The Obama enemies list

Back in the day, when a president wanted to compile a list of his enemies, he had to do it not much differently than the ancient scribes - laboriously by hand, only a little faster because of typewriters and memeograph machines. Tricky Dick Nixon, poor fellow, started off with a paltry 30 names, but through dint of studious devotion to enemy-identifying and intensive risk of writer's cramp, his staff was able finally to identify 30,000 enemies by name.

Beginners. Pikers. Rank amateurs.

Thanks to the blessings of modern technology, the White House can now compile an enemies list of millions of names - nay, tens of millions - simply by publishing a web page asking for electronic submissions to the list. If you're one of the three people in the country who haven't seen the page, it's still on the White House site. If no longer there, here's a screen cap. Key part:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

No one at the WH is going to laboriously type submitted names to a memo to circulate on paper among the staff and into the Oval Office, as they had to do during the Nixon Dark Ages. Within milliseconds of receiving submitted emails, its sender and its subject are electronically sucked onto a master data file. I would guess that the filters assume that the rat fink's sender is a "friend" so his address is stripped out to an "allies" file, where it will await future mining for fundraising and further enlistment into Obama's astroturfing legions.

As for the subjects of the emails, those ratted out, if their email addresses are provided by the ratter they will begin receiving copious amount of White House propaganda press releases promoting The One's plans to control the American economy and drive private health insurance into the ground. And if that doesn't turn them or at least shut them up, perhaps more strenuous measures will be taken. After all, Nixon's plan for his enemies was to get the IRS to audit them, plus other measures. As Nixon's white-collar thug John Dean put it, they intended to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."

But something like that could never happen again, right? Especially not with a pure product of Chicago politics in the Oval Office. Nah.

(Not long after the inauguration, I began to receive emails of press releases from the WH press office, and still do. Okay, fine, I've been blogging since 2002, been published in the Wall Street Journal, published and linked by RealClearPolitics and been an interview guest on The O'Reilly Factor. So, sure, if I was running the press office, I'd send releases out to every blogger and opinion writer I could.

(But at almost the same time I started getting releases from the White House Press office, I started getting releases from Prensa de la Embajada de la Republica Boliviariana de Venezuela, which is to say, from Hugo Chavez's propaganda office. Coincidence? Since I have written practically nothing about Chavez or Venezuela, it's a heck of a coincidence.)

Needless to say, had GW Bush's White House announced such an electronic name-hoovering scheme as Obama is doing, the Dems would have been out in the streets with torches and pitchforks and Congress would already be holding hearing even if the Reps were still in majority there. But from Congressional Dems? Only this.

So what is a Constitution-respecting American to do in the face of such despotism? The best suggestion I've seen is this,

I want everyone to forward all of your junk email to flag@whitehouse.gov. Also send link of idiot democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid recitng their talking points. Send any criticism of free speech to the site. We should make it useless by overwhelming.

But make sure you use a proxy server and an webmail account used only for this purpose.

John Hinderaker observes, "A secret and more or less permanent dissident database--in America! That's quite an accomplishment for an administration still in its seventh month. It seems longer, somehow."

Update: Camille Paglia writes, "I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him." Then,

The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

Italics added. As Camille's bio shows, she is no member of the vast rightwing conspiracy.