Now I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon. He's had two hit television series and at least one of his other two series should have been a hit (I'm kind of ambivalent on Dollhouse). As a writer and director he's brilliant. As a political analyst he's as unbelievably stupid as the rest of his airheaded Hollywood compatriots.
He predicts that a President Romney's policies will "guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting . . ." Poverty and unemployment? Does he seriously think that Obama has successfully dealt with either of these issues? The poverty rate has risen steadily over the last four years and there are a record number of Americans receiving food stamps. Unemployment has remained persistently high despite Obama's incurring of six trillion dollars in new debt. Based on historical patterns, a recession as severe as the one we experienced in 2008-2009 should have been followed by a robust recovery. Instead we have had a dead cat bounce. Just as the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Recession, Obama's policies have retarded and obstructed the natural corrective tendencies of the American economy.
As for the rest of Whedon's prediction, I can't tell if he really believes Romney's election will lead to "overpopulation, disease [and] rioting" or if that's just fanciful language meant to further his theme of the zombie apocalypse.
I have two main objections to Whedon's interposition of himself into the election. The first is that, like most wealthy left-wingers, he is essentially immune to the harmful effects of the policies he wants to impose on the rest of us. Whedon's net worth is estimated at $45 million. Unemployment doesn't matter to him because he never has to work again, although he will because his talents are in high demand. It doesn't matter if Obamacare drives insurance rates up and drives doctors out of the market because he has enough money to pay cash for whatever healthcare he needs. No matter how many Americans are inflicted with shrunken horizons, diminished opportunities and restricted freedoms, Whedon and his fellow wealthy progressives will live out their lives in comfort, congratulating themselves for being enlightened enough to support progressive politicians and policies.
My second objection is that, while Whedon may be an Obama fan, Malcolm Reynolds definitely is not. Reynolds fought for the Independents in the Unification War. Reynolds thinks governments are for "gettin' in a man's way." Reynolds has contempt for elites who think they can make people 'better." He aims to misbehave.
Obama is so Alliance I expect to see Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod wearing blue gloves. He's an arrogant elitist who doesn't hesitate to attempt wholesale re-engineering of an economy or a society but refuses to acknowledge his responsibility for the entirely predictable negative outcomes. He rolls the dice on a massive overhaul of the health insurance market that will only result in increased costs, decreased service and government rationing. He attempts to conceal the negative consequences by postponing implementation of some aspects of the law until after the election and illegally exempting favored constituencies from compliance with other sections. He has engaged in a ham-handed and cynical cover-up of the Benghazi debacle because it exposes the flaws in his Middle East policy. He subjected the entire population of a planet to the experimental drug G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate causing most of the people to give up and die and converting the survivors into a race of subhuman cannibals. No wait, that wasn't Obama; but it's the kind of thing he'd try.
Obama isn't just the Alliance. He's the Watchers' Council, or rather he admires and respects institutions like the Council - a self-appointed unaccountable cabal of European busybodies who have arrogated to themselves the right to regulate vampire slaying here in the United States. Obama seems to think that America is a destructive, disruptive force in the world and needs to be restrained by international institutions. He gazes enviously at foreign governments that intrude far more deeply and regularly into the lives of their citizens than the U.S. government has historically been allowed to. He often defends his policies, like health care nationalization or green energy cronyism, by saying that other countries do it and the United States need to catch up. One of his chief acolytes, Thomas Friedman, famously wished that the U.S. could be "China for a day," taking orders from the central government without that messy Constitution getting in the way.
In short, Obama is a classic Joss Whedon villain. He's Wolfram and Hart, twisting and perverting the law. He's Loki, the god who aims to 'liberate' us from freedom. The fact that Whedon can't see this isn't really surprising, but it's still sad.
UPDATE: Kevin Williamson has a better, more comprehensive takedown of the Whedon video over at National Review Online.
The nerdom in this post reminded me of Jonah Goldberg. Well done.
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