On All My Motions

The Muslim Brotherhood are by far preferable to what Syria, Egypt, and Libya had before.

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Today, the American consolate in Benghazi was set ablaze leaving one dead and several injured, and the American embassy in Cairo was attacked by a mob. Our government's response so far has been to offer a vague apology regarding our "abuse" of free speech.

Israel is poised to attack Iran, but the U.S. president turned down an offer for a pow-wow with their Prime Minister, citing scheduling conflicts. He is booked for a David Letterman appearance, thankfully. Meanwhile, the new Egyptian government is setting up meetings with Iran. There's a lot of baggage between those two entities, but they have several shared interests and they seem to think a moment of import is at hand. Perhaps you could say the same about Obama and Letterman, but their "moment of import" will probably involve a joke about the new White House-branded micro-brew, and perhaps a few more toothless bites on that Root of All Evil, "Bain Capital."

The Arab Spring is turning into the Long Arab Winter before our eyes. It's tragic, but not very surprising. Israel is telegraphing a strike so obviously that a blind man could see it from space. With Syria in full meltdown, Egypt in the hands of Islamists, Iraq a factionalized mess and the world in the grips of a global recession, the odds of another world war are getting juicier by the nanosecond... but Nero is fiddling.

Edited Date: 2012-09-12 03:14 am (UTC)

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aadler

Semi-secular dictatorships that dislike (or even hate) America, but focus primarily on preserving their own power, are not good things … but they ARE preferable to lunatic theocracies that hate America and actively promulgate terrorism. Especially when they murder their own citizens in job lots as dictated by their idea of religion.

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aadler

It’s almost as if the man is deliberately trying to make his mark on history as the WORST president America has ever had. He’s not there yet — Buchanan set a pretty low bar, and there are some other strong contenders — but he’s already surpassed Carter.

On November 5, 2008, I posted:

America has chosen its next president.

And our enemies rejoice.

I see no reason to alter that opinion, except to add that their rejoicing has proven well-founded.

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jordan179.livejournal.com

Will the horrible suffering caused to the people of Egypt and Libya by the wars the Muslim Brotherhood start be by far preferable to what those people had before?

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jordan179.livejournal.com

Yes -- Obama has sown the seeds of several bloody wars, seeds which his successors will be forced to reap.

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aadler

And that’s in addition to the death and suffering visited directly on the people of these countries by their wonderful new ‘governments’. The citizens of Iran — which had its own not-particularly-pleasant dictatorship before the revolution there — can tell us a great deal about how marvelous life is under a mullocracy.

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aadler

We can be sure, however, that he will go to his grave still insisting that it’s all Bush’s fault.

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I don't think it's deliberate. He has deliberately made some bad moves these past few years, but I think it's mainly due to a political inexperience, an immature postmodern worldview that pretends there are no such thing as unintended consequences (for instance, I think he actually believes some of the class-warfare crap he's been selling) and that he's generally disposed to view American interests as secondary to his ideological ones. From what I can tell, he's also got a bad temper, poor work habits and no curiosity about concepts outside of his "social justice" wheelhouse -- remember when he mispronounced "Navy corpsmen" as "corpse-men" at the National Prayer Breakfast? He also seems to have massive command-and-control problems, isolates himself in his inner circle and -- the worst sin of all -- believes his own press.

The reasons for those failures are open to debate. I've been thinking about it a bit, lately. In reading his books, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father", more than once the "N-word" sprang to mind... that N-word being "Narcissist", Mr. Toure. Here is a man who wrote, not one, but two memoirs before he was forty-five years old, and found plenty of enablers among the press, Hollywood and Norwegian Socialists.

I think the world's worst actors (Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Pakistan, North Korea, etc.) don't see him as an ally, just as a light touch who can be easily bent to their whims because he is confused about how the world actually works and can't marshal action when it conflicts with his illusion of how it works.

Yep, that all adds up to a bad president, but bad in a Carter or Woodrow Wilson kind of way, not in a Buchanan or Harrison kind of way. Maybe the political epitaph will read, "At best, Hamlet, at worst, Macbeth."

Edited Date: 2012-09-12 05:22 am (UTC)

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I'm with you, brother. Most people in America today refuse to even acknowledge that we're still at war, let alone that it's a war we could lose.

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I believe you're right. A lot of people think he's doing this stuff deliberately, but I think it's mostly incompetence. And worse, the largely ignorant electorate is going to put him back into office, watch and see.

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Well, I'm sure there's some vestige of the Gaddafi family still alive. Maybe you could vote for a president who would help reinstate him. That's what you want, isn't it?

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aadler

Did we just shift from political disagreement to personal animus?

I feel about Gadaffi as I did about many other bad actors around the world. The most positive thing he ever did for the human race was to die. The operating calculus, however, is not particularly complex: When bad people are replaced by worse people, this is not an improvement. Especially when it’s an evil individual replaced by an evil system.

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aadler

I personally believe it’s a malignant combination of incompetence and deliberate intent.

I do not, however, believe he’ll be re-elected. It astonishes me that he still has any significant following at all; he was elected on promise, and every aspect of that promise has dismally and prominently failed. Some who supported him last time will vote for his opponent; many will simply stay home; even those who stay the course won’t have the same enthusiasm for driving get-out-the-vote efforts.

No, I’m far more concerned with the possibility of him declaring a national emergency (on any number of pretexts) if he loses, and using the extraordinary powers already granted him by a witless Congress to keep himself in office against the will of the people. Because, of course, he knows better than us, and he has a moral duty to lead us to the imminent utopia we’re too ignorant to see.

I don’t predict this. I don’t even see it as especially likely. It should be too preposterous even to consider, though … and unfortunately, with this man’s stated beliefs and past performance, it isn’t preposterous at all.

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skarman.livejournal.com

Please, I'm sure if we talk with them, explain our position, then all will be well. We just need to bow and scrape and say 'yes' to everything they say. Isn't that what yamamanama is saying?

Because that's worked so well thus far. Let's be very clear here, Islam has taken a continent that was at the forefront of education and science and pushed it into an area where "It's god's will" is the main belief. They don't believe in science. They don't believe in education. All they belief in, is that god's will is paramount and that whenever things go wrong for them, it's all the fault of the Jews, Israel, the UK, the US and the West.

Look at what Israel has accomplished in a desert region. Then look at what the oil-rich islamic countries surrounding it have accomplished.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Apart from a highly evolved sense of seeing females as less than men. Or hanging/stoning/beheading LGBTs and raped women.

Mubarak, Quadaffi, Assad and the like where and are bad people BUT they were a known quantity that kept the worse elements in line. Now, they're gone or almost gone and things are worse. Witness the attacks on the US consulate and embassy. And the mealy-mouthed excuses by Washington and the State Department's people, including the ones in Egypt.

I've said it before in the last three years and I'll say it again. I race and religious war is brewing and it will be starting very soon. The Middle East is still living in the Dark Ages, due to their own prejudices. Check their calender, not the West's Roman-derived one and you'll see it's true. They won't rest until every other person on the planet is under their boot heel.

I invite yamamanama to check out all the wars of the last decade. The majority have one side being of islamic faith. The Balkans. The Middle East. Africa. Indonesia. The Philippines. Pakistan VS India. The attack on Mumbai. The attack in London. The attack in Spain. New York.

Funny how none of these have any other instigators, hm? I'm sure they're just misunderstood people, whom we need to cuddle and give in to all of their demands.

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How about Ceylon? That's a pretty major war. Or Burma? Maybe there are Muslim insurgencies there, but really, it's pretty much everyone vs. the Burmese State. The Congo Wars had nothing to do with Islam.

(EDITED because I can not in good conscience use the Sinhalese name for that shithole)

Edited Date: 2012-09-12 06:39 pm (UTC)

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As much disdain as I have for Venezuela, how can you put them amongst the worst? Have you forgotten Burma, Ceylon, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Mali, South Sudan.

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skarman.livejournal.com

You're correct, the Congo wars and that little slice of hell didn't have anything to do with muslims. Only tribal warfare. So congratulations. You've found a few that had nothing to do with islam.

OH SNAP!

This is what I wrote (quoted for accuracy):
"I invite yamamanama to check out all the wars of the last decade. The MAJORITY have one side being of islamic faith."

But what about the Janjaweed in Sudan and Chad? Or the insurgencies in Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia? How about Somalia and Kenya? As I read the map, those countries are all in Africa. Me thinks the number dwarfs the Congo, Liberia and the warfare between Hutus and Tutsis, hmm? All these countries, in Africa, have major problems with islamic terrorists. Have had it for years.

I think it's time you start checking out history. See what the Middle East was like before islam held sway. Science played a major part back then. So did slavery. Which it still does to this day. Funny that science was destroyed and slavery is still upheld. Then look at what happened in 1979. How the mullahs and their followers invaded the US Embassy and held it hostage for over a year. And what happened because of that. Then I want you to pull a parallel to today and the events of the last few days.

They say history repeats itself and ample proof is provided. You mentioned the Congo massacres between the tribes. Parallel to the massacres in the deathcamps of WWII. A weak US president presiding over the overthrow of an ally and the attack on a US State Department outpost.... Was that in 1979 or 2012? Oh, I know! It's BOTH!

I've lived through the Cold War. I've watched as the Peanut Farmer president made a mess of things. I've watched the Berlin Wall come down and the USSR and the East Bloc countries come tumbling down. I've seen the Soviets bleed themselves dry in Afghanistan. I've seen their people standing in line in Moscou, waiting to buy a loaf of bread and a pound of potatoes while their leaders drove around in limousines and their sons died in that hellhole. I've seen the various terrorist groups take hostages, shoot them, throw them off ships into the sea, blow them up etc.

Nothing has changed, just the names of the groups.

History is filled with repeating the same mistakes again and again. Einstein said it best:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Perfectly describes these people, doesn't it?

BTW, I'm serious about history. You should really start reading up on it. It seems that it is a subject not taught in schools anymore. Just like basic things like math, geography, economics, languages and logical thinking.

Edited Date: 2012-09-12 07:15 pm (UTC)

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Depends on your criteria for "worst." You didn't ask me for mine (and I assume you don't care), but in foreign policy terms "worst actors" generally means those who are unstable players on the world stage who can shift power dynamics towards authoritarians and cause regional trouble with a good chance of global spillover. Notice I didn't mention China either. Though they manipulate puppet states, bet both sides of every race and generally suck on human rights, they are still a relatively stable nation who actually wants continuity... for now, at least. That may change soon, given the 24 million extra men that resulted from their discontinued birth control policy.

You include Mali and Turkenistan in the "worst actors" group? Fine, but last time I checked they aren't spending billions on a Russian-supplied military buildup like Venezuela, or developing battlefield nukes (you know, the kind of briefcase-sized warhead designed to potentially nuke invading columns of Indian tanks on their own soil) like Pakistan.

So, I suppose the answer to your question is "No", I haven't forgotten that the world has no shortage of terrible places run by tyrannical regimes (and, given human nature, it never will). Some of those regimes are simply more externally dangerous than others.

Edited Date: 2012-09-12 08:20 pm (UTC)

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Ceylon is possibly the most brutal regime on the face of the planet.

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I personally believe it’s a malignant combination of incompetence and deliberate intent.

You might be right. It's possible there's a quadrant of my brain that does not want to accept the possibility of a genuine fifth column in the White House. I'm not the sort of person who ignores ugly realities, but the notion that all the bad moves the president's made were actually designed to hurt the nation feels a little too conspiracy-theory for me.

Maybe it's more the case that he misunderstands the nature of the republic (he wouldn't be the first). It's obvious he's read too much Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, but it's also pretty obvious that he hasn't read enough James Madison, Al Hamilton or Adams (pick an Adams, any Adams). Or, if he read them, he only did so for the chance to apply a postmodern, hard-left critique, and get a pat on the skull from like-minded profs.

It's a common mental deficit these days among college grads - the pretense of having honestly explored and then rejected certain ideas that in reality you were never given a fair accounting of, never intended to seriously consider, and dismissed out of hand. And you can't rule out the Pavlovian feedback loop that goes on in a liberal arts program. Like the rat that gets the pellet when it presses a certain lever, the the student who regurgitates the "correct" reading of various political and social philosophers will go much further, much faster than those who deviate from it.

My guess is President Obama found himself diving deep into that deep end of the ideological pool during his college years, and never had reality (jobs, businesses, military service) to come and slap him in the face later on. He just sort of "ascended" from college to the Senate to the Presidency. He's a president with an interesting background, but no foreground (and, increasingly, no middle ground).

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The combination does seem the most likely scenario.

While I'm just as astonished as you are (just as I'm shocked that they can still find 10% of the electorate that likes Congress), I've completely lost faith in the memory of the average voter, or their ability to research or use common sense. After all, they elected him in the first place despite plenty of evidence about what he wanted to do. I honestly think, out of ignorance and apathy, we're going to put him back into office again. Am I being pessimistic? You betcha. I pray I'm wrong.

And if I am wrong ... yeah, Congress has been handing the Executive branch more and more power as time goes by, and Obama thinks we're all children -- I could absolutely see him refusing to give it up.

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Very good analysis. Obama's not stupid, or crazy, or even evil; he's just ideologically mind warped.

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skarman.livejournal.com

What I find sad about the current state of affairs with the younger generation is that they all seem to be so much in favor of 'socialism' and 'communism'. They display their affiliation so prominently.

Placards. Che shirts. Flyers.

It is very clear that they've never studied history. The only countries still adhering to either philosophy are in dire straits and have been for decades.

Cuba and North Korea being prime examples. China, on the other hand, has learned and is mixing it with market based economics. Russia has tried democracy (with an unhealthy dose of corruption), build up its economy and is now very publicly consolidating its power under one man, harkening back to the good ol' days of Joe Stalin and his ilk, threatening its citizens who speak out and expanding its influence across the globe again. And this is what they want to emulate?

I also find it funny that people (and countries) always scream about the horrid conditions in other countries and then look at the US to go in and clean it up but at the same time scream about how the US is playing the world's police officer and how they're interfering in a country's internal affairs. They can't make up their minds, it's like they're bipolar.

Again, I lament the fact that history isn't taught or studied anymore. Or at least, not the history we grew up in. As for those seven countries mentioned by yamamanama, all but two are ones that have islamic insurgencies.

Funny that. Again proving that it's a doctrine that is a recipe for disaster all over the world.

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Thanks, but here's my question: at what point does "mind-warped" become "the status quo"? I think the trend started in the 80's (when left-wing radicals from the 70's became tenured professors), and cranked into full gear in the 90's. By the time generation-X (my generation) was coming into full flower, the radicalism of the 70's had reached an "Aesop's Fables" level of authority in pop culture. For instance, by 1992 the gun-toting, misogynistic, separatist-for-rent who called himself Malcolm X had been transformed into a fair and high-minded civil rights leader, on equal footing with MLK.

That's why I have trouble calling President Obama a "radical." As far as I'm concerned, he's not a radical. His worst ideas represent what approx 25% of the national population considers to be reality -- not a majority, but still a big enough chunk to make you wonder what kind of room you're standing in.

Edited Date: 2012-09-13 06:31 am (UTC)

From:

aadler

What you named as an alternative explanation was actually the one I was attempting to express. I don’t at all believe that Obama is a ‘Manchurian candidate’ planted by hostile powers to bring us down; I believe he is sincerely following his ideology, and that ideology — reinforced by the influences you name — has him believing that America is a fundamentally flawed nation that needs to be transformed (‘into his image’) in order to achieve redemption. That was what I meant by malignant intent: a deliberate desire to bring America down to a lower level in the world, with him operating not as an agent of a foreign power or even of a revolutionary cabal, but by his own position of self-appointed redeemer.

Arrogance, intolerance, narcissism, perhaps even megalomania (too early to tell on that one) … but I would be willing to bet that, through it all, he genuinely believes he loves his country and is doing everything he does ‘for our own good’.

Funny how those who overtly or not-so-secretly despise religion, seem not to recognize the quasi-religious attributes of their own holy crusades.

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Understood.

Funny how those who overtly or not-so-secretly despise religion, seem not to recognize the quasi-religious attributes of their own holy crusades.

Have you ever read Eric Voegelin's "The New Science of Politics"? It's a great book written by a witness to a dark history, and I think it explains a lot of what we are seeing in our current politics.

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Maybe, then, conservatives will be the "radicals" of the future? Or maybe not, since it seems likely moderates will increasingly become the nation's minority group, politically speaking.

Left wingers becoming tenured professors; that's without a doubt a major event in what's happened to the country. But at this point I'm not so much concerned with how it happened, or what the terms should be, so much as: How do we turn it around? It seems liberals having been doing a pretty good job of institutionalizing their beliefs to the extent that many people think there's no other way to do things. Just think of how all we have to do to be decried as hating racists is to voice an opposing view to any Obama policy, and you can see how far we have to go.

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"They've never studied history." Yup. That's it exactly. And with the increasing left leaning in our schools, they won't be allowed to, either.

There's a definite "have our cake and eat it too" thinking on the left, as you say. Bipolar with a healthy dose of hypocrisy, and a side course of ignorance. We could beat most of this with an honest and intense study of history, but who wants to work for knowledge anymore?

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