Progressivism's appeal to our baser instincts

I can readily identify with the vast number of Americans who don't grasp economics very well. Such concepts were never my thing; the advent of handheld calculators was, to me, a greater innovation than the wheel, and I shied away from figures until I gained an affinity for business, which sort of necessitated furtherance of my education in that area.

Suffice it to say that the economic analysis most Americans are receiving from government and the establishment press is slanted, to say the least. This is troublesome, because there's never been a time at which being at least somewhat clued-in was more important.

I've gleaned that Americans at large can understand that megalithic financial institutions, at the behest of a megalithic federal government, lent astronomical amounts of money to people who couldn't pay it back; hence, the subprime-mortgage crisis and global financial implosion. People may still be stunned that such action has had such far-reaching effects, but that much comprehension is, in my view, quite sufficient as a start.

There are a couple of other things that many did not grasp until recently, and it wasn't for a lack of ability to fundamentally comprehend them. The idea that President Obama is captaining us to hell, full speed ahead, became apparent to millions of Americans over a year ago; that's one of the reasons the tea-party movement has burgeoned. From his $10 trillion expenditure to get America out of a recession, to kowtowing to potentates and dissing friends and allies, to a greater interest in upholding political correctness than securing our increasingly volatile southern border, his overt employment of bribery and lies pertaining to transparency, lobbyists, taxation and earmarks, every day more Americans can see that something is drastically amiss as far as this president's policies go, even if they don't have a handle on the particulars of his political philosophy.

This week at the G-20 summit, Obama urged "rich" nations to begin spending their way out of their deficits (as he is ostensibly attempting to do in the U.S.). Back at home, Americans have realized that recently passed health-care-reform legislation is going to create widespread nightmares, that "net neutrality," "energy reform" and "environmental justice" are dangerous ruses and that the president's spending may well "fundamentally transform" America into a montage of scenes from "The Road Warrior."

The idea that President Obama is captaining us to hell intentionally, however, was a revelation. For a long time, it was beyond Americans' conceptualization that our government – let alone a standing president – might wish to raze the United States' structure to its foundation and precipitate circumstances and conditions that will make the Weimar Republic look like a New Year's Eve party.

The other revelation is still taking place, and that is Americans are beginning to understand what hell is going to look like.

A key dynamic I addressed in my book "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession," was the process by which progressives incrementally initiated black Americans into the entitlement culture, dependency and dysfunction. This is most poignantly illustrated by the plight of poor, inner-city blacks. During the civil-rights-movement era, black Americans were somewhat vulnerable to these machinations, but the process still took nearly 50 years.

Now, these millions are coming to the realization that black Americans were merely a small-scale experiment conducted by the radical Left – and a very successful one. With the ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency, the word was given that it was time to enlarge that experiment, or, rather, to apply the now-proven theory to the general populace on a larger scale than ever before.

And speaking of words, the same Americans suddenly became privy to the fact that the prevalent use of the "R-word" – racism – has been nothing but a device by which the political Left has agitated people of color while intimidating whites into capitulation. Despite the casual delivery by activists and the press, accusations of racism have become so gratuitous, indiscriminate and frequent that only the most disconnected, ideological or dense individuals have failed to recognize that something untoward is afoot.

Those among us who are awakening have also realized that the process of initiating the rest of us won't take anywhere near as long as 50 years. Why? Because the entitlement culture looks attractive to many Americans – "goodies" that will be supplied through the toil of faceless "others," via an all-loving, benevolent nanny state. Progressivism is attractive to so many because it appeals to their baser instincts, and the political Left has spent the last 50 years cultivating Americans' baser instincts.

What our fellow citizens find distasteful is the specter of their lives, and the lives of their descendants, coming to resemble that of the most culturally bankrupt and dysfunctional of their inner-city black fellow Americans.

And that distaste has nothing whatsoever to do with race.