Speaking of people whose service earned them a space for having unpopular opinions, I came across this 2008 bit of mine citing the Rev. Mr. Wright. It was a rumination on what was, at that time, an open question about whether Obama was really more of a Chicago-way liberal, or more of a New Republic liberal.
At this juncture I would have to say that he proved to be a TNR liberal after all, but with numerous Chicago-way connections. We can see the evidence of the corruption and power worship in the IRS scandal, the misuse of the Department of Justice to protect friends and allies from investigations and prosecutions, and the abuse of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to try to force a punitive form of 'social justice' on American campuses. His rise empowered those people, even if he was not fully one of them.
We can see the TNR aspect in the rest of it. The world is burning as he leaves office, and it is burning because of American weakness. Fuel for these fires came from his desire to fight a 'clean hands' war with drones and surgical strikes, his flight from Iraq, his refusal to stand up to his own red line in Syria, and his rush to give Iran everything it could ask in order to get any kind of a treaty. The Chinese have found him easy to push, so much so that America stands in some peril of watching the Philippines defect to their sphere. Russia is feeling expansive. All of this comes from the fact of weak hands.
2 comments:
We can see the TNR aspect in the rest of it.
Yes, we can. There was a time when TNR had a more sensible foreign policy stance. In the 1980s, TNR ran a number of articles panning the Sandinistas. IIRC, in the wake of Gulf War I,TNR ran an article pointing out that John Kerry's office had written a letter replying to a constituent about John Kerry's support of the successful war- even though Senator Kerry had voted against Gulf War I.
Obama had a deadly combination- using Chicago tactics to ensure bad policy is carried out.
To the Left, it wasn't bad policy but good policy. The same reason why Christian doctrines are good to Christians but evil to Muslims due to a conflict in the past.
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