Obama the wordsmith, redux
It’s all about the narrative, don’t you see?:
Vox’s Matt Yglesias offers an essential explanation, from a sympathetic source, of how things look to Obama administration insiders.
“Many senior administration officials at this point are part of the permanent national security apparatus, but the core group of real ”˜Obama people’ has a surprisingly dovish self-conception, where they see themselves operating in a world in which demands for military intervention are constant and endless””from the media, from congressional Republicans, from foreign governments and their allies in Washington, and from the permanent security bureaucracy itself””but America’s actual ability to engage in non-counterproductive interventions is quite limited.”
Thus, Yglesias concludes, “the hardest problem in US counterterrorism policy is in some ways as much a speechwriting challenge as anything else. The next time something goes wrong and an attack hits the United States, how do you sell the American people on the idea of not really doing anything about it?”
So the hardest problem in counter-terrorism is how to write speeches, or better yet, how to write speeches about doing nothing?
Well, I supposed that’s what we should expect from a president who got elected for his speeches and not for doing anything. And this, I suspect, is how he is going to end up being remembered as commander-in-chief: as the guy who, in a crisis, gave us petulant speeches about why he was doing nothing.
Early on, every problem Obama had was reduced to a messaging problem. Find the right narrative to present your superior views to the peons with their pea brains, and everything falls into place.
What’s more, don’t listen to the experts—because YOU are the biggest expert on everything in the entire universe. Obama made that clear even before he was elected to his first term, and anyone who wasn’t alarmed by these sorts of statements from Obama was a poor judge of character or not paying a particle of attention.
Obama and Petraeus [hat tip: commenter “Artfldgr”]:
It was an instructive exchange. Obama, a first-term senator with no experience in military or intelligence matters, challenged the general who had beaten back a jihadist insurgency in Iraq, led a remarkable turnaround in the country, and was a leading figure in America’s broader war on terror. The assessments Petraeus offered were based on years of personal experience guiding U.S. troops against jihadist armies generally, and Al Qaeda in Iraq specifically, and they were bolstered by mountains of intelligence reporting on the enemy, its objectives, and its practices.
Obama simply thought he knew better. His challenge wasn’t based on facts that contradicted Petraeus, or on facts at all. Rather, Obama made a series of assertions based on nothing more than his long-held conviction that Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror. And when he was presented with evidence that contradicted his thesis, Obama simply set it aside and restated his own view. It’s a pattern that would play out repeatedly throughout his presidency.
Obama will be president for another year, and he can add incalculable damage to the incalculable damage he’s already done. His leftism combined with his hubris has been a toxic combination, and the American people bought it—twice.
It’s the American people that became toxic. Which happened long before 9/11 of the 21st century.
Neo,
You have my recommendation and access to my narrative reframing material that’s purpose-designed to counter them in the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist.
Y is partially correct, the voters did swallow the mannish boy’s bs hook, line, and sinker. Shame on them. However, a vast majority of voters get all of their info from the msm, and as someone eloquently noted, the msm is the air cover of the dems. 24/7 propaganda saturation bombing is difficult to defeat.
I’m not merely referring to the 20th century where people bought into FDR’s socialism and other BS, plus welfare.
The Democrats in the 19th century weren’t any better, just a bunch of Judas goats and Benedict Arnold traitors.
They lost CW 1 once, now they are going to start it up again, this time they plan to win.
Assaulting and intimidating abolitionists who gave speeches in the north, wasn’t enough. They had to start a war to make sure Slavery 2.0 sustained itself and to force the feds to make people give them their property back. If it was your property, why did it run away?
A lot of wars are a result of previous unresolved conflicts. CW 1 did not end the Democrat power plantations nor slavery itself. WWI didn’t end the threat to Europe. And WWII didn’t end the Soviet Communism either.
Desert Storm 1 didn’t end it either, so OIF came later. It just rolls in on itself sooner or later, these unresolved issues.
He has begun importing the Army of the Caliphate onto American soil!
He has prevented any background checks of the jihadis!
He has transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to the Iranian terrorist nation!
He has supplied ISIS with Toyota trucks, cash, and weapons!
He facilitated the murder of Ambassador Stevens and the brave men in Benghazi!
He has specifically interfered with the targeting of ISIS targets by the US Military so that no significant damage has been done to ISIS assets!
He’s a Mooslime.
TWICE! A toxic people indeed!
Although … FDR was 4 times. Progress?
“Obama will be president for another year…”.
Actually, it’s one year and 61 days – but who’s counting? (Me)
I feel dumber for having read the Vox article, but Tracinski’s article is very good. Saw him at one of the first and what turned out to be the biggest tea party rally in DC. My sign, “Its the Liberty, Stupid”, was shortly thereafter used as the title of one of his articles at RCP.
Early days when we hoped we could make a difference. Now we’re in countdown mode.
As for President Affirmative Action, it goes beyond just messaging when he has a problem. Every thing about him is packaged. He was sold to the American public just like a Happy Meal. They bought it and then came back for seconds.
CA 7th graders sing Islam ‘fight song’ penned by teacher
Wordsmith teacher.
What is her problem? Call of the harem?
Thing is, them Libtards are very much into wordsmith stuff:
The DNC Just Lost Its Mind–and Maybe Its Own Base–with this New Ad
The DNC hasn’t lost its mind and the womyn will elect Hiltlery ….
Then, there is visual smithing:
Cornell professors display artwork depicting GOP as terrorists, rapists
TWANLOC!
Then there is this kind of wordsmithing:
THEY LIED! Media Edited Video to Claim Donald Trump Said to Register All Muslims
Tar, feathers, rail ….
Register all Moooslimes ….
“I, ah, ah, want to ah allow the beautiful, ah, mmm, sound of the ah, morning call to, ah, mmm prayer, float ah, over the, ah, mmm fruited, ah plain.” — hello kitty panty boy president
The Obama – Petraeus interview link was pure gold. He has a view of how the world should be, which he arrived at in his student days. Everything he has done since has been in deference to that world view. It is set in concrete. He’s a TRUE BELIEVER. Cannot change, no matter what.
He’s pushing back twice as hard — ever the ideologue.
It’s our Fuhrer against the world.
Barry Soetoro just can’t stop… remaking the voters into his kind of people: Muslims.
Regarding Obama and Petraeus, I once saw a TV interview with one of his HLS classmates. The classmate describes Barack as notably arrogant and so much so (even for Harvard) that there was a special word for it. He would even get into it with teachers about his supposed superior knowledge of the law.
BUT Obama is an intellectual! He writes books! I have David Brooks assurance on this, since he had dinner with the lad!
And even Harvard historians tell us he’s a moderate, an internationalist, and pragmatic!
How can this NOT be true?
Brooks is at best a traitor.
Orson and Ymarsakar:
About Brooks and how Obama wooed him, see this and this.
More wordsmithing:
Obama Warns Of America’s ‘Pitfalls’ While Speaking in Malaysia
About Brooks and how Obama wooed him… t’was not good for the Jews.
neo-neocon You give too much credit to Brooks in the first post. Brooks isn’t all that difficult to con or fool. He’s sub average compared to me, and I’m merely above average.
To put it another way, a 13 year old child has little chance of winning a bout against me, if I trained in his style for six months and he trained in it for 6 years. Hussein didn’t need to have all that much a superior grasp of things over Brooks, to fool Brooks. Brooks can easily fool himself, given his weaknesses and lack of experience in Willpower.
They’re both trash, but in different fashions.
It’s hard to know exactly what Obama said that was so dazzling. But since David Brooks has never written anything that indicates he’s any sort of deep thinker himself, perhaps the mere fact that Obama was familiar with the name “Reinhold Niebuhr” was enough to do the trick.
That’s not Hussein talking about Rein. That’s Hussein using NLP. It’s the guru factor. I see it a lot in martial arts dojos, especially the crazy mcDojos, rather than just the family friendly Dojos.
G6loq Says:
November 21st, 2015 at 1:53 pm
More wordsmithing:
Obama Warns Of America’s ‘Pitfalls’ While Speaking in Malaysia
About Brooks and how Obama wooed him… t’was not good for the Jews.
&&&
Dang it.
That article melted my irony meter… with sparks flying across the room.
“organizing along ethnic lines”
BHO the ultimate bipedal projector.
Ymarsakar Says:
November 21st, 2015 at 4:23 pm
I’m constantly amazed at how many can be introduced to NLP and NOT accept its power.
We are social animals.
We love to agree, harmonize.
By starting off with blatantly agreeable assertions it’s all too easy to slip a tad bit of poison in the the word salad.
The LIV — Low Involvement Voter — is repelled by DEPTH.
Brooks is a classic low involvement “philosopher-prince of print.”
He conflates the ego-boost of seeing one’s scribbles in mass circulation with insight and talent — whereas they are a tribute to his orthodoxy, his harmlessness to the established orderers.
For he really holds his position — by holding for their position — orthodoxy. He’s a marshmellow tipped wit.
No wonder ‘they’ lap up this lapdog.
I’m constantly amazed at how many can be introduced to NLP and NOT accept its power.
I tested the basic techniques on random people. To most people, it would be called “conversational skills”, but to me, it was me not using the power, just seeing how people would react.
Most humans are lazy, they read something in the abstract and think they understand it in the concrete. Experience is what matters, not abstract stuff people “think they know”.
Steyn on wordsmithing:
http://www.steynonline.com/7308/the-week-in-nothing-to-do-with-islam
The maudlin, syrupy, sentimental drivel has to stop.
I cut cut those people off …..