Bruce Dowbiggin
The Manchurian President: How Barack Obama Infiltrated America
First, they came for the belts. Then they came for the shoes. Then they came for the liquids. Then they came for the… lint roller? A NYC man convinced random citizens to submit to a voluntary roll-down. Subservience to authority is the byword in the 2020s.
How did we get from Question Authority to Lint Roller guy? Wasn’t this the generation that couldn’t be fooled? Apparently not. Lint rollers, systemic racism, masks, lockdowns— the former counter culture now swallows them whole, without question.
Is the current trans/ BLM/ DEI social upheaval worse than the 1960s revolutions that threatened the West? In July of 2020 we attempted to answer the question by pointing out the gap between Abby Hoffman and AOC. “The significant difference between the (Charles) Manson years and today is that, in spite of the widespread rioting, looting, protest marches and media attention to the counter-culture in the 1960s, the forces of anarchy and political upheaval never got close to real power in the corporate and business world of the West.
They met Chicago mayor Richard Daley head-on in Grant Park and lost. While the counterculture kept trying (and keeps trying) they never got past the 1968 Democratic convention. The Democratic Party (still controlled by its Dixie segregationists) held their radicals at bay after the George McGovern massacre in 1972. The ascetic monk Jimmy Carter was their response in 1976 to the over-heated circus of the ‘60s and 70s radicals.
The business community never felt any need to appease the SLA or the anti-war movement. Instead the co-opted it. Remember The Monkees? And while some in the media were amused by Flower Power and Jane Fonda being a traitor, the corporate media never felt the slightest need to abandon the power structure. So yes, the ‘60s make great material for films. But for political theatre they were just an opening act for the enormous societal transformation taking place since the time of Covid19.
Then how did the radical left, crushed by Nixon in 1972, re-emerge today to finally achieve its agenda? Enter: Barack Obama, the Manchurian President. For those who missed the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, Laurence Harvey portrayed a former soldier brainwashed by communists in Korea and trained to assassinate a presidential candidate when a specific playing card was shown to him. Allowing the baddies to control the nation.
In this updated real telling a Democratic candidate is the vessel selected by defeated ‘60s radicals to complete their power grab. Hunkered down after their murderous bomb-throwing past, radicals like Bill Ayres and wife Bernadette Dohrn searched for the ideal candidate to get them that power. Like all good Marxists they were willing to play the long game. And if a few bodies hit the floor— well, that was collateral damage.
They first hoped Bill Clinton might get them there, but his sexual peccadilloes and triangulation with GOP left them disappointed. Eventually they saw the prophet in their Chicago living room, the embodiment of their hopes. Glib but not too glib. Black but not too-black. Hip but not too hip, Barry “Call Me Barack” Obama would succeed where Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and Hilary Clinton had failed in transitioning the culture.
Fawned over by the SJWs and elected as a moderate supporter of The Sanctity of Marriage Act, he was bullish on markets, equal opportunity versus equal outcome and other traditional Democratic policies on immigration, education and foreign policy. Once in the White House the Manchurian President was shown his trigger card in 2008.
Faster than you can say Henry Louis Gates, Obama and his coterie of ambitious advisors— Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power— sent the Department of Justice and other key bureaus into police forces, universities, government offices and the military to implement a radical diversity program. Using the template his wife Michelle Obama had used in implanting critical race theory gender fluidity, white privilege and cultural appropriation into Chicago’s school and hospital system, they sought to make cultural guilt the most prominent fact of American life. Clever replaced wise.
”The future FLOTUS was a hot commodity, brimming with resentments despite her position at the top of the food chain. She was a product of Chicago’s leftwing community spearheaded by former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayres. She regularly attended a church where the pastor hissed, “God damn America”.
Then she went to the University of Chicago Hospitals where, for the lofty salary of $273,610, she performed the same purgative act, inserting racial guilt and gender fluidity into their operations. By the time she left Chicago for the White House, the organizations she advised were in turmoil over white supremacy, slavery, sexism, colonialism and just about any product of the contemporary society. By all accounts her message was a raging success— for her.”
Soon, white males, police, bureaucrats, soldiers and foreign service diplomats were being cloistered in day-long encounter sessions, assailed for their “privilege” and racism, forced to recant or be fired. Over the eight years of Obama’s presidency it became clear that to access federal funds or seek advancement you had to dance the radical dance composed by Marxists professors the previous generation.
Hollywood, Wall Street and pro sports were then brought under the same authority of the restored 60s radicals. All was moving, in Obama’s words, with the arc of history. Hillary Clinton would provide a third term to seal Obama’s legacy.
They hadn’t accounted for Donald Trump. The pushback against Woke, interrupted in 2016, halted the radicals’ natural assumption of power. Shocked at the impertinence of Trump as POTUS they spent four years attacking, usurping and de-ligitimizing the flamboyant TV star. Denied their sinecures and Georgetown addresses the furious “Swamp” twice tried impeachment, launched a two-year Mueller investigation, employed MSNBC and CNN against him on a daily basis and finally blamed him for Covid.
They propped up a senile Joe Biden and exploited new Covid laws to get him elected. It worked. In the two years since wandering Joe became president, the momentum toward a Brave New World of battling “disinformation” and identifying traitors in their midst has captured all the vital organs of society.
Like the lint-roller victims, most people choose flight over fight, hoping that if they appease a trans-obsessed society it will go away. In the Manchurian Candidate Harvey’s character kills the bad guys and then himself. They hope.
Don’t count on Team Obama folk having second thoughts, however. Having allowed Trump to interrupt the gravy chain once they’ve re-doubled their efforts to stage a Red Guard-style movement, suppressing Wrongthink, disposing of the MAGA class while imposing an elite ruling cadre that will make sure no one tells the real story of Barack the Manchurian.
And the thing about this movie? Most of the lint rollers won’t know it’s done till the card is turned over.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the “what colour is that green light?” decision to fire their head coach Sheldon Keefe last week. The removal of Keefe after five years followed a dispiriting first-round playoff series loss to a very ordinary Boston Bruins team. Coaching may or may not have been the root cause of that loss. (Keefe himself admitted “teams are waiting for the Leafs to beat themselves”.)
The real reason for the firing is 1967, and we don’t think we need add more than that.
In essence, the management of MLSE— the owner of the Maple Leafs and a lot of other sports stuff in Toronto— needed to throw a body to the baying hounds of disappointment. Also known as Leafs Nation. Newly minted CEO Keith Pelley, fresh from the PGA Tour/ LIV psychodrama, was certainly not going to pay the price.
Nor was GM Brad Treliving who has only been on the job for two seasons. The key decisions on Toronto’s lopsided salary cap were decided long before Treliving occupied his desk. That left two people in vulnerable positions. 1) Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, who has been drawing an MLSE cheque for a decade. 2) Keefe.
When was the last time you saw a coach fire a team president? Precisely. Keefe joins the list of (briefly) unemployed coaches who circulate in the NHL like McKinsey consultants. Shanahan gets a lukewarm mulligan from Pelley. But after the failure of the Kyle Dubas experiment— “who needs experience?”— and now just a single playoff series win in a decade Shanny’s best-before date has arrived.
Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan attends a news conference in Toronto on April 14, 2014. Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said Peter Horachek will remain the team’s interim head coach until the end of the season. Shanahan met the media Friday for the first time since coach Randy Carlyle was fired on Tuesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Depending on who he and Treliving enlist to coach— remember, Mike Babcock was too tough and Keefe was probably too player friendly— it had better produce instant results. Because Shanny, the pride of Mimico, is out of chances. The coach choice will also be affected by whichever player or players that management decides are superfluous to ending the Leafs’ ridiculous run of misery.
The Leafs brass’ press conference last Thursday did little to shed light on what happens after Keefe’s expulsion. Just a lot of MBA determinism on a bed of baffle gab. A crabby Steve Simmons question/rant briefly threatened the harmony of the moment, but order was restored. And the media bitching switched from the press box to social media and podcasts.
Speaking of the fourth estate, the other unmentioned aspect of this story— indeed every story in the NHL these days— is just how it was revealed to the public. When people sipped their morning Tim’s or Starbucks the (almost) coincident bulletins came down the social media pike about Keefe’s dismissal.
Predictably, Chris Johnston of Sportsnet and Daren Dreger of TSN announced the breaking news within heart beats of each other. While there had been speculation on Keefe’s fate for days, the announcement coming from the networks duo confirmed the story in the minds of the industry. That allowed everyone else drawing a cheque as a hockey journalist to pile in and swarm the dead body.
In today’s sports journalism, where social media has replaced newspapers, scoops are governed by a protocol. There are the heralds— in the NHL it’s currently Johnston and Dreger— and then there are the disseminators. The days of a rabble of reporters all scrambling to get a story bigger than who-will-play-in-tonight’s-game are gone. Today, it’s a very narrow funnel for scoops.
It’s the same in the NFL where Ian Rappaport (NFL Network) and Adam Schefter (ESPN) monopolize the tasty scoops on behalf of their employers, who also happen to be NFL rights holders. In the NBA, Brian Windhorst (ESPN) has the inside rail when it comes to the LeBron James/ Steph Curry scoops. In MLB… it’s probably Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic) but no one cares about baseball anymore, do they?
The leagues like it this way, doling out stories to guys they can trust. None of this is criticism of Johnston or Dreger, who have deftly maneuvered themselves into the coveted “from their lips to your ears” spots. From our own experience we can remember the exhilaration of having the best source or sources on the really big stories. Like Johnston/ Dreger, we worked hard for a long time to develop those sources and only very reluctantly let anyone else horn in on our stories.
It was also our observation that this order of things journalistic suited a lot of reporters who either couldn’t get good sources or didn’t want the stress of being first on stuff. It was enough that, like the Keefe story, they’d get the goods eventually and most fans would not care who was first. So long as you had a take. So be it.
Some resentful types took potshots at our work if it upset their pals in the dressing room or the management suite. On the Stephen Ames/ Tiger Woods story in 2001, we had the late Pat Marsden tell us on air that we’d done a great job on Ames’ criticisms of Tiger. Only to hear him lambaste us— again on FAN 590— only minutes later as we listened driving home from the studio. But we digress.
Many reporters are complacent in playing the game, so long as their bosses didn’t enquire why they are getting scooped all the time by the same few rivals. With the death of daily newspapers that doesn’t happen much any longer. (Many editors today may only see stories when publication brings a libel notice.) For them a salty take is good enough.
The scoop business is also affected by the multiple roles now demanded of sports media types. In addition to their “day job” on a beat they also have to supply digital content and talk-back hits to the Mother Ship. Most also are feeding a weekly podcast, dictating time on air rather than time working the phone. There are only so many hours in a day to chase a story.
Better to play the Breaking News waiting game.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Have you ever been to a concert where a hot new product like Tesla is mentioned and many in the crowd applaud in approval? Have you been at a dinner party when you say you went to a new Thai restaurant, and everyone at the table explodes in rhapsodic glee? Have you ever been to see a comic and he mentions he has the latest iPhone with the nifty camera and people actually cheer?
You see those people cheering a piece of tech or a style of cuisine? Those are the people who believed Justin Trudeau when he told them to sink everything into real estate when interest rates were near zero. They. Will. Believe. Anything. So long as they think it makes them cool kids. Trudeau could say he can control the weather by stopping cows from farting, and they’ll be wearing a bovine flatulence T-shirts pronto.
Now, we can hear you laughing in derision at our skepticism about the real estate-economy that has taken over the nation— the new economy that Justin fed, watered and then bragged about. (To the exclusion of the other cornerstones of our once-dynamic nation state.) The one that will be going to Market one of these days for a meeting with an air compressor.
Again, you laugh. Despite the housing shortage Justin says we can easily accommodate two million new souls a year, no problem. He says Trump was a vile racist for wanting to exclude unhinged radicals from zombie countries back in 2017. The freshly-arrived from Trump’s “shithole countries” with “shithole value systems” and “shithole economies’ will prop up the value of Canada’s two-million dollar cash-cow bungalow in West Van or Etobicoke. And the Happy People believe.
Why? Because Justin and his cabinet are in Control, and they’ll just rein in these types when they get here and start asking that Jews be exterminated or white people surrender the merit system to DEI droogs. That little dustup at the universities where nervous trust-fund virgins claim to be onside with systemic rape? Justin can stop them anytime. Everything is cool. After all, Canada is the model for a postmodern state.
And that stuff about how the Canadian real estate market being 80 percent propped up by drug money, kleptocracy profits and Blackrock? Pshaw. That is just the Far Right Diagolons trying to panic you into hiding your money from the government which just wants to send it to the “shithole” countries in a kickback loop. If nothing else, the banks will save you— if there’s any shareholder value left after this deranged DEI diversion.
Can’t happen here? We know people who were around the EU in 2008 when the U.S. mortgage debacle cratered economies around the world. For years they’d been served by Poles in the service industry, Spaniards in the restaurant kitchens and Bulgarians doing the physical labour. Life was good. Everyone drove a Beemer and owned a condo overlooking the sea.
Then, one day, they noticed that all the airport parking lots were overflowing with Beemers that went unclaimed. No one had paid rent in months. The banks noticed that all these lovely fellow citizens of the EU had drained their savings, reached their cash credit limit on the Mastercard and skedaddled with the dough. Funny, they all must have gone on holidays to once, no?
No. They were gone. Bye bye. Adios. And the credit bubbles in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, France and other EU worthies popped like the champagne they’d been sipping for years on easy credit and idiotic notions of productivity. Nations like Iceland went bankrupt overnight. Counties in England threw their keys on the table. People’s life savings evaporated.
But Justin says that won’t happen here on his co-watch with Jagmeet the Bespoke. Sure, no one under the age of 40 can afford those two-million dollar cash-cow bungalows in West Van or Etobicoke. But those old Boomer geezers will die soon, and after we tax the daylights out of the estate, the kiddos will inherit the house. Probably after we turn it into a four-plex or fine them for having empty bedrooms because they couldn’t afford kids.
One of the ferocious beauties of market economies is their way of periodically turning on themselves when too many people are getting rich too easily. The Canadian RE economy of Justin Trudeau is one of them. It’s about a decade old without any sign of dropping. Life is good. Everyone drives a Tesla and rents a condo overlooking the sea.
Little wonder. Everything he and his faculty lounge of dimwits like Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault have done this decade has been to prop up the value of real estate owned by their real pals in Asia, Europe, the assorted kleptocracies in Africa or the sub-continent. It was like an ad for Chlorox the way these “investors” blithely laundered their dirty money in Canadian condos and low-rises. When news leaked out that mobsters were using casinos in B.C. (where Justin’s maternal side came from) as a laundering station it was covered up very quickly.
But the clock ticks. Even Justin’s former finance minister Bill Morneau is warning that the bubble is going to pop if Justin keeps printing more money to keep the real estate values so unsupportably high. The entire middle class of Canada, which has ridden the real estate train, will see their life savings evaporate like Jody Wilson Raybould’s political career.
No matter. Justin’s been living in government housing since 2015 (some of it with his Mommy). What does a trust-fund nit know about making rent cheques or a mortgage payment? Without Sophie spending like a dervish, he never needs to look at an America Express card again. He’s got 17 more months to build up credits with his future benefactors, and he’s not applying the handbrake now.
Okay, you can applaud now.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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