Many years ago, a friend named Jane described a heated conversation she had with her husband, Charles, about a particular issue. They debated back and forth for a long time. Charles kept explaining the issue from different angles, convinced Jane would agree with him if only she had a better understanding of his opinion.
Finally Jane blurted, "You've explained this issue 10 different ways. It's not that I don't understand you; it's that I don't agree with you."
Charles looked surprised, then said, "Oh. OK. I get it now." End of discussion.
In other words, Charles had been laboring under the misunderstanding that Jane didn't agree with him because she didn't understand the issue. Jane had to make it clear that she understood perfectly but merely held a contrary opinion.
Too bad the political elite in this nation can't have that same clarity of understanding.
As you can imagine, this was a very emotionally charged week with the recent elections. Alarmed at the socialist direction our nation is heading, people took a stronger interest in their government than they had for a long time.
And through the weeks leading up to the elections as well as during the post-election analyses, one theme kept catching my attention: the liberal notion that people were voting conservative merely because they were too ignorant to do otherwise.
"I probably should have used the word 'opponents' instead of 'enemies' to describe political adversaries," Obama admitted Monday, in response to the outrage we felt at being termed "enemies" during his radio interview on a Hispanic network. I'm quite certain Obama "apologized" only because the midterm elections were the next day.
Apparently, our illustrious leader also finds it sooooo amusing when the little people rally against his fiscal policies. "You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said when we objected to raising taxes and enslaving our great-grandchildren with debt.
It's clear that the elites believe the "great unwashed middle of the country" are too dumb to know how to vote, and so we are encouraged to grow the government bigger and more powerful in order to continue telling the little people what to do.
Oddly enough, I see this contempt for middle America exemplified by the elites' attitude (from both the left and the right) toward Sarah Palin. From the mainstream media and the upper echelons of politics, Palin is loathed and despised.
It took me a while to realize why this hatred of Palin bothered me, until I realized it's not Palin per se, it's us, the heartland, that is loathed and despised. Palin is merely the figurehead for what the elites see as the massive, stupid middle of America. Anyone who doesn't endorse the Marxist plans for bigger government and more regulation are dismissed as uneducated yokels, blue-collar hicks, gun-toting bunny-shooting troglodytes. The progressives believe Sarah Palin personifies these traits, which accounts for her great popularity among the unwashed and why the elites hate her guts.
In the wake of the elections, Obama said, "It's a matter of persuading people … and making an argument that people can understand." Once again Obama seems incapable of grasping the concept: It's not that we don't understand his agenda; it's that we don't agree with it.
These elites believe people reject socialism only because they don't understand the facts. Obama's attitude is he "is sure he knows best and thinks that those who disagree just aren't in their right minds." These politicians and the mainstream media profess their deepest concerns for our opinions only when it's expedient (i.e. elections); the rest of the time, they just long for us to sit down and shuddup.
Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Mr. Obama has not connected with popular discontent. "A lot of people have never been to Washington or New York," he notes caustically, "and they feel people there are so out of touch. When you're unemployed and you're sitting in your living room and you hear the president say, 'You don't understand what the problems really are – you're just scared,' that makes people really, really angry."
Some of that anger was expressed last Tuesday, of course, and now snobs like Bill Press are trying to explain it away by calling the American people "dumb."
Let's face it, the elitists are scared spitless of the seething, unwashed masses in middle America – those faceless millions who are rediscovering their lost power via the vote. As Tom Tancredo noted, "The intensity and nastiness of the attacks on the tea-party movement tell us how much the left fears ordinary American citizens who take an interest in politics." [Emphasis added.]
"Rather than entertaining the possibility that the program [the Democrats] have pursued is genuinely and even legitimately unpopular," notes Peter Baker, "the White House and its allies have concluded that their political troubles amount to mainly a message and image problem." Translated: They know best, and we're just too stupid to realize it. Bill Clinton said, "But if [citizens] understood the facts … they would naturally vote Democratic."
"There is nothing that so consistently defines the Democrats as their total inability to admit that people hate what they stand for," writes Andrew Longman. "A Democrat, in order to be a true Democrat, can never acknowledge the signs that liberalism has failed or that everyone, in fact, hates it."
Which is why the left is so hell-bent on proving tea partiers are redneck, thumb-sucking racists. "The truth is that [John] Stewart and his fellow leftists can't stand criticism of their policies and their politicians," notes David Limbaugh. "It's not the tea partiers' mythical rudeness that bothers leftists. It's that they are daring to stand up to the left's agenda." In other words, sit down and shuddup.
I know this is difficult for the elitists to grasp, but the heartland of America doesn't like being condescended to. We don't like being dismissed as "dumb." Ordinary Americans are rallying in the millions, trying to get a simple message through to our government: Return to the Constitution. Stop spending money. LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE.
So watch your step, elites. The great unwashed are watching.