Here is an interesting post from Stuart Scheiderman about the Democrat’s latest ad campaign, “the Life of Julia”.

Excerpt: (links removed)

What were they thinking? What was the crack Obama re-election campaign thinking when they launched their slideshow about “The Life of Julia”?

How is it possible that highly skilled political operatives could have descended into such ham-handed manipulation?

Have their minds been infiltrated and colonized by Republican gremlins? Or were they just trying to provide fodder for the conservative commentariat?

If the latter, they have succeeded beyond their dreams.

James Taranto describes the unfolding story of Julia:

Julia, who has no face, is depicted at various ages from 3 through 67, enjoying the benefits of various Obama-backed welfare-state programs.

As a toddler, she’s in a head-start program. Skip ahead to 17, and she’s enrolled at a Race to the Top high school. Her 20s are very active: She gets surgery and free birth control through ObamaCare regulations, files a lawsuit under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and pays off her student loans at a low interest rate. We get updates at age 31, 37 and 42–and then the narrative skips ahead 23 years when she enrolls in Medicare. Two years later, she’s on Social Security, at which point she can die at any time.

In its last frame Julia is retiring comfortably on her Social Security payments. Apparently, they are so generous that she does not need to worry about running out of money.

Is this what people on the left think of individuals? That we need to depend on government for success?

Consider this story from the UK about how government doesn’t trust parents to feed their own children but instead insist that schools feed them, paid for through taxes, of course. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt: (links removed)

This defence of free school meals against a posh government which “hates anyone who is not like them” is promoted as a radical stance. But in truth it is shot through with a cloying, Dickens-style pity for poor kids, who, it is presumed, never receive hot food at home and thus must receive it at school. Campaigners are really calling on the authorities to play in loco parentis and to provide less well-off children with nutrition, because apparently their parents are too poor or stupid to do so. So the Children’s Society says free school meals are essential because “poor diets can be prevalent and child obesity is particularly high in low-income families”. Apparently free school meals are often “the only healthy cooked food [poor children] get”. These waifs and strays, who come from “disadvantaged families” whose eating habits “exceed recommended daily sugars and saturated fat intakes”, must have their eyes opened to “healthy food options”, says the Children’s Society.

It seems clear that the passion for free school meals is not driven by serious political thinking but by perverse middle-class fantasies about the “junk” that poor kids get fed at home. Likewise, when the government cut back on free school milk in 2010, commentators and campaigners were aghast, seeming seriously to believe that poor kids would become calcium-deprived, malnourished creatures without that daily third of a pint of milk. As one said, for children who “do not get a balanced diet high in fruit and vegetables and food like fish, milk [in schools] is the only real way of them getting enough calcium”. One expert told the BBC that the reason it’s so important to have milk and hot food in schools is because”the understanding from some parents about nutrition is so poor”.

In short, schools must do what feckless poor parents have allegedly failed to – care for children. The free school meals defenders are not just interested in feeding kids; they want to save them, fantasising that these urchins come from such unhealthy, morally dilapidated homes that it falls to schools to make them good, healthy, upstanding citizens. At least the school dinners crusader Jamie Oliver was a bit more upfront about his obsession with giving poor schoolkids hot meals, arguing that they come from “white trash” families where the parents are “t*ssers” or “*rseh*les” who feed their children “s**t”. Those are the exact same sentiments behind the current fretting over free school meals, even if the lingo is a bit more PC.

Stuart concludes his article on “The Life of Julia” with this:

As you know, Chinese thinkers grant the greatest importance to “face.” Saving face is a vital psychological need. It’s so important that I wrote a book about it.

When the Chinese talk about face they are talking about the public presentation of self. Face is the way you present yourself in public. People know who you are because they identify your face.

Imagine what it would be if you went through your day without having anyone recognize you, without having anyone know your name, without anyone acknowledging your existence. How long before you would think that you had gotten lost in the twilight zone?

Having face means that you belong to the community. Losing face means that you have either lost status within the community or have been expelled from it.

That is Julia’s status, or her lack of status. She has been transformed into what the Obama campaign wants her to become, a parasite that depends entirely on government support and whose most significant relationships are with the government agencies who are trying to buy her vote.

By the way, what do you call a woman who has been stripped of her name and her dignity, and who allows herself to be sold to the highest bidder?

That’s how socialists view the people who pay them: as incompetent fools in need of micromanagement, so that you everyone will be equal – equally dependent on the government and indistinguishable. While you were completing your double major in economics and physics, they were majoring in feminist theory, race theory and queery theory – learning how their attitudes were better than yours. You learned how to be self-sufficient. They learned how to think that you are stupid and evil.

Your job is just to make money so that they can spend it on you to help you and your children to have the right views – their views. Even though their views have no practical value.  They learned that they should be telling you where you should work, how much of your money you should keep, and how the money you earn should be spent. Not just the tax money they take from you, but the money you keep. They think they should decide how far you can drive, how much you can heat or cool your house, what food you can eat, and how much health care you are allowed to buy. And so on. That’s the Democrat party.