Another brilliant person who doesn’t understand Obama
The other day we had Victor Davis Hanson. Now we have Niall Ferguson as another brilliant and often insightful man who doesn’t seem to have a clue about Obama despite seven years of close observation.
It’s a failure of imagination, a line many otherwise smart people refuse to cross. But why? I don’t think it’s just fear of being called “racist,” either, because they’re certainly criticizing Obama and have been for a long time, and such criticism is often enough to trigger the “racist” charge. But apparently both Hanson and Ferguson would rather twist themselves into pretzels to say “fool, Obama’s nothing but a fool” rather than “knave.” Perhaps “knave” seems to them to be tinfoil hat territory, and that’s why they just won’t go there?
This really says it all in terms of what Ferguson is missing:
Those who know the Obama White House’s inner workings wonder why this president, who came into office with next to no experience of foreign policy, has made so little effort to hire strategic expertise.
I don’t know the “White House’s inner workings,” but I haven’t wondered. I noticed the phenomenon at the outset of Obama’s presidency, and Obama gave us the answer right off the bat, too. This was my first piece on the subject (September of 2009), featuring a quote from none other than commenter Artfldgr:
Why might Obama have a tendency to ignore experts, even those he has appointed? Arrogance and hubris on his part would certainly be one explanation, and not a bad one at that. But another phenomenon may be in play, best summed up by this comment made by “Artfldgr”…:
“Expertise has no place in power. It is irrelevant and an opposing force. so no one under the despot can have expertise except for the lowest proles who have no other options and no way to leverage their expertise except in the service of the power above.
…Power loves a servant, and an independent capable person is a power of opposition, not servant. So they move incompetents into place. The incompetents owe all they have, since they can’t do that well on their own. So their morals are easy to corrupt and they know whom they serve.”
Couple that with Obama’s arrogance/hubris, already in clear evidence in April of 2008, when I wrote this post quoting an ominous interview with Obama, and how could Ferguson have failed to notice these signals from Obama, clearly explaining why he didn’t think he needed experts (or, rather, that he was always the most expert expert in the crowd)?:
Ironically, this is an area””foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.
It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world…
“I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college”“I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee…
And then there was this famous Obama quote:
I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.
Instead of the experts Obama doesn’t think he needs, he surrounds himself with leftists, political operatives, and/or worshipers who agree with him, such as Jarrett:
He knows exactly how smart he is. .”‰.”‰. I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. .”‰.”‰. He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what ordinary people do.
Tell me, what need would such a person, with such an opinion of himself, have for conventional “experts,” other than as window-dressing?
In February of 2010, I was still wondering why people don’t get it (in a post about how Obama’s closest advisors are almost all political advisors rather than experts on anything else).
More here (from before his first inauguration) and here, as well as here.
There’s more, but you get the picture. It wasn’t hard to see; it was easy.
In the Ferguson article, he explains that his initial assumption about Obama was that his strategy was to be unlike his predecessor Bush. Ferguson later jettisoned that idea and figured Obama was flailing because he lacked expert advisors. But Ferguson seems determined to ignore the fact that these people have been chosen by Obama over and over again; what’s operating is neither chance nor bad luck. And he ignores Obama’s repeated statements of hubris and arrogance. Ferguson—and so many others—don’t put this all together, nor do they see the overarching goals and patterns of the actual decisions that Obama (or Jarrett and Obama; take your pick) have made—that neither the decisions nor the policies are incoherent, and this is because the Obama administration’s goals are different than they seem, and different from the goals of Obama’s predecessors.
Ace occasionally refers to the Dunning-Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
It does not seem at all inconsistent with ideological knavery.
Matter of fact, it is the low intellects who mistake ideology for high intellect and keen insight. The internal coherence of the ideology (as opposed to objectively logical or factual coherence) passes for intellect and insight.
Well said.
At one level, I do wonder if there is something bordering on the pathological at play. But, I am also convinced that there is an agenda driving this Administration.
I suspect that Jarrett is steering this train wreck, and perhaps using Obama’s hubris, and narcissism, as the cloak for some of her actions.
The assumption in valuing strategic expertise is there’s a sincere desire for that strategy to succeed.
Notice in our competitors’ propaganda that Obama’s failures are conflated with pre-Obama foreign affairs to damn the lot.
He is clearly a fool. And clearly a knave. They are not exclusive.
Even if one is clear that his strategy is not that of a patriotic American, he has provided lots of evidence that he’s not very bright and not very competent.
His total butchering of the administration of his obamacare web site is a classic in how not to manage. And no one has offered an argument as to why he would intentionally want to make an ass of himself for some tactical or strategic reason.
He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually
Harrumph! Obama does not even possess a mediocre 4th rate mind.
I doubt if he even got through Harvard law on his own.
It is beyond the usual affirmative action mediocrity.
(And valjar maybe calling the shots on the small things, but you can bet that Soros and Co. are driving the main agenda. Obama is just a figurehead.
it is the mark of our collective decadence that not only do we allow this to go on, but it does not even matter to a great many people.
This is America at its lowest, and I confess that I never would have thought it possible until now.
One wonders if we can recover at all..
Certainly, this is not the America I grew up in.
Ahem.
If Obama’s goals were
Here is a post on another blog that addresses this issue from another angle. In essence, the author points out that many on the right are unwilling and/or unable to come to grips with the fact that the hard left is not operating in good faith: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/10/roots-of-leftist-viciousness-in-alinskys-rules-for-radicals.html
It is puzzling. I think it must come down to this: they must think they will no longer be received in polite company if they express such views. They’re afraid of sounding like a RWNJ.
I’m actually more puzzled by Althouse, who wrote the other day that if Biden ran to affirm Obama’s tenure she could vote for that depending on who the opposing candidate happens to be. Wonder if she is trying to be a contrarian, troll her readers, or she’s just an idiot.
The Andreas Lubitz analog makes for very uncomfortable thoughts in men such as Ferguson, in most men in fact, if only since once it has been grasped, the grasping itself calls for action. Political action, on the other hand, calls for concert.
Ferguson and Hanson are both coming from the point of view that Obama thinks like they do. They believe he cannot help but see how the world really is. The quotes that you posted, neo, showing that he believes he really is smarter and knows more than anyone else are prima facie evidence that he is not a realist, but an ideologue/true believer who has a world construct in his mind, which he believes is the ONLY ONE worth pursuing.
To most people with a sense of the way the world operates, he is doing irreparable damage to the United States and the Western world. In his mind he is doing great things in pursuit of his world view. The fact that he is a far left ideologue actually makes him dangerous to the West, but in his mind he is saving the West. That’s what allows him to go on 60 Minutes and claim his policies are winning in spite of even NBC’s Steve Kroft’s assertions that Putin, Iran, ISIS, and China are all running rings around him.
If his open denial of reality continues and the world situation continues to deteriorate, I expect many pundits, even leftist leaning pundits, to become more alarmed. The masses, however, will continue to gaze in rapture at their cell phones, tweets, and social media that entertain them and keep them in a stupor of ignorance. Thus, the slip sliding toward WWIV continues.
Who the hell is N. Ferguson…
I still lean more toward the “fool” category for Obama. He seems to operate on the received “wisdom” of the Democratic party and he’s going to follow it to its bitter end.
Kissinger had the best point: High office consumes intellectual capital. If you haven’t thought about foreign policy before you take office, you will be reactive only and utterly lost. I worry when Carson says he’ll listen to “experts” when he is President. Which experts? What if they disagree (and they will)? On the other hand, I loved how Carly ticked off those foreign policy points at the last debate.
A simple test for a Leftist I made in 2007 was:
Intentional or
Unintentional?
Very basic, very simple, and very hard to get into an endless argument about.
One either put one’s hand into the fire intentionally or one put one’s hand into the fire unintentionally. It’s hard to go into the distraction of intellectual justifications that so many people prefer to have.
Giving credit where credit is due; The Multitudinous Disasters Of The Obama Administration. Here: On Syria And Iran, which appeared on 08 March 2010 on the New Republic’s blog:
http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/the-spine/the-multitudinous-disasters-the-obama-administration-here-syria-and-iran
” By Martin Peretz
I’ve written myself about the Obama administration’s more-than-flatfooted policies on Syria (here, here, and here) and Iran (here, here, and here). So I am particularly gratified when I find myself in alignment with Barry Rubin, a truly brainy scholar with a slight polemical touch. His latest analysis is below.
Syria is a galling instance of the president’s obsessions … and for several reasons…
…As Rubin suggests, a more serious defeat has already been integrated into the president’s view of the world. It is not so much the utter disdain for American efforts to pacify and palliate Tehran. Could the Iranian regime have made it any clearer? Indeed, even the administration’s indifference to the Green Movement, which was supposed to buy us credit with Tehran, brought forth its contempt…
…he has taken all the constitutional powers allotted to him and run with them, without even the advice of the Senate. So here his own instincts–untutored instincts and tiers mondiste instincts–are free to decide and to rule the roost…”
Peretz goes on to cite an article written by Rubin, who is unfortunately no longer with us, in its entirety. Clearly Peretz and I would not agree on Obama’s domestic policies which I would include under the heading of “multitudinous disasters.” But Peretz “got” Obama on his foreign policy early on.
Why tie yourself in knots? Because if Obama is a Knave, and a Knave got elected not just once, but twice, then there is an inherent flaw in American Democracy itself, and any remedy is going to difficult and wrenching.
Indeed we can lament Barry Rubin’s passing, likewise the passing of Fouad Ajami.
Since the US is so fractured, it’s more effective to use a parliamentary system now instead of a winner take all system. Basically, copy what the Germans and the Democrats do, and get all your competitors in the Republican party and give them cabinet slots and use them as advisers.
So Sarah Palin as energy sec, and Fio as SecState, or something of that nature depending on who gets the top portfolio, the seat itself.
There’s so many traitors and corrupts bureaucrats in DC, that if you happen to get them on your cabinet, you are completely gently caressed up. It’s like asking Valerie Jarret for advice on how to setup your personal and family security…
Perhaps Hanson and Ferguson are victims of that old standby – denial. The alternative to putting it all down to incompetence / laziness / hubris or whatever human shortcoming is that there is a cold, hard contempt and loathing for this nations’ values and traditions, including, and especially the rule of law. It’s a “mistake” that quite a few conservatives still make. Who, after all, wants to think that his opponent does not accept the rules of the game which the conservative holds in high regard? Paging Doctor Pangloss.
They can’t connect the dots. It’s a matter of Willpower and heart, not IQ.
Seeing evil and facing it, requires a kind of fortitude and Willpower. You don’t get that Willpower by being in academia or being praised as being smart by the PTB or writing articles for the Powers that Be.
Ben338 Says:
October 13th, 2015 at 1:44 pm
Here is a post on another blog that addresses this issue from another angle. In essence, the author points out that many on the right are unwilling and/or unable to come to grips with the fact that the hard left is not operating in good faith…
and, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
I blame the voters …
I blame the donors …
Indeed, neither Hanson or Ferguson, intelligent as they may be (and they are), seem to be able to grasp the sheer destructiveness of Obama’s goals.
I assume that this is because they are genuinely decent people who believe that no president would wish to destroy the country he was elected to lead (twice!).
Thus they are incapable of making the necessary leap—which would make them appear to be conspiracy theorists.
It’s a failure of imagination, a failure to understand what’s before their eyes. A failure to “connect the dots” (as was mentioned above).
A failure to understand that prevarication is Obama’s default position (doctrine?)—and even if they sense that “something is not quite right”, they fail to draw the ultimate—truthful—-conclusions.
They just “don’t want to go there”…. Which, by the way, is one of Obama’s strongest weapons, if not the most most powerful weapon in Obama’s single-minded quest for destruction.
And one can easily sympathize with their resistance— and the resistance of others.
It simply sounds too crazy, too hysterical, too paranoid: an American president who’s most cherished goal—whose dream—is to destroy the country he leads.
And that’s the problem…because Obama is just starting to ramp up.
File under: “I’m not a particularly ideological person” (Obama in November 2013)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/11/25/obama-says-house-republicans-are-biggest-barrier-to-progress/
hobbyhorse Says:
October 13th, 2015 at 1:16 pm
And valjar maybe calling the shots on the small things, but you can bet that Soros and Co. are driving the main agenda. Obama is just a figurehead.
%%%%
Truth is stranger than fiction: 0bama can’t suffer George Soros.
That’s right: he tunes Soros out — entirely.
Their IQs are just too far apart.
Barry just can’t stand to listen to a fellow who he can’t follow. This situation is so pronounced that it’s been noted and commented upon.
Soros can talk to some of the White House players — and is without a doubt financially corrupting them.
( A zebra does not change his stripes. Soros is brilliant because of insiders tipping him off. It’s the ONLY way that it’s possible to consistently beat the international currency swap market, a market stuffed with geniuses and computers.)
Barry listens to Valerie girl.
He listens to his wife.
He listens to his mother-in-law.
Get the picture?
This is a boy who was raised without his biological father. Hence, “Dreams” – – yep we’ve got a real dreamer all right.
BTW, You must have noted that illegal immigrants are “Dreamers” in Barry’s lexiCON.
&&&
Soros thrives with the APPEARANCE of presidential sponsorship and insider knowledge. Whereas, whatever dope he’s getting — he’s paying for.
He sure can’t get it from the President, as Soros doesn’t much play golf.
BTW, have you noted how Ike played with golf pros — and Barry never does ?
Just by being in the company of the President, Soros is able to con everyone outside the White House into believing that he, Soros, is an anointed one. Trust me, that’s a cloak that just spins profit.
It makes all of the lower staffers open up to George.
“Say, if I help George Soros, he ought to praise me to Barry.”
In so many words, apparent power can easily be converted into real power.
So this is a very savvy play by George.
BTW, psychopaths don’t EVER really enjoy each other’s company. Bad vibes.
With these two, you’re looking at evil that walks and talks.
George is a Nazi enabler.
Barry is a Commie// Muslim enabler.
Their hands would catch on fire if they touched a Bible/ Torah.
Putin correctly calibrates our boy-genius President:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/10/putin-obama-has-mush-for-brains.php
” ‘Now, we often hear that our pilots are striking the wrong targets, not IS,’ Putin said at an investment forum in Moscow explaining that Russia had asked Washington to provide a list of targets.
But Washington declined.
”No, we are not ready for this’ was the answer,’ Putin quoted them as saying. ‘Then we thought again and asked another question: then tell us where we should not strike. No answer too,’ he said, adding: ‘That is not a joke. I did not make this up.’
‘How is it possible to work together?; he asked. ‘I think some of our partners simply have mush for brains, they do not have a clear understanding of what really happens in the country and what goals they are seeking to achieve.'”
Putin doesn’t go into why Obama has mush for brains, although I’m sure the old KGB spymaster has a solid understanding of why he does. He wouldn’t give that away for free in a public forum since the KGB spent a lot of money and time exploring the subject of useful idiots.
And really it doesn’t matter why. Putin is the luckiest Russian leader since the end of WWII and he knows it.
Time to invoke Ockham’s Razor. The mannish boy is not a fool, he is 100% the successful Manchurian Candidate. His words and deeds tell the story. Blended into the bho narrative is his strange childhood and the yellow brick road of affirmative action. Otherwise, he would be gun in hand commiting mass murder at a gun free zone.
At least in the case of Hanson, I think he doesn’t want to go into the field of psychological diagnosis. But that is the only way I can analyze Obama’s actions. He never had a stable base; his mother constantly criticized his stepfather for acting American. Then she sent him to his grandparents and to a fancy school where he also didn’t fit. He learned to equate his being different with being superior, and he sought out people who would feed this image, eg, Muslim apologists like Said, Ayers, Wright, and the Harvard Law types who wanted to show they weren’t racist. Having no experience-based philosophy, he took on aspects of what these types preached and pretended this worldview was superior. How can anyone with a grain of sense believe that a trip to Pakistan in your 20s elevates your knowlege of Islam over people like Bernard Lewis? And then he had the melanin advantage, which he learned to use to protect himself from criticism. Even now, this is what protects him from impeachment. You simply cannot analyze Obama completely on the basis of policies or ideology. You have to go back to all the things that have screwed him up since childhood.
Barry Meislin Says:
October 13th, 2015 at 4:34 pm
Indeed, neither Hanson or Ferguson, intelligent as they may be (and they are), seem to be able to grasp the sheer destructiveness of Obama’s goals.
&&&
Barry Meislin:
Ferguson and VDH are BOTH academics. Ferguson is at Harvard — his expertise is history.
Not economics.
Not politics.
But he is great at the lectern and is quite the scribe.
&&&
Yet Academe is highly aligned with Agenda 21 and the rest of 0bama’s schtick.
As a teen, 0bama practically lived on campus… as in it was only a block from his home.( condo ) His wealthy Grandmother moved to accommodate his needs.
She did the same thing a generation earlier for her daughter, leaving Seattle for Mercer Island.
{ I also was raised on Mercer Island — and lived one floor down from his grandmother’s condo in Honolulu. }
I lived in the very air he breathed — the rage-based ethos of the Japanese American + Leftist (anti-American) Haoles that constituted academia at Punahou (prep school) and the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii. (These are directly adjacent.)
( Most Punahou teachers would qualify to teach at the college level. Think in terms of ‘Ivy professors’ too lazy// laid back to teach at ‘Ivy’ — that’s the kind of elitist talent that indoctrinated all at Punahou. )
The above childhood entirely explains why Barry REALLY thinks that he’s mainstream.
For he really is spewing their orthodox view of evil America — circa 1977.
In Jakarta, Honolulu, Boston or Chicago — Barry saw NOTHING BUT one-party rule, and a corrupt politics it was.
His mother, grand-mother, grand-father, and the family’s super neighbor (Frank Marshall Davis) were ALL extreme hard-Left raging Americans.
It will take years for truth to ‘out’ but the weight of the evidence, the personal histories, all point to his grandparents as being husband and wife CIA agents — operating domestically — but solely focused on frustrating British colonialism in Kenya.
Yes, the USA and UK backed rival native factions in Kenya. The US backed the Lefter wing, the UK backed the Righter wing. This was not an open conflict. Rather it was more along the lines of proving which nation knew the way forward as America de-constructed the British Empire.
( And the Dutch empire, the French empire, the Portuguese empire and the Soviet empire )
( The Spanish empire, the Japanese Empire, the Italian Empire and the Nazi Empire, had already been destroyed.)
Eventually the Hyper-Power sucked all of these empires into its orbit and destroyed them… as empires.
Manifest Destiny, revisited.
The full sweep took a century, the American Century.
Once you comprehend where his roots are, you can appreciate why this spoilt man-child hectors us, lectures us.
His ‘high hat’ comes DIRECTLY from his tutelage under one of the most arrogant, overbearing personalities the 20th Century had to offer.
For Barry’s youth was so unpleasant that he’s been caught describing his experiences in the third person.
He was ‘out grouped’ while in Indonesia. As an American mulatto — he was severely ‘diss’d’ — and threatened, to boot.
His family history goes very, very, far towards why he’s running his ‘private wars’ with CIA assets. ( Dark wet ops )
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dfe1547ba36f4f968deee227d467dc08/officials-russian-bombs-cia-rebels-had-syrian-gains
“The CIA began a covert operation in 2013 [ try 2012 ] to arm and train a moderate [ hah ] opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. [ answer: zero ]
The above article is the first MSM admission that Barry was running a CIA black war under Hillary Clinton’s CIA crew.
[ The State Department has been a CIA ‘cover’ since day one. ]
CIA agents that operate inside the State Department are in a league all their own. They straddle both authorities. THESE were the boys that were caught up in Benghazi.
The idea behind dating all of this to 2013 is expressly to keep the stink of failure off of Hillary Rodham Clinton. That date is a lie. This whole affair ties directly back to Libya. Both civil wars involve the same ‘dark’ players.
The jihadis fighting Assad include many cadres that had made their bones in Libya.
The attack against our crew in Benghazi smacks of deep dark spook craft. For all logic would point towards Tehran and Moscow. If you are familiar with Moscow, it’s their custom to use those opposed to themselves as operatives and, hence, scapegoats for perfidies and sabotage that benefit only Moscow.
Remember how it was purported that John Paul II had nearly died at the hands of a RIGHT WING Turkish assassin ?
Then, years later, it’s all out: it was all initiated by the KGB from Moscow. They instructed their Bulgarian branch to run the op through Turkey and through a fake Right Wing cell that had been set up for just such an eventuality.
Now that’s spook craft !
Barry was raised in a home were such antics were discussed at the diner table.
I have long thought that Obama kept his grades secret because they weren’t good and would demonstrate that he was an affirmative action student and not very smart.
Don’t know if this video is translated properly, but if it is, it offers Vlad’s view of Obama policies in the ME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykb5sxTl1Rw&feature=youtu.be
He (Vlad) sees the world much differently than Obama.
I think their refusal to see him for what he is, is that it involves seeing the office of the president so degraded, and if you don’t admit it, maybe it hadn’t happens yet. Not sure I said that correctly. Basically they’re in denial, because it’s more comforting.
I suspect that Barry’s Middle East policy (such as it is) is ALL Valjar.
Tonawanda, Bingo! I think the Dunning-Kruger effect perfectly explains Obama and the people he surrounds himself with. Thanks for that link!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
CIA agents that operate inside the State Department are in a league all their own. They straddle both authorities. THESE were the boys that were caught up in Benghazi.
I don’t speak or understand Russian, so can’t describe the validity of the Putin Russian subtitled vid translation.
Subtitled translations are better than the UN approved dubbing technique, as it allows you to learn a language as well as program your eyes to read and listen at the same time, to two different data streams. This has a counter propaganda and mental defense application as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Activities_Division
I did some preliminary research into the Democrat ran operation about yellow cakes in Niger, designed to discredit Cheney and Bush II’s Iraq policies.
The CIA action teams structured as back then, if I recall, were centered around military units, Special Forces types mostly, commanded by a CIA case officer. There’s been a lot of shifts around and agency changes, first under Clinton when they divided up the intel agencies to stop them from gathering intel together, Gorelick protocols. Then under Bush II which re united the various intel agencies with military action arms, in order to streamline counter terrorist operations. Then again under Hussein O, it was changed once again, utilizing Bush II’s changes to benefit the American Regime.
That’s why there was a CIA complex near Benghazi. That’s why the State Department can pull off the private bodyguards of the Ambassador of Libya before the Benghazi attack. That’s why Hussein’s chain of command was responsible for the “stand down” order, even though technically it came from the military branches. That’s why the only reason some dozens of Americans were saved is because some CIA military contractors “Disobeyed Orders” to stand down, and went to save the embassy staff at the cost of their own fatalities due to lack of air and ground support or intel. This battle went on for hours, just so you know.
Most people these days, who have converted from “Normal” sheep grazing on grass to what some call “crazies” for being able to accept the unacceptable and imagine the unimaginable evils in this America, can tell you a lot about their theories and hypothesis concerning the harm of these American operations.
But I have yet to find any intel analyst willing to connect the dots from merely open source data. And the dots are very easy to connect. It also leads back to the AA shoulder launchers that shot down the Seal Team Six copter, as well as the leak of their identities and/or operatnal details in Afghanistan.
It simply sounds too crazy, too hysterical, too paranoid: an American president who’s most cherished goal–whose dream–is to destroy the country he leads.
That’s not even the most crazy part. Thinking a President is bad for America, well Americans have thought that about Bush II and FDR and Lincoln too. So to VDH and others, this is “normal”. It’ll all “blow over” come the next election cycle every 8 years or so.
But the “most crazy” part is that the Leftist alliance is a real organization and can command the loyalty of 51% of all Americans, that is more than 150 million people, based on a dual monarchy of secular and religious head powers. So whomever the Left chooses to replace Hussein with their Next God King, 51% of Americans will obey and will then require the other minorities to Obey as well, regardless of the cost.
That’s the most crazy part, when the issue is a leader, getting rid of the leader is something most people expect to happen over their life times. When they start imagining that this is a systematic problem that transcends one generation, then their imagination freezes.
They don’t come right out and say it for the same reason you dance around the issue, quoting commenters instead of saying it outright yourself, Neo… committing the sum total of all these observations to print, even electronic print, would be classed as treason in today’s political climate, and the Inner (Media) and Outer (Government) Parties have made clear examples of what they do to such “traitors.”
None of us can stand against them. We all mock and pick, because that is all we can do without being unpersoned.
If their God King or Caliph orders them to turn in conservatives and patriots next door to the rape and death squads, the American Leftists Will Obey their Orders. They have no reason and no strength, to resist Evil.
Can a VDH or some other egg head and supposed academic intellectual, be capable of wrapping their brain case imagination and mental commands over that reality?
If they cannot, is it the result of a lack of brainpower or a lack of Willpower?
We all mock and pick, because that is all we can do without being unpersoned.
That’s not what the Oathkeepers and other allies did at the Brady Ranch, however.
The risk is real, but America’s units have already begun to self organize. Which is why the SPLC is keeping a close eye on them, and providing a target list to the Waco Democrat police and the police unions and the FBI.
Occam’s Beard Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I think she’s outmaneuvered the Messiah already, just by taking a back seat, low-profile role in a Cabinet position. This way she won’t be closely associated with Obama when he steps in the dog’s business, and the electorate won’t be suffering from Hillary fatigue. She can resign on a contrived matter of principle when the Messiah — as needs must occur — has to make a decision between two unpalatable options. The principled resignation of a Cabinet member makes a much bigger splash than a snarky speech from the Senate floor.
If Obama had any brains, he’d have made her a demi-President, joining the two of them at the hip. That would’ve kept the PUMAs onside, and vaccinated Obama against any later challenges by her, because any such challenge would look (or could be made to look) disloyal and opportunistic. Hillary would be just as invested in the policies of the Obama Administration as Obama himself, and so she couldn’t easily distance herself from him.
But this way, she’s off the hook. Bad move, Barack.
This comment from the same 2009 as the Art quote, from Occam, was pretty interesting I thought. A sort of pseudo prophecy even.
The question I generally have is that given what we know now, did Hussein plan to setup her and was smarter than people gave him brain credit for? Or perhaps it’s Valerie Jarret and the czars that are smarter than people gave Hussein credit for.
Ymarsakar:
My speculations on the subject of Hillary and Obama, written in September of 2009, are here.
So…it’s taking some intellectuals years longer than it took we regular folk to see that the emperor has no clothes.
It must be harder for them to acknowledge this given that all the right people in politics, the media, and the academy, have been crowing about what a fine suit it was, and how it fit Dear Leader so well!
More people are noticing what I noticed quite a while back.
https://twitter.com/DRUDGE_REPORT/status/654289767098531840
“EU DIPLOMAT: My Govt ‘Believes Obama Mentally Unwell'”
This report actually originates with John Schindler, who blogs at The 20 Committee.
http://20committee.com/
He’s an excellent source of information on intel, counter intel, and INFOSEC issues since in his past lives he was a USNR cryptologist, NSA intel analyst and counterintel officer, and lecturer at the Naval War College. Unfortunately he also likes to blog about politics. Which is fine, it’s his blog, but in my opinion he sort of goes off the rails when he steps outside of his areas of expertise.
He’s been in demand on TV of late to explain Hillary Clinton’s multiple crimes r.e. her email and mishandling of classified; you may have seen him on Fox, where he seems to appear most frequently.
He reports that a senior EU diplomat as well as an old friend approached him to ask about how the US impeachment process works. The reason why he asked is contained in the tweet from Drudge.
Frankly I think the strain of Putin and the Mullahs tag teaming him and alternately pantsing him in public is getting to him. I wish someone in the GOP had done their duty to the country years ago and pushed him into a public melt down, but then that would have taken some spine from that generally worthless crowd.
steve57, well my hopes were on Secret Service people who take their oaths to uphold the Constitution seriously.
No luck.
blert says “Ferguson is at Harvard – his expertise is history. Not economics. Not politics.”
Not quite – not at all!
Ferguson is an interdisciplinary historian who first made his mark as a financial historian, first with “Paper and Iron-Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897—1927.”
Finance, economics, and politics are his real strengths. After that first one, he did an economically focused history of WWI. Then he turned to bigger picture works, with a specialty in asking probing counter-factual questions of the past, often with stunning analysis along the way.
Ferguson has also done a number of excellent television programs to accompany his books. The tie-ins have made him a best-selling historian, with conservative leanings, but using notable and innovative techniques, leavening a lively and contemporary narrative style.
A Scot, he admires the US. And thus, he followed the money from Oxford to Columbia and then Harvard. He divorced his wife and married the Muslim dissident-refugee, the Somali-born (and raised) MP from the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also classically liberal-minded.
Now, admiring the US is not the same as understanding US politics. Furthermore, historians are noteworthy for having little success properly imagining the future.
That is to say, they typically worry about the wrong things.
Demographers do better than historians do.
Now, about Hussein Obama – I recall being surprised that the Kenyan was running for president, since after his speech at the Democrat convention in 2004, he was advertised as such.
After all that (somehow) changed with the primaries of 2008, because many of the young were excited to read his books, I grew curious about him.
Until the James Cone clone Reverend Wright came on the scene, and it was obvious that this Barack fellow was a Marxist, who hasn’t learned a thing from the counter-factual (and body count) failure(s) of Marxism (eg, the Soviet Union had to use market prices from the freer world to “know” what was scarce or abundant itself – in other words, it had to leech to have a clue about economic rationality within its realm, and therefore economically failed).
Since then, a lot of missing yet consistent biographical detail about Barry has been backfilled by prof Paul Kengor, Dr John Drew, and Stanley Kurtz – plus, the obvious narcissism of Barry being Barry – and you have a well-rounded picture of a bright but lazy narcissistic “leader,” not a thinker or intellectual or contrarian. But an America hating anti-Christian, only posing as such to gratify his power-lust.
He’s a knave to cultural-Marxism and its prejudices. And always has been.
Still, I have been puzzled for two or three years that no one has written the biography that directly paints Obama as a Marxist. It’s painfully obvious and necessary.
But to the cognoscenti of the Northeast and West coasts, few seem able to even understand that the economy has not recovered, that we are in the worst “recovery” in US history, and that Obama is a failure as a president, and the US is in dire decline – economically, constitutionally, and culturally.
And that (but for the first, at least in part), none of this will be reversed in the coming decade.
When did US decline begin? Between 2003 or 2004 and 2009 – my friends agree. (Intellectually, the PoMo relativism of the prior decades set the table for denial and rationalization of reality. The crisis of 9/11 shook plenty of ‘Leftists turned moderate,’ after the Fall of Communism, from their slumbers. Unfortunately, they have been replaced by foolish knaves and the intellectually retarded and historically ignorant.)
The most obvious sign was American decline was the failure to genuinely debate serious and pressing national (and international) problems – like, after 9/11, who was the enemy?
(We saw this in the demise of organs like “The New Republic.” And then the NYRB. After that, dissent and critical examination of Islamic terrorism was completely marginalized to the Right, and then almost ghettoized, eg, Pamela Geller.)
If you are in a GWOT and cannot name the enemy correctly, directly, honestly, you and your nation is in deep and serious trouble.
Denial is not your friend, nor is it a river in Egypt – but to the Left, it is (you F**king ISLAMOPHOBE! Homophobe, Trans-Cis-LBTGQ-hater)!
That and unsustainable debt, and the inability to diagnose the financial origins of the Great Recession (SEE “Fragile By Design” by Haber and Calomiris, reviewed at length, HERE http://eh.net/book_reviews/fragile-by-design-the-political-origins-of-banking-crises-and-scarce-credit/), and you can see a nation that can’t punch its way out of a wet paper bag.
Instead, pseudo-problems like rape and torture, police brutality and greed abound! motivated “thinking” has replaced engagement with reality (cf, the first “Democratic” presidential “debate”).
If I was surrounded with people preoccupied with inanities like this, who wouldn’t lose their way like VDH? John Roberts? Or Ferguson?
Either that, or it takes an exceptionally strong or stubborn mind.
Which makes this blog and our host and most of the many commenters here exceptionally valuable.
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