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 Manchurian President: How Barack Obama Infiltrated America