice, as most recent developments suggest, then the former child stars and hope and changers no longer feel that they need to bother even maintaining the appearance of virtue.
Last time around, Obama had already begun the Libyan War before he told the American people. This time, the Syrian War could begin at any time, but will possibly be preceded by the release of a report. Or maybe the report will come out later, as the man who should be president is acting like an emperor, and the emperor is naked enough to be performing at the VMAs.
Alinsky's fourth rule is making the enemy live up to his own codes. But what if the enemy has no rules, only will. What if the enemy has no values and exists only to be seen. That is the unreal space occupied by a former community organizer from Chicago and teenage girl from the Disney Channel. Where there are no values, there can be no hypocrisy. All that is left is the triumph of the will.
The VMAs are a calculated spectacle in the same way that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will was and in the same way that the latest Obama speech pledging to act unilaterally on his latest plan if Congress does nothing. Their theme is the triumph of the will over morals, the power of the individual to dominate crowds through no special virtue except determination. It is a fascism of the spirit that glorifies the dissolution of the individual in a secular religion of power and privilege.
Miley Cyrus did what she did because she could. The goal was the most priceless commodity of modern culture; attention. In a crowded digital world, the only thing that matters is being seen. Obama's triumph is being noticed. It is the secret of his success. In a crowded digital world, the triumph of the will is not physical or intellectual, let alone spiritual, but that quality of compelling others to become aware of your existence and to incorporate your existence into their reality.
Like Miley, Obama will go to war because he can. It isn't even his idea and it isn't a good idea, but that doesn't matter. If you're a Disney starlet, eventually you have to show everyone that you've grown up by taking your clothes off. It's what the audience expects. If you're an anti-war liberal who makes it into the White House, you have to show everyone that you've grown up by getting out there and getting your war on.
It's what the audience expects.
For months now, the Washington Post and the New York Times have been urging Obama to go to war. France and the UK have been beating the war drums even longer. Qatar and Turkey have been crying for war before the last one wrapped up. Eventually the naked emperor had to go out there and give his international fans what they wanted.
Obama was tentative when it came to his first war, but he's an old pro at it now. He knows that no one who matters will judge him for anything that happens. It's all in fun and it distracts the unemployed people eating soup out of a can from wondering if they're going to be evicted tomorrow or today.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has grown up. He knows that the public doesn't matter. He knows that Congress doesn't matter. He knows that there is nothing between his will and the might and fortunes of a nation. And he's doing what he will with them.
He might bomb Syria for a few days, as he's claiming and as he falsely claimed of Libya, or a few weeks or a few months. The military has been cut to the bone and retasked to celebrating gay weddings and green energy, but there are enough bombs left over to make for some spectacular fireworks as the Al Nusra Front and their Free Syrian Army allies make it to Damascus to slaughter the last Christians there.
Every show needs a good closing number and the burning of the last churches in Syria while the
bombs burst overhead will be the performance of a lifetime. Maybe Obama will even get Miley to sing.
There will be criticism, but as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Benghazi, "What difference does it make anyway?" What difference does anything make in the absence of morals. Without them, there is only power and the will to use it, whether it is the power to bomb a nation or take your clothes off.
The only way to prove will is through action. The ability to do a thing implies a need to do it. If a thing can be done, it must be done. And so will disproves itself as the ability to do a thing forces you to actually go ahead and do it to prove your will, without regard to whether you want to do it or not.
Our society sleepwalks towards these inevitabilities of power without ever asking who it was that decided on their inevitability. Transformed from a society of virtue into vice, we wonder why we are slipping into tyranny and corruption of every sort. Restraint is a virtue. With only the vice of power, the addiction of will, there is nothing between us and those who would destroy us but the nakedness of their power. And the moment that they can deprive us of our rights and destroys us, they will.
Tomorrow, Obama may fight Syria. But the rest of the time, he's fighting us.
Shamelessness is the quality that Barack Obama's antics in Washington and Miley Cyrus' antics in Brooklyn have in common. Not merely a shamelessness that emerges out of a humiliating episode, but shamelessness as their fundamental attribute. A shamelessness that aspires to be cool because it appears to achieve the ultimate goal of coolness of not being bound by anything at all.
Miley Cyrus was once a Disney starlet. Obama was once anti-war. In 2007, he told voters that the president does not have the authority under the Constitution to unilaterally go to war unless there is an urgent threat to the United States. Now he's planning a second war in which the only urgent threat is to the military prospects of his Islamist allies for taking over another country.
Obama's shamelessness isn't incidental to his actions; it's their whole point. Like Cyrus, he is celebrating his liberation from any standard or value, triumphing over them through attitude alone. And in a world without morals or values, the only thing that counts is power and the will to use it.
It may be sex in Brooklyn and power in Washington, but both of the tawdry spectacles expose the elemental thing that is left behind when all virtues and values fade away. Without these things, the human animal becomes just that, a repugnant and irredeemable spectacle that attracts the like-minded and repels everyone else.
Without these virtues, why shouldn't Obama break his word and get his war on? Like every moral dilemma that most people face, it's only a dilemma if you have morals. If you don't, then it's no longer a matter of what the right thing to do is, but whether you can do it.
Or as Aleister Crowley put it, in between one of his bouts of Satanism and binging on cocaine, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
That is the cheerful maxim of our Aeon of Horus, our entertainment industry, whose products can be seen on display at the MTV Video Music Awards. MTV long ago dispensed with much of the music, to make way for the drama of reality television. Its real entertainment product is people doing what they wilt and becoming famous for it.
From 8 to 11 AM, it's MTV's 16 and Pregnant, carefully branded in case anyone confuses it with A&E's 16 and Pregnant or PBS's 16 and Pregnant. Then it's Teen Mom. In the evening there's more Teen Mom. And if you make it to 4 AM, tune in to AMTV RISE & GRIND. And at some point, Barack Obama or Michelle Obama will show up to tell everyone to exercise and eat healthy.
Miley Cyrus' performance embodied everything that MTV stands for; tacky, desperate for attention and in the real world, pregnant at 16. But the appeal of this enclosed media world is its cheerful amorality, maintained by invisibly huge amounts of money, that tells viewers that their own amorality will also not have consequences.
Bill Clinton was our first MTV president. Barack Obama is our second. The decline in MTV neatly matches the descent from Clinton to Obama, but what unites them is that cheerful amorality that can triumph over any crime. These are men whose creed is "Do what thou wilt" and like so much of our political and entertainment elites, they have been doing it. They have been getting their wilt on.
Obama has decided to get his war on. Again. Though really, France and then the UK decided that America should get its war on. And to be strictly accurate, Saudi Arabia and Qatar decided again that their financial puppets in the UK and France, licking their lips at a taste of their oil-fed sovereign wealth funds, should get their war on even while cutting their militaries to be the bone.
Formerly anti-war France is on its third war in three years. This will be the second war for its newly elected Socialist government in just this year. That's impressive for a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys who were supposed to be our role models in navigating the subtlety of international diplomacy. But France has always been renowned for its cheerfully amoral politics.
The man whose only calling card was the peace sign, is about to launch his second war. And if bombing Syria goes well, there's always Egypt. And if the Tunisian protesters follow their lead and dare to boot their Islamist masters, they might get a few cruise missiles headed their way in Operation Caliphate.
Obama's premature gift of a Nobel Peace Prize has become one of the more absurd footnotes in his career. Like Cyrus gyrating on stage, he seems to be doing his best to leave behind his old anti-war reputation. Now he can hardly wait for the UN inspectors to finish their job in Syria before squatting at a table and nodding cluelessly while being told where the bombs will fall first.
If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucauld said, our elites have decided to dispense with the tribute. Not only will there be no more virtue, but the dealers in vice will not even bother with the hypocrisy. If the balance of our society has been tilted forcibly from virtue to vice, as most recent developments suggest, then the former child stars and hope and changers no longer feel that they need to bother even maintaining the appearance of virtue.
Last time around, Obama had already begun the Libyan War before he told the American people. This time, the Syrian War could begin at any time, but will possibly be preceded by the release of a report. Or maybe the report will come out later, as the man who should be president is acting like an emperor, and the emperor is naked enough to be performing at the VMAs.
Alinsky's fourth rule is making the enemy live up to his own codes. But what if the enemy has no rules, only will. What if the enemy has no values and exists only to be seen. That is the unreal space occupied by a former community organizer from Chicago and teenage girl from the Disney Channel. Where there are no values, there can be no hypocrisy. All that is left is the triumph of the will.
The VMAs are a calculated spectacle in the same way that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will was and in the same way that the latest Obama speech pledging to act unilaterally on his latest plan if Congress does nothing. Their theme is the triumph of the will over morals, the power of the individual to dominate crowds through no special virtue except determination. It is a fascism of the spirit that glorifies the dissolution of the individual in a secular religion of power and privilege.
Miley Cyrus did what she did because she could. The goal was the most priceless commodity of modern culture; attention. In a crowded digital world, the only thing that matters is being seen. Obama's triumph is being noticed. It is the secret of his success. In a crowded digital world, the triumph of the will is not physical or intellectual, let alone spiritual, but that quality of compelling others to become aware of your existence and to incorporate your existence into their reality.
Like Miley, Obama will go to war because he can. It isn't even his idea and it isn't a good idea, but that doesn't matter. If you're a Disney starlet, eventually you have to show everyone that you've grown up by taking your clothes off. It's what the audience expects. If you're an anti-war liberal who makes it into the White House, you have to show everyone that you've grown up by getting out there and getting your war on.
It's what the audience expects.
For months now, the Washington Post and the New York Times have been urging Obama to go to war. France and the UK have been beating the war drums even longer. Qatar and Turkey have been crying for war before the last one wrapped up. Eventually the naked emperor had to go out there and give his international fans what they wanted.
Obama was tentative when it came to his first war, but he's an old pro at it now. He knows that no one who matters will judge him for anything that happens. It's all in fun and it distracts the unemployed people eating soup out of a can from wondering if they're going to be evicted tomorrow or today.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has grown up. He knows that the public doesn't matter. He knows that Congress doesn't matter. He knows that there is nothing between his will and the might and fortunes of a nation. And he's doing what he will with them.
He might bomb Syria for a few days, as he's claiming and as he falsely claimed of Libya, or a few weeks or a few months. The military has been cut to the bone and retasked to celebrating gay weddings and green energy, but there are enough bombs left over to make for some spectacular fireworks as the Al Nusra Front and their Free Syrian Army allies make it to Damascus to slaughter the last Christians there.
Every show needs a good closing number and the burning of the last churches in Syria while the
There will be criticism, but as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Benghazi, "What difference does it make anyway?" What difference does anything make in the absence of morals. Without them, there is only power and the will to use it, whether it is the power to bomb a nation or take your clothes off.
The only way to prove will is through action. The ability to do a thing implies a need to do it. If a thing can be done, it must be done. And so will disproves itself as the ability to do a thing forces you to actually go ahead and do it to prove your will, without regard to whether you want to do it or not.
Our society sleepwalks towards these inevitabilities of power without ever asking who it was that decided on their inevitability. Transformed from a society of virtue into vice, we wonder why we are slipping into tyranny and corruption of every sort. Restraint is a virtue. With only the vice of power, the addiction of will, there is nothing between us and those who would destroy us but the nakedness of their power. And the moment that they can deprive us of our rights and destroys us, they will.
Tomorrow, Obama may fight Syria. But the rest of the time, he's fighting us.
Comments
Twerking Towards Gomorrah.
ReplyDeleteI have only one problem with this article . You say "Miley Cyrus did what she did because she could."
ReplyDeleteNo. Miley Cyrus did what she did because she was told to do it. If anyone thinks that any of these performers do a single thing, move a single centimeter outside of a carefully choreographed, scripted, vetted and committee approved direction, then you do not understand how the major entertainment conglomerates work, and what's more, you probably think Pro Wrestling is real (hint: it's "real" in the sense that it is choreographed).
You also probably tremendously overestimate the creative abilities of these mindless drones.
This administration needs to be brought to heel. Their contempt of The US House, and therefore of the US people is on sickening display. I wrote to my Congressman, Bill Young of Florida 13th District to express my total opposition to intervention in Syria, this is, in part, his response:
ReplyDelete"On July 24th, the House approved the Fiscal Year 2014 Defense Appropriations Bill that I authored in my role as the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on National Defense. H.R. 2397 passed on a bipartisan 315 – 109 vote following an open process where 100 amendments were considered on the House Floor.
Included in this measure was an amendment , which passed unanimously, that prohibits the use of any funds with respect to military action in Syria without consulting Congress as required by the War Powers Resolution . Rest assured, I have been paying close attention to the situation in Syria for the past three years, since the beginning of the popular uprising that has turned into an armed rebellion."
So Congress has thrown down the gauntlet, we will see if they have the guts to pursue this.
LMAO, good old fashion one-sided reporting. I have no love for our current president and personally, I think the whole democratic/republican thing is a complete farce. Neither side gives one lick about us. However, if you are going to act like Obama and Clinton are lying, dirt bags, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to skip over the fact that our former president gained the public's support for a war that was built on a LIE.
ReplyDeleteIs that you Cindy Shehan?
DeleteSwartz.
Your writing is excellent. Maybe Cyrus and Obama are physically grown up, but I question the maturity of either's mental state. There isn't enough dignity or integrity between the two of them for one grown man. I noticed that as things have been going tougher, Obama's intelligence has not been getting raves.
ReplyDeleteWho ever follows him will have truly inherited a mess.
Daniel, your article reminded me of a quote from the first Harry Potter book: "There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it." -Lord Voldemort
ReplyDeleteThanks to the left we now have the worst of both worlds. Now terrorism is basically thought of as a response of oppressed peoples and we can't go to war against it. The Bush doctrine is considered a joke by them but it was designed to protect civilians of ALL nations but especially the civilians within the countries that could take action. You were with us or against us.
ReplyDeleteNow you are against us but we are with you. We are with you in your "struggle" and we are with you when one side supposedly crosses a line only politicians (probably on the take from one side) understand. No one knows what the sides are now or will be. We just know we are on the side we need to be on to be properly progressive. The members of the side we fight on behalf doesn't have to be with us...in fact they are against us but they have their "struggle" in which we are with them but that struggle is often against our civilians.
Maybe we can make this simple and just blow up our own people to teach Syria a lesson.
It isn't just shamelessness or the lack of virtues that the political class and the "entertainment" moguls express but a total contempt of truth and belief in the lie that acts have no detrimental consequences while it is always right to do as one pleases if they can.
ReplyDeleteBoth political parties but particularly the leftists, and the egotistical and narcissists that make up the "entertainment" conglomeration live outside of reality and truth because both are much too difficult for them to face. The reality that there are objective truths and that human reason understands that and also understands there must be a sense of morality and ethical conduct in order for a society to exist outside of a chain of slavery, have also been discarded as "progress" requires the throwing out of the baby with the bath water.
Since these two entities refuse to face reality, they cannot see that the progress they champion is actually a regression into the barbarianism of the past and simply a repeat of the truth of human history where the powerful few always exterminate or enslave the masses they rule over. They celebrate their lack of virtues and absolute deviancy and diabolic attitudes thinking this is some modern invention because they lack any interest in and knowledge of historical realities and the realities of the consequences of living only the darker side of human nature which is simply an animalistic, brainless function of mere existence.
Elaine
@Anonymous
ReplyDelete"Since these two entities refuse to face reality, they cannot see that the progress they champion is actually a regression into the barbarianism of the past and simply a repeat of the truth of human history..."
Miley Cyrus' VMA performance would have been right at home in the palaces of decadent and declining Rome, in the temples of Israel's ancient Baal worshipping enemies, in the tents of Genghis Kahn's hoards or any other barbaric society of our ancient past. The one difference is that in most cases it would have been slaves performing such, as it would have been unseemly and morally prohibited for the women of that particualr culture to conduct themselves in such a manner.
"Yesterday the media was too busy drowning the country in the spectacle of the antics of a former Disney starlet at the Video Music Awards for a cable channel that no longer does music videos to report on the antics of a former community organizer who was busy sketching out plans for an illegal war that he had been on record as opposing."
ReplyDeleteWhy, it's almost as if the whole thing was planned in advance so that no one would pay attention when the president started an illegal war.
But that can't be, it would imply it's a conspiracy and we know only crazy people believe in conspiracies among the ruling classes.
"The military has been cut to the bone and retasked to celebrating gay weddings and green energy"
ReplyDeleteMay I add to that that the Army Doctors will soon be retasked from helping the wounded to performing sex change operations.
"Operation Caliphate"? Daniel, you are too generous in the credit you give Obama. He is incapable of supporting an Operation Caliphate.
ReplyDeleteObama is a "cool" guy; you got that right, but cool guys play a lot at golf and vacationing. Being "cool" means you look cool; you don't study or work. Learning the responsibilities of Statesmanship is work; learning History is too much work, esp. for a fake scholar, who found he looked "coolest" giving speeches to ignorant audiences. That's all he can do, AND he knows it. His "red line" threat was a speech, and everyone knows he doesn't mean what he says, as long as he looks cool to the "Brothers" and Hollywood. If 70% are against a Syrian engagement, shooting missiles would not be cool.
He gave a meaningless speech on MLK, yesterday, but he looked cool, and that is enough "work" for this week. He isn't going to make a decision; he "don't do decisions". One speech a week is way too much work, so some high appointee, like John Kerry, will explain that Obama will give Syria another chance because there is not enough evidence that Assad was in control of those gas weapons.
A golf vacation is called for.
Regards,
What I've noticed is that everyone commenting is afraid to use their name. So much for freedom of speech, huh? There is no doubt Obama openly supports terrorism. Anyone with an ounce of brain knows the rebels in Syria are the same people we fight in Afghanistan. Obama was planted in the White House, probably by the world bankers and the Saudis, to destroy this country. Any strike in Syria will make everyone over there hate us more than they do now, and that's a trick. The problem is that the entire Congress and Senate seem to be on the same payroll funding Obama. The United States striking Syria on what was probably a rebel chemical attack to get us involved, will start the war that ends life on earth. Liberals don't care, though, as long as they think they are right. They will die by the millions, but it doesn't matter because they got their change. The sad part is that most people don't watch the news, could care less about current events, and most probably couldn't find Syria on a map or their own state.
ReplyDeletePost a Comment