Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Obama the Analyst is Bottom-Up

No one is a completely “bottom up” or BU thinker or analyst, just as no one is a completely “top down” or TD analyst of our way of life, government, and our many problems. The TDer makes many little problems out of very large problems in a coherent manner in order to solve them incrementally, whereas the BUer is always busy identifying problems at the lower levels, and literally cannot see the woods for the trees much of the time.

I see Obama as an interesting combination of 5% visionary TD, and 95% pieces and parts BU.

To be a visionary TDer is relatively easy, since our local, national, and world ideals are standing there screaming to be recognized and worked on by all of us. Just pick a few: World peace; Third World development; economic stability in the US; the Middle East; Judeo-Christianity versus Islam… Oil…

A pieces and parts BU type, on the other hand, is cursed with the perception of hundreds and hundreds of problems, only some of which are sufficiently interrelated that common solutions can be teased out of the morass and championed.

What seems worse to me is that the BUer finds it very hard to build his analysis upwards to join with the TD analyst at some middle ground to arrive at holistic, common solutions when they are feasible. Of the many side conditions for such a systhesis, is the preservation of our freedom and liberty, which must rule out authoritarian governmental modifications and Constitutional changes.

The obvious example is Obama’s Hope, Change and Unity mantras which highlight just about as pure a Top Down approach as one can find, and just about as vacuous. Contrast this versus his wallowing around in a sea of other, lesser or tangential problems with only the dangerous channalizing of his leftist inclinations to guide him in a BU attempt. The focus on race, cleverly put in the guise of "post-racial" initiatives is certainly the clearest example of his BU mindset, and the thousand and one subproblems he is raising in the process, each requiring a solution, but still totally focused on the black race, and the black experience, is a whole bunch of trees with no forrest in sight.

The problem set that Obama begins with is not necessarily in the mainstream of our desires, and the implications for beginning with his set and his priorities are to distort severely what most of us perceive as the proper direction for our governance, our taxes, our freedoms, our economy and our foreign policies—in short, the future of the nation.

Labels: hypocrisy, Mental Confusion, Obama

# posted by Mannning @ 12:50 PM