Obama and Biden: on weakening the US
Commenter “Frederick” asked:
@neo:This was part of Obama’s plan, I believe: to weaken the US on the world stage.
Probably too big for the comments here, but I’m curious about this. Do you think Obama and the people aligned with him deliberately seek to weaken the US? And if so, for what purpose: is it that they think the US is evil, or because they think Americans would be better off, or what is the motivation? And is this something they knowingly do, and talk about it amongst themselves? And how large is the inner circle that knows what the aim is and is on board?
In the thread that followed, there were some excellent responses. I’ll highlight a few here:
Obama is post-American. He doesn’t give a rip about ordinary people. He cares about the transnational cosmopolitan professional-managerial stratum (and celebrities). Vigorous national states are a bulwark against that stratum. Note his peculiar hostility to Bibi Netanyahu. Israel is unapologetic in its pursuit of national interests and Bibi’s impressive qualities remind Obama of his own inadequacies.
I would add that I don’t find his hostility to Netanyahu the least bit “peculiar.” It’s SOP for the left; Netanyahu isn’t just an Israeli – which is already a bad thing to the left – but he’s on the right and unabashedly so. To the left, the only good Israelis are those who are on the left and who are appeasers of the Palestinians.
Art Deco adds:
BTW, I think if you put them under sodium pentathol, you’d discover that Obama’s bad attitude is quite normal among professional-managerial types in this country.
No need for sodium pentathol. They’ll say it up front. Nor is it limited to “professional-managerial types.” Not long after my political change – which was close to twenty years ago – I began to notice that, in casual conversation among the people I knew, the US was routinely referred to in pejorative terms. These were not even deep geopolitical discussions, either; we’re talking about things like the fruit stands in Europe versus the fruit stands in the US. These people were neither managerial nor especially professional, intellectual, or leftist. A few were teachers, some were office workers, but all were regular Democratic Party voters without thinking all that much about it. Somewhere along the line – and maybe it was even long ago, during the Vietnam era – they had decided the US was uniquely awful and nationalism terrible as well.
And yet they’ve stayed in this country.
Obama was raised in an explicitly more leftist environment, as well as a state that only achieved that status about two years before Obama’s birth and was nowhere near the continental US. His father, whom he didn’t know, was a Kenyan national, and his mother lived the bulk of her adult life in Indonesia, a country where Obama lived as a child from about the ages of seven to eleven. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that his ties to the US are more those of an outsider; who would have given him any other perspective, or any positive perspective? (That has nothing to do with his birth certificate, by the way – I believe he was born in Hawaii and is a natural born citizen of the US).
Commenter “Don” adds:
Part of Obama’s view, I believe, is the left’s expectation of US decline. It was said that Obama viewed his role as managing the decline of the US. Many have been predicting a multipolar world where China is the major player. Before that in the 80s and early 90s pretty much the same people expected Japan to surpass the US…
A good illustration of this was Obama’s “red line” on Syria. He didn’t act when they crossed it, and when asked in an interview he stated that “it wasn’t his red line it was the world’s”.
I think the foundation of this type of thinking is a belief that the world is a nicer place then it really is. The left has tried to make it seem that the US causes all kinds of trouble, and we are hated because of what we do. If we left others alone, there could be peace.
In reality, the modern world is a much better place because, since at least 1805, the world’s oceans have been dominated by English speaking navies, with the exception of the first half of 1942 in the Pacific. England and the US are the key cause of the modern peace, prosperity and technical advancement.
Again, these are common views on the US left and not at all exceptional.
And from “Mike K”:
I think Obama has decided (maybe aided by his mysterious supporters) that the US is irredeemable and must be destroyed to save it, like the village in Vietnam. This is sort of a religion on the left who have no idea how things are built or where electricity comes from.
Many years ago I wrote a post on patriotism and nationalism, and I’ve reposted it many times on Memorial Day. Here’s one of those recent repostings; I suggest you read the whole thing if you’re not familiar with it, because it’s relevant to the present discussion as well. But here’s an excerpt:
…[P]patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were thought to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, coupled with a lot more than nationalism itself. But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name…
…[T]he post-WWII idea [was] of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism.
Although Obama has no particular historic ties to Europe, I believe that this is his orientation and that it was one of the reasons Europe adored him. Its opposite is also one of the reasons Europe hated his successor Trump.
As for Biden – he has no principles other than his own personal ambition. His present-day cognitive challenges aside, even when he was better in that regard he still followed Obama in everything when Biden was vice president. Biden’s anti-American actions now – and there’s almost nothing but anti-American actions – are what he thinks he must do to appease his base and to follow in the footsteps of Obama and company. There’s also the corruption angle, and we don’t know how broad and deep that is. But money, as well a covering his past tracks in that regard, may be a big part of Biden’s policies at present.
I tend to understand this through the lens of the tribe.
The tribe of the educated ruling class is the worldwide community of educated people.
The tribe of the middle class is the nation.
The tribe of the lower class is the ethnic group.
The obsession of the educated class is that the nation state equals nationalism equals Literally Hitler. So their goal is to make sure that nationalism never rears its ugly head again. And to do that, they think, they must weaken the nation state.
Fundamental transformation–that’s the Obama speech that got my attention–my WTF! moment. Who the hell does this clown think he is and what the hell makes him think this country–the greatest on earth–needs, wants or deserves ‘fundamental transformation’? Biden Administration’s “managed decline” seems to be at play, away from hyper-power status to a UN/League of Nations partnership.
Hoo boy (related):
“Al Sharpton Takes Rich Woke White Liberals to the Woodshed”—
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/04/12/they-dont-get-us-al-sharpton-takes-rich-woke-white-liberals-to-the-woodshed-n2605783
Sharpton. No less….
Key grafs:
‘…”They’re losing people of color because they really don’t get the people of color’s life. If you are living in a city, in a neighbor, that is inundated with crime, and you act like that’s not an issue you’ve already lost me….
“…We don’t want to be manipulated by right-wing elitist billionaires or by left-wing guys that don’t understand our life on the ground that is living in fear of crime, that is living as a result of inflation that is killing us in many parts of the country. We need gas to go to work….
“These beltway elitists, these limousine liberals here in New York, don’t live in the real world and Blacks have to, and browns have to deal with the real world every day….”‘
(So let’s see now. Might that mean that Al Sharpton “ain’t Black” any more…?)
– – – – – – – –
BTW Bill, I think it’s less “managed decline” than “engineered destruction”…but yeah, that too….
+ Bonus:
CNN…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/04/12/cnn-sucks-networks-new-subscription-service-is-going-down-in-flamesover-a-fairly-obvious-reason-n2605803?
With all his dementia and corruption, the senile Biden is doing the nation much greater harm than Obama ever did. He has Harris as backstop, and a Cabinet of incapables who owe their jobs to him, and will never invoke the 25th Amendment. What are we to do?
Obama was raised in an explicitly more leftist environment, as well as a state that only achieved that status about two years before Obama’s birth and was nowhere near the continental US.
I had relatives in Hawaii from 1937 to 1987 and made multiple visits to the islands during the period running from 1969 to 1979, FWIW. From my limited observation of them I don’t see Hawaii residents as a class as having a deficit of patriotism. You would in that era occasionally hear irritated complaints about ‘mainlanders’, but not hostility to America. Note, Obama has never in his life spoken or behaved as if he were emotionally invested in Honolulu (or in any place else, while we’re at it).
Barry Meislin:
Very interesting quote from Sharpton. It’s fascinating how much of the on-the-mark criticism of the left and the woke is from the portion of the left not captured by groupthink.
I don’t know if this has been linked here already, but see this article from Grayzone:
“How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy”
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/31/left-covid-lockdowns-mind-autopsy/
“…I don’t see Hawaii residents…”
How might you explain that Hirono creature, in that case…?
(She’s a real piece of work, that one)
And given the vagaries of Tulsi Gabbard (who’s, rather amazingly, developed into one of the country’s more sensible gadflies), it would seem that politics there attracts not a few eccentrics…
(Maybe because they used to be cannibals? Or because they’re all surfers?? A bit too close to the International Date Line? Drink too much fermented pineapple liquor? Other?)
In any event, seems like “never a dull moment” out there…
Late to the party not much to add as I agree with all. A stay at home, ex- teacher friend of mine remarked back in 2004 that she didn’t know why my belief system ran as it did-family, friends, community, country…She thought I had much more in common with a doctor in Paris than say a baker in my town. Why should I care more about some local guy? That is really what they believe-never mind our commonality as Americans, and belief in our constitution, etc. Instead what matters is our intellectual bin or our elitism. Blech.
There’s a lot of things I might not like about my house, and might want to change. I might sell it and move. I might do really stupid remodels in questionable taste. I might complain about it all the time in comparison to other houses. But I’m not going to invite crackheads to live there. I’m not going to burn it down. I’m not going to deliberately smash all the windows.
Such things happen to houses but it’s vanishingly rare for people who live in and own a house to treat them that way, when you think about how many people there are who own and live in houses.
You get hoarders who ruin their house over time with their poor judgment. You have people who don’t have a lot of sense and don’t prioritize maintenance, sure, and over time their houses get ruined. There’s people who think Pepto-Bismol pink is a lovely color. But you so rarely have people deliberately destroying their own home, having that explicitly as their motivation.
So when it comes to the actions of politicians in Washington DC I look to poor judgment, ignorance, and venality, with the third being far and away the biggest motivator. And I don’t think those qualities live on one side of the aisle. I’m skeptical of cabals with expressly destructive intentions, and maybe my experience of people is limited and they’re far more common than I think.
Somewhere along the line – and maybe it was even long ago, during the Vietnam era – they had decided the US was uniquely awful and nationalism terrible as well.
I think Vietnam had a lot to do with the left and how it has developed.
She thought I had much more in common with a doctor in Paris than say a baker in my town.
Many liberals (not yet hard left) are very interested in telling people they have been to Europe and how things are much better there. Even If their experience was “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium.” Makes them feel cosmopolitan. Sort of like Obama thinking Austrians speak “Austrian.”
How might you explain that Hirono creature, in that case…?
You think I suggested attitudes in Hawaii are absolutely uniform?
When you sell yer house I don’t think you believe yer saving the world.
When these guys want to trash the country, they believe they’re saving the world—oh, and the country, too.
It’s as basic as that.
AND…it’s a huge power trip, saving the world, that is. (Not sure if selling yer house is a power trip. Maybe…)
That’s why they simply can’t accept any criticism…though they might still be sensitive to “the optics”…since bad optics might get in the way of their mission….
(And that’s why you gotta be real careful when you hear someone who really wants to “save the world”. Helping people, that’s another matter, another plane—and that’s fine—but saving the world?? Watch out!)
Speaking of saving the world, has Global-Warming Greta said anything about how war is not good for the environment, not good for the planet, not cool? Haven’t heard anything. Did hear that she did have an accident, though—her father did something to her (reverse Oedipal complex?)—but one might wonder why she’s been so quiet (unless it’s a funding issue, perhaps).
(Maybe because they used to be cannibals?
The aboriginals are about 11% of the population. Never heard they had a history of cannibalism.
Or because they’re all surfers??
They aren’t.
A bit too close to the International Date Line? Drink too much fermented pineapple liquor? Other?)
??
In any event, seems like “never a dull moment” out there…
You relocate there for the ambiance, not for excitement. Honolulu’s a 2d tier city like Nashville, but with wonderful air, odd flora and fauna, and a lot of high rise condos. Not very pedestrian friendly, IIRC.
Obama was brought by Marxists ( all three of his parents, and grandfather) probably took all kinds of courses that we know nothing about.
Can’t disagree with much on this whole thread and yes do mean 3 parents
I had neighbors who had a house, got into meth, lost the house, and trashed it before foreclosure forced them out. It was a sad spin into the ground. Leftism is just as destructive as meth, IMO.
BHO has at least one fine house. He got it by selling the leftist-meth to the gullible, now meth heads.
He’s buying another in—whaddayaknow!—Hawaii.
“…[P]patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were thought to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, coupled with a lot more than nationalism itself. But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name…” neo
The hypothesis that posits that nationalism itself is the primary causal factor in wars is transnationalism. As a theory, it fails given that innumerable wars occurred long before the rise of nation states.
George Soros is arguably, the foremost advocate of transnationalism. His Open Borders Society may be the most widespread and largest financial supporter of leftist organizations.
The current political leadership on the Left are all advocates of transnationalism.
Israel is symbolically and arguably the foremost example of nationalism.
“The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” George Soros
The United States is indeed the foremost obstacle to the transnationalist movement.
Soros is closely aligned with the Global Elite’s World Economic Forum.
In Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, broadcast on January 17, 1961, he warned of the danger of the military-industrial complex.
The very same year, a program to subsume U.S. sovereignty to the U.N. was published by the US State Department. It has never been amended or officially discontinued.
“Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World”
U.S. Department of State, published in 1961.
http://www.channelingreality.com/NAU/IVHS/DOS_Pub_7277_1961_09.pdf
Obama started and Biden is progressively reducing our national military forces. Our nuclear arsenal is being allowed to degrade into uselessness. Private ownership of guns is under continual attack. The “Climate Change” aspect of the UN’s Agenda 2030 is part of how the West’s global elite intend to compel nations to submit, with sanctions of recalcitrant nation’s financial instruments and import and export of trade, the stick.
Trudeau’s government canceling protester’s access to their financial assets is a preview of an important aspect of how the global elite intend to control mankind.
Implementation of China’s “social credit system” another tool to compel compliance.
“We Will Delete You” https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/we-will-delete-you
RE: Weakening the US.
While all sorts of other things are grabbing headlines and attention, grinding away in the background—seemingly unnoticed by virtually everyone–is the very dangerous automatic mechanism of mandatory Federal spending on “entitlement programs.”
The money spent in our annual Federal Budget is divided into two major categories—into “Mandatory” expenditures—funds which have, by law, to be sequestered and then paid out before any other expenditures are made, and, then, into the remaining funds, the money that can be spent on everything else, the “Discretionary” expenditures.
People tend to fixate on the total U.S. annual budget number, or on the amount of our mounting public deficits or debt.
But, the most frightening and ominous sets of economic figures are the ones which show what percentage of our entire Federal Budget each year is devoted to these Mandatory expenditures–to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to Federal Retirement and Veterans Benefits, to various other social welfare programs, and to Interest on the Public Debt—and, then, to the dwindling percentage of our Federal Budget that remains after those Mandatory expenditures are paid out.
Those remaining funds which are available for Discretionary expenditures—which pay for everything else—for the cost of running our entire Federal Government, for National Defense, for Foreign Aid, for all Federal Research and Development work, plus everything else.
For 2022 such Mandatory outlays are estimated to consume roughly 65% of the entire Federal Budget, with 35% left over for Discretionary expenditures to pay for everything else.
There are a couple of key facts to keep in mind here–
One key thing to remember about these “Entitlements” is that the percentage of the Federal Budget that they consume almost invariably and automatically grows each year—because more people are automatically “entitled” to them just due to normal population growth and immigration, and as existing Entitlement programs are extended to more and more people, or expanded in coverage or benefits i.e. cost.
Moreover, eligibility for many of many of these entitlement programs is keyed to the annual dollar amount of the “poverty line,” the dollar amount of income below which you are entitled to benefits, and this threshold tends to get higher every year, so that more people fall below the poverty line each year and are, thus, eligible for some types of entitlement benefits–the Poverty Line for a family of four in 2022 is $27,750.
Another key thing to realize is that–as the percentage of our Federal budget that is consumed by entitlement spending increases, the percentage of our Federal budget that is available for discretionary expenditures shrinks—and the practical effect is that our federal government has increasingly less room to maneuver–less ability to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and less ability to respond to unforeseen events, and to emergencies.
In addition, one more key thing to recognize is that the amount of those annual mandatory expenditures devoted to “Interest on the Federal Debt” has been extraordinarily low in recent years—because interest rates have been essentially around zero.
But, should interest rates climb back to normal ranges, the increase in the additional percentage of our Federal budget that would have to be paid out for Mandatory “Interest on the Public Debt” payments would dramatically increase the percentage of our Federal Budget that would have to be paid for mandatory expenditures.
It has been said that “Social Security” is the “third rail of American politics,” but unless the percentage of our Federal Budget that is devoted to Mandatory expenditures for entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is dramatically reduced, this whole scheme of mandatory vs. discretionary payments and how they are determined is reformed, or our economy can be revved up to produce massive and sustained increases in GDP and, thus, in tax revenues, we are headed for the situation in which these Mandatory expenditures will grow to consume our entire annual Federal Budgets.
See also https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3263551-fixing-the-federal-budget-requires-changing-how-entitlement-programs-spend/
P.S.–The poverty line is “indexed for inflation” so, with the inflation rate headed for the sky, it’s pretty certain that even more people will automatically be “entitled” to benefits in the coming year or years.
@Snow on Pine:The poverty line is “indexed for inflation”
It’s also, curiously enough, indexed for prosperity, as (to oversimplify) it sets its thresholds on the indexed cost of food. People spend a lot less on food than they did, and much of what we consider “necessities” today were unattainable or luxuries in 1965.
1961 is the new 13 minutes.
re Nationalism, here’s a very interesting video from Claire Lehmann: Nationalism is the Antidote to Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpmoAnvnbTw
Obama was brought by Marxists ( all three of his parents, and grandfather) probably took all kinds of courses that we know nothing about.
Where is the evidence that Stanley Armour Dunham (furniture and insurance salesman), Madelyn Payne Dunham (manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii) or Lolo Soetero (cartographer for the Indonesian state oil company) were Marxists?
Frank Marshall Davis was a Marxist (keep in mind, though, that people go native in Hawaii). Where is the evidence Frank Marshall Davis was his father? (If that’s what you’re insinuating)?
Obama and other like-minded folks think that they are “fixing” America.
I remember Obama “explaining” American Exceptionalism by saying:
“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Which goes to show he doesn’t understand the concept of American Exceptionalism at all. But, by golly, he is positive that he sure knows how to “fix” America!
Yep. Mosly accurate. Mostly how I thought, when younger, as a leftist/progressive.
I think the right mostly gets the left–to the extent the right doesn’t drop into the reflexive dismissal of the left as stupid, evil, crazy or inhuman.
Mostly letists are not. Mostly they are humans, being human. Changing one’s politics is a serious, risky business, requiring large expenditures of time, focus and energy.
One may be disappointed, but the flipside is that many change at all.
“Although Obama has no particular historic ties to Europe, ”
umm, his heritage is closer to Hermann Goering and Robert Mueller then to Ben Carson or MLK
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish!” Euripides
Snow on Pine,
A society in which the majority refuse to live within their means is ultimately, unsustainable.
This is a sickness that really got going in a big way in the ’60s and has been expanding ever since. It had been present before then but not on the mass scale that it reached among the various ’60s rebels, who, as we are always saying, became entrenched in the institutions and made many, many converts. Now, as some of you have mentioned above, it’s the conventional default mindset for people of a certain type, the way patriotism is for others. There are millions of them and as we are constantly saying are culturally dominant.
Rudy Giuliani has done some foolish things over the past few years but he said something about Obama that I thought was very perceptive (quoting from memory): “He doesn’t love America. Not like we do.” The “we” there being, I took it, the ordinary America-loving American. He provoked some outrage but I thought “yeah, that’s it in a nutshell.” America is a place that may or may not ever come up to his standards.
Hard to get into peoples’ heads. But I think, from the attitudes struck, that being anti-American (traditional version) inflates the ego of some and is a virtue signal to similar folks. ANYbody can be a patriot (sneer). It takes wisdom to see through that. So pretend to see through it and, bingo, you’re wise.
Prominent gay writer Bruce Bawer wrote a book on the threat from conservative Protestantism. To prove his bona fides, he moved to Amsterdam with its famously loosey-goosey social scene, where nobody is worried about conservative American Protestants. Turned out to be a bad idea. Thing is, it wasn’t the hulking Dutchmen going around doing the gay-bashing thing.
So Bawer moved to Oslo where, apparently, if you know where not to go, you’ll probably be okay.
But it’s better than the US with its conservative Protestants. He probably thinks he’s fooling as many as one person.
It’s the, for want of a better word at this hour–might find a couple of more after dawn–Baweritis where one must diss the US. And, even if he’s quit, the deep thinkers must keep on keeping on.
Enough of them and you have a movement.
Geoffrey:
You have some spinning and ‘splainin’ to do. Vlad’s spokesman admits that Roosia signed a 1997 agreement regarding the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe:
“Q. You say that NATO promised never to enlarge to the East and Russia was cheated on that. But former Warsaw Pact countries requested to be included in NATO themselves. And Russia signed up to the Founding Act on Russia-NATO relations in 1997, accepting NATO enlargement. No cheating there.
A. It was the biggest mistake of Russia’s foreign policy in the last 30 years. I fought against it, because the Founding Act of 1997 legitimized further NATO expansion. But we signed it because we were desperately poor and we still were trusting in the wisdom of our partners.”
But, but, but Ukraine isn’t Eastern Europe? Is is forever part of Roosia?
https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/04/12/putin-confidant-says-russia-is-at-war-with-the-west-and-russia-will-correct-the-mistakes-of-nato-expansion-n549214
Don’t fret Geoffrey that 1961 US State Department document surely addresses this too. Poor Roosia, brought to it’s knees 80 years after the glories of Communism, forced to sign a treaty allowing former vassals a choice in their own destiny.
Snow on Pine – great comments on budget allocation issues, etc. But we are already now essentially bankrupt as a nation (although not yet broke as we can still generate income). The only remaining question is whether we default in an open and honest way, revising our promises to various “interest groups” and arranging the “haircuts” wherever they may be best handled, or pursue a surreptitious default via inflation or other chicanery.
In regard to nationalism: it strikes me that nation states offer the opportunity for between state competition that can benefit everyone, hopefully more frequently
via peaceful “specialization and trade” but also too often via advancements made during war. Somehow globalization has ended up being more win-lose than win-win.
This also mirrors the US states as laboratories of democracy federated to, or with, the national government.
As I understand it, nation states were “developed” via the Treaty of Westphalia as a way to resolve the horrible wars and disputes occurring between 1618 and 1648 across Europe. Now the EU and related thinking is that war between nation states is driven by nation state nationalism so war should lead to dissolving the nation state into some nebulous transnational conglomerate, in clear violation of human nature and social structures over millennia.
@ Frederick > “Such things happen to houses but it’s vanishingly rare for people who live in and own a house to treat them that way”
Interesting analogy, and om is also correct about how some people end up destroying their homes; although that isn’t really their objective, it’s an unfortunate consequence.
However, the Obama Class (to coin a term in sync with the discussion) doesn’t “own” America, they are only renters, and either don’t care about our “home,” or actively choose to destroy it — because it isn’t theirs.
A while back, maybe a few decades now, there was a spate of human-interest stories about renters who destroyed the properties they had leased, maliciously and without any discernible reason. This is a recent one that is similar.
https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/tenants-totally-destroyed-my-rental-property–it-i-657348.html
Toxic renters are an on-going problem for landlords, but the Destroyers are a different type altogether.
https://rentprep.com/landlord-tips/handle-angry-tenants-damage-your-property/
Christopher Chantrill on April 12, 2022 at 4:37 pm said:
I tend to understand this through the lens of the tribe.
The tribe of the educated ruling class is the worldwide community of educated people.
The tribe of the middle class is the nation.
The tribe of the lower class is the ethnic group.
Interesting way to put it.
Snow on Pine, thanks for your crystal clear explanation of Bribe Back Better—and the egregious return to earmarks.
Should be mandatory reading…
This is an excellent post on an excellent blog. My questions:
1. Who is really in charge? Some cabal in the intelligence/military community? Obama may be making some political decisions, but remember that he couldn’t speak without a teleprompter.
2. Who does Putin think is really in charge?
Who the hell does this clown think he is and what the hell makes him think this country–the greatest on earth–needs, wants or deserves ‘fundamental transformation’?
Yup. When he was first elected, I got into some discussions about the above with people who voted for Obama. I asked “what do you think he meant by that?”, and I got zero answers. To me it was as plain as day.
And if anyone’s read his book (“Dreams from my Father”), that’s exactly who he inherited his philosophy from.
Unfortunately, people have a hard time with introspection (especially the left), so the people who are still Obama fans still won’t have an answer.
@Richard Aubrey:ANYbody can be a patriot (sneer). It takes wisdom to see through that. So pretend to see through it and, bingo, you’re wise.
One of my pet peeves is people quoting Dr Samuel Johnson to criticize patriotism: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” But Johnson was not criticizing patriotism, he was criticizing scoundrels, and he had a specific person (William Pitt) in mind who used the label (in Johnson’s opinion) falsely.
Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.
Johnson had written a year earlier, in a pamphlet called “The Patriot”:
A patriot is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest.
Doesn’t sound too scoundrelly.
And if anyone’s read his book (“Dreams from my Father”), that’s exactly who he inherited his philosophy from.
Steve Sailer’s take on Obama is that he’s a transmitter of other’s views, not someone who generates his own viewpoint; I find that quite plausible. His father had some published writings he could have perused and he could have heard this, that, and the next thing from his mother or from Neil Abercrombie. However, he only spent nine weeks in the same city with the man over a period of 21 years, and the latter occasion ended badly. Thesis: Obama’s attitudes come from his mother, from Frank Marshall Davis, and from the kultursmog in higher education. It’s a reasonable wager the Punahou School was permissive but not generative in said process. The three people who might have counteracted the foregoing were Lolo Soetero, Stanley Armour Dunham, and Madelyn Dunham. They didn’t, I suspect, because they were normal-range people without strong views on matters abstract from mundane life. In Stanley Dunham’s case, you’d add to the stew his general unseriousness and in the case of both Dunhams you’d add the unfortunate dynamic that seems to have prevailed between parent and child. You need your siblings growing up, and one thing siblings do is prevent exploitative relationships from developing between child and parent. Ann Dunham was a user, and that’s most unattractive.
Who is really in charge? Some cabal in the intelligence/military community? Obama may be making some political decisions, but remember that he couldn’t speak without a teleprompter.
My suspicion is that most of the cabinet secretaries and agency chiefs are doing their own thang. To the extent someone is in charge, it’s a cabal consisting of Jill, Ron Klain, Blinken, Sullivan, and Austin. Psaki and the medical staff at the White House are providing crucial support.
Unfortunately, people have a hard time with introspection (especially the left), so the people who are still Obama fans still won’t have an answer.
If the yap of the partisan Democrats among our friends and relations is any guide, liberal discourse in our time is now worthless. It’s a set of subcultural fictions and resentments, nothing more.
George Orwell….who was a leftist, actually was a socialist, still wrote very affectionately about England. A very different mindset from today’s American Left.
See my post from 2009, He’s Just Not That Into Us,’ where ‘he’ referred to Obama…but now applies to a whole lot of people.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/9641.html
“But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name”
Fascism, i.e., national socialism, rose as a consequence of the atrocities the parties of the Third International, i.e., communists, international socialists, committed. They communists aligned with the Soviets were beaten back in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. But the fascists had no plan longterm and when the sociopaths of Hitler and cronies took over, conquest was what would keep them in power. We all know, for a time, they aligned with the international socialists, then attacked the Soviet Union. We all know the remnants of classical liberalism in the US, with the fascists of the New Deal, and similar in Britain, beat the national socialists back along with the international socialists. Post-war, the international socialists were given Eastern Europe.
But back home all those socialists who fled Europe took up tenure at US and British universities. They still preached their war against the west and promoted a hysterical hatred of capitalism as the German professors that inculcated what became Nazism into the educated Germans [von Mises, ‘Planned Chaos’], but now with internationalism instead of nationalism. They hate nationalism and patriotism because it interferes with the dreams of international socialism. Stalin wanted to run it out of Moscow, the EU wants to run it out of Brussels, in the US, they want to run it out of Harvard.
Fascism, i.e., national socialism, rose as a consequence of the atrocities the parties of the Third International, i.e., communists, international socialists, committed.
Rubbish.
You had two fascist governments in Europe which arose out of domestic political processes – Germany and Italy. The Communist Party in Italy in 1922 accounted for about 4.5% of the electorate. The Communist vote in Germany during the Weimar Republic bounced around 12%. You’d have certainly had a large bloc of the German electorate looking for a bulwark against the Communist Party in 1932; what distinguished the Nazis in 1932 was not that they were antagonists of the Communists, but that they were the one part not implicated in the mismanagement of Germany’s affairs over the previous 18 years. The salient element was the bumbling of the German establishment.
Outside of those two, you had fascist movements in other countries. The most vigorous was to be found in Roumania. Roumania had no Communist Party of note during the inter-war period and even the local socialist party was quite small.
See Finland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Hungary during the interwar period. If you needed to get medieval with the local communist parties, you weren’t limited in your options to fascist parties.
Peter Drucker, Austrian by birth, lived in Germany during the rise of the Nazis….his view was that Fascism, particularly in its Nazi incarnation, was a nihilist response to the perception that *everything* had failed…Marxism had failed, the Church had failed, etc.
See his book The End of Economic Man…his first book, not as well-written as his later works, but important and well worth reading.
Frederick. I get the patriotism quote and the context. But the short form is easier to remember and has the aura of truth. A stern, declarative sentence.
}}} You had two fascist governments in Europe which arose out of domestic political processes
Well, there are some interesting … connections… which exist at both the development of the USSR and the development of Nazi Germany.
As I understand it (not a deep student, I ack), the Kerensky government was attempting to establish a republic, with a US style Constitution. Lenin was a nobody at that point, writing whackadoodle Marxist drivel in Canada, until someone financed him coming from Canada to Russia to foment the October Revolution, which began to create the USSR.
As I understand it, the main driver of that financing was the American brother of a German financier. As you might realize, Germany was hard-pressed in 1917, and getting the Russians completely out of the war was a major boon to their logistics and manpower issues, freeing up millions of men from the Eastern Front to move to the Western Front.
Someone’s Grand Plan? Probably not. But it certainly changed the course of events for most of a century.
Second point: The Soviet Bear was becoming a concern to Europe, as they slowly managed to industrialize and make more significant usage of their vast resources (no, the inevitable failure of centralized planning En Large was not as obvious in the 30s).
So the nations of the west tended to encourage Germany to re-arm, intending for them to attack the Soviets, their natural enemy (NatSoc and Soviets are just different versions of the same process…). Hitler, not a complete fool, instead made the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Stalin, so he could turn his main focus on the West. Both of them — Hitler AND Stalin — continued with plans to attack the other, but Hitler was shiftier and faster… he turned around and attacked the USSR. As I understand it, Stalin was actually hurt — he thought he and Hitler “had a deal”… (yeah, that HE himself was planning to break…LMAO).
It’s interesting, really. Had the Brits not wound up a very tough nut to crack, Hitler might have been able to devote more efforts to breaking the Soviets, and, given the closeness of which it was in both 41/2 and 42/3, he might have managed it. He got right to the outskirts of Moscow in 41/2, and he not only got into Stalingrad in 42/3, but he almost pushed the Soviets out. It is a Very Good Thing the world had Winston Churchill when they did.
}}} But, but, but Ukraine isn’t Eastern Europe? Is is forever part of Roosia?
Actually, yes, Ukraine IS in Eastern Europe. The Ural mountains, further to the east, are considered the dividing line between “Europe” and “Asia”. The Urals run approximately straight down to the landlocked Aral Sea. Ukraine, largely above the Black Sea (with the also landlocked Caspian Sea between it and the Aral sea) is decidedly to the west of the Urals… ergo and qed, as well as “bob’s your uncle”… Ukraine is a part of Eastern Europe.
The more fun argument is that the Ukraine was a State long before Russia was anything more than a bunch of towns under the control of a warlord who paid fealty to the Ukrainian polity. So doesn’t the Ukraine have more of a precedent claim on Russian territory than Russia does on Ukrainian territory?
😀
BTW, in looking at the location of the Urals, I noted the disappearance of the former “fourth largest lake in the world”, the Aral Sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
It has happened before, the sea is, itself, kind of like the Salton Sea in California, a natural lake basin which is sometimes fed by the planet, and sometimes not.
But in the 60s, Soviet hydroprojects diverted the influx of water into the Aral Sea and it began to dry up, until it now has less than 10% of the area it once had and its salinity level is above that of the Dead Sea.
It’s now considered a serious case of ecosystem collapse.
I call attention to this, because, it’s… interesting.
Can you imagine the screams of the Greens if the US government had done something to cause Lake Michigan to dry up?
This, along with their toxin and nuclear dumping in the former Czechoslovakia, is what socialist governments DO. They destroy the environment as, when, and how they wish.
No matter how BAD you think the West is on the environment, Marxism will be much much worse.
ObloodyHell:
Thanks for answering my leading question, which I posed in case Geoffrey wanted to play lawyer and pettiflog NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Russian agreement signed in 1997.
Yeah, The Aral Sea had to die/dry in order for the USSR to grow cotton IIRC. There were some Soviet chemical/biological weapons facilities in that area as well that had some, adverse “incidents” IIRC. Worse than the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah by far.
The three people who might have counteracted the foregoing were Lolo Soetero, Stanley Armour Dunham, and Madelyn Dunham. They didn’t, I suspect, because they were normal-range people without strong views on matters abstract from mundane life.
It was the Dunham’s who brought Obama over to Frank Marshall Davis to visit.
American Thinker writes:
The next year they relocated to Mercer Island specifically so their daughter, Obama’s future mother, Stanley Ann Dunham could attend Mercer Island high school.
That school had very strong leftist tendencies. Perhaps they intentionally selected that?
And the Dunham’s church:
The Chicago Tribune mentions a description of the Dunham’s chosen church as “The Little Red Church on the Hill”. According to its own website, East Shore Unitarian Church got that name because of, “Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of ‘Red China’ to the United Nations….” The fact that Mercer Island’s John Stenhouse, according to his 2000 obituary, once served as church president might also have contributed to the “red” label.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html