26-01-2014, 06:08 PM
http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2014/01/2...-17627714/
There's this interesting piece in the New Yorker by David Remnick, called "Going The Distance," about the presidency of Barack Obama at this point, five years into the eight he'll have so long as he doesn't become disobedient to the people in charge.
Remnick also crafted a shorter piece for ReaderSupportedNews, an excellent on line source for information and opinion deeper than the usual media junk, titled "The Obama Tapes." It's based on access he was granted to Obama for a lengthy conversation aboard Air Force One, punctuated by fund-raising stops in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Three things trouble me very much about the "Tapes" article.
First, Remnick leads with questions and remarks about the Chris Christie debacle, then follows with the Gates memoir. These may be the least interesting subjects since Justin Bieber's drunk driving arrest. Seven paragraphs in we get around to matters of greater substance.
I don't want to pick on Remnick, even if he obviously fell in love with how cool it is to hang with Barack Obama. But it says something that an article by a reporter with a shot at questions for the President will begin with relative trivialities. This isn't the nightly news. It's journalism. Was he afraid that absent the sexy lead-in nobody would read it?
Today's top story: two dead in a random shooting in Oakland; mother of three drives her kids off a cliff in Bayonne; treasurer's affair with ball player exposed.
Second, Obama's apparent beliefs about his achievements. In domestic matters, he's smooth as glass, the "big things" he's accomplished, how the "Democrats have been unified," but he can't "penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I'm not the caricature you see on Fox News…"
Missing from his account is not only any reference to those domestic policies which have triggered not just Democratic defections but wide scale dissent from what used to be a fairly passive Democratic left.' If Remnick asked and Obama answered, these matters don't appear in the online piece: NSA spying and the Fourth Amendment; his regime's relentless prosecution of numerous journalists and suppression of whistle blowing; the "Insider Threat" policy to turn government employees into informers; his agreement to cut food stamps; his agreement to terminate the emergency unemployment payments to 1.4 million people. These are disturbing issues whose implications for the future are considerably graver than anything Gates wrote in his book.
Third, Obama's sense of himself and his work in the larger world, what America represents. His comments here suggest a man so deluded as to represent a danger to other nations, and to ours. Here's some of what he said:
"My working premise, what I believe in my gut, is that America has been an enormous force for good in the world, and that if you look at the ledger and you say, What have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong, on balance, we have helped to promote greater freedom and greater prosperity for more people, and been willing, as I think I said to you earlier, to advance causes even if they weren't in our narrow self-interest in a way that you've never seen any dominant power do in the history of the world.
"And so, to apologize for certain historic events out of context, I think, wouldn't be telling an accurate story. On the other hand, I do think that part of effective diplomacy, part of America maintaining its influence in a world in which we remain the one indispensable power, but in which you've got a much more multipolar environment, is for other people to know that we understand their stories as well, and that we can see how they have come to certain conclusions or understandings about their history, their economies, the conflicts they've suffered. Because, if they think we understand their frame of reference, then they're more likely to listen to us and to work with us.
"So for me to acknowledge the fact that we were involved in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran is not to pick at an old scab or to do a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacking. It's to say to the Iranian people, We understand why you might have some suspicions about us; we've got some suspicions about you because you have held our folks hostage and murdered our people and threatened our allies. So, now that we understand each other, can we do business?"
We've heard some of this before, of course. America as the great force for good, liberating helpless people, healing the sick, and so forth, nearly all of it a crock of shit.
Even those foreign policy initiatives which trailed some honorable intentions, such as the Marshall Plan, were based on geopolitical concerns, banking, money, and power. The Marshall Plan did help revitalize Europe after WWII, but it was designed as a counterforce to communism and socialism, which were gaining adherents, especially in Italy and Greece.
What sounds new,' at least to younger people, is the tone of apology for those isolated, unfortunate events which America initiated against a government, such as Iran in 1953, which may have caused Iranians to "have some suspicions about us," since we overthrew their democratic government and replaced it with a butcher who murdered tens of thousands of his countrymen and oversaw the Savak, a secret police of unparalleled ferocity and madness.
He moderates it, however. We Americans, Obama intones, in turn have suspicions about Iranians because they "held our folks hostage, murdered our people and threatened our allies…" I guess these things just cancel each other out.
It is the language of the abuser, an equation of wrongs, a false apology. I raped you and you threw a pot of geraniums at me so we're even.
"Now that we understand each other…" Such a conceit. America "understands" Iran. That's why we impose sanctions which restrict the flow of medicine and food; that's why we station troops in 150 countries, because we "understand." Iran "understands" America, which ought to alert them to the consequences of resisting our instructions. Iraq and Afghanistan didn't "understand" us and now look.
"Can we do business?"
Obama invites us to "look at the ledger," proclaiming that America's policies have "liberated" people, that what we have done, as distinct from all other empires in world history, is sacrifice our own self-interest for the good of others. Far more good than harm, that's his "working premise." My working premise is Fallujah.
Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Honduras. El Salvador. Chile. Indonesia. Bosnia. Yemen. Mali. Syria. Central African Republic. Mexico. Viet Nam. Dominican Republic. Haiti. Cuba. Panama. Congo. Rwanda. Angola. Somalia. Uganda. Pakistan. Cambodia. Argentina. Peru. Ecuador. Bolivia. Venezuela.
Well, you can't please everybody.
Perhaps you remember the President's response to the first questions about NSA wiretapping the leaders of other countries. We only did it as a way of getting to know them better. Really, you can look it up. Presumably, that's the reason the TSA gropes you at the airport or train station, your government wants to get to know you better.
Remnick eventually offered to polish Obama's shoes:
"I asked Obama if he would say he was the first President to acknowledge these historical events in the way that he does.
"I think, if you look at Kennedy's best speeches, the notion that we are connected with folks around the world, and that we lead not simply by the force of arms but because of values and ideals, and that we have to uphold them, is part of what made Kennedy an inspiration not just in this country but around the world," Obama said. "And he may not have spoken about certain specifics in the same way, but partly that's because he lived in a more innocent time, in some ways."
Okay, here's where it gets kind of personal for me. "Kennedy's best speeches." This swine comparing himself to America's greatest President.
This, from one of those best speeches':
"What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana, enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I'm talking about genuine peace, the kind that makes life worth living…"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ootEGoVKy4.
Kennedy's June 10, 1963, commencement address at American University was an eloquent, extraordinary speech for disarmament and a call to rid the world of nuclear weapons. If you haven't heard it, you ought to. He gave his life for it.
For an American President who kills by remote control, who every Tuesday spends time deciding on the names to be added to a death list, who recently proposed that $1 trillion be spent on new nuclear weapons, who rationalizes spying on Americans without a warrant, to compare himself to John F. Kennedy, is an obscenity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUjJa9jnynA.
As usual, I am not able to tell whether Obama is actually off his noggin or is a long-dormant creature of some industrial-criminal conspiracy. The man gives incomprehensible answers when they're not simply lies. It could not be accidental. Either he really believes he's a force for peace, demanding that we fight the proliferation of arms while simultaneously increasing the export of American weapons to an all-time high, or he's the most cynical man who ever held that office. I read his words in cold print and he conjures Richard Milhous Nixon.
The Remnick piece is troubling for a lot of reasons. For what it reveals about the press, even in that magazine of some intellectual pretensions, with the writer fawning over a President whose policies are at least the subject of bitter controversy. For what it reveals about Obama and his sense of himself, how he sees himself as a historic figure. For how far we've fallen into the well, my country in its arrogant, violent global inquisition, its leaders dressing for glittering state dinners with unindicted corporate criminals, its dissident patriots imprisoned or on the run.
There's this interesting piece in the New Yorker by David Remnick, called "Going The Distance," about the presidency of Barack Obama at this point, five years into the eight he'll have so long as he doesn't become disobedient to the people in charge.
Remnick also crafted a shorter piece for ReaderSupportedNews, an excellent on line source for information and opinion deeper than the usual media junk, titled "The Obama Tapes." It's based on access he was granted to Obama for a lengthy conversation aboard Air Force One, punctuated by fund-raising stops in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Three things trouble me very much about the "Tapes" article.
First, Remnick leads with questions and remarks about the Chris Christie debacle, then follows with the Gates memoir. These may be the least interesting subjects since Justin Bieber's drunk driving arrest. Seven paragraphs in we get around to matters of greater substance.
I don't want to pick on Remnick, even if he obviously fell in love with how cool it is to hang with Barack Obama. But it says something that an article by a reporter with a shot at questions for the President will begin with relative trivialities. This isn't the nightly news. It's journalism. Was he afraid that absent the sexy lead-in nobody would read it?
Today's top story: two dead in a random shooting in Oakland; mother of three drives her kids off a cliff in Bayonne; treasurer's affair with ball player exposed.
Second, Obama's apparent beliefs about his achievements. In domestic matters, he's smooth as glass, the "big things" he's accomplished, how the "Democrats have been unified," but he can't "penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I'm not the caricature you see on Fox News…"
Missing from his account is not only any reference to those domestic policies which have triggered not just Democratic defections but wide scale dissent from what used to be a fairly passive Democratic left.' If Remnick asked and Obama answered, these matters don't appear in the online piece: NSA spying and the Fourth Amendment; his regime's relentless prosecution of numerous journalists and suppression of whistle blowing; the "Insider Threat" policy to turn government employees into informers; his agreement to cut food stamps; his agreement to terminate the emergency unemployment payments to 1.4 million people. These are disturbing issues whose implications for the future are considerably graver than anything Gates wrote in his book.
Third, Obama's sense of himself and his work in the larger world, what America represents. His comments here suggest a man so deluded as to represent a danger to other nations, and to ours. Here's some of what he said:
"My working premise, what I believe in my gut, is that America has been an enormous force for good in the world, and that if you look at the ledger and you say, What have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong, on balance, we have helped to promote greater freedom and greater prosperity for more people, and been willing, as I think I said to you earlier, to advance causes even if they weren't in our narrow self-interest in a way that you've never seen any dominant power do in the history of the world.
"And so, to apologize for certain historic events out of context, I think, wouldn't be telling an accurate story. On the other hand, I do think that part of effective diplomacy, part of America maintaining its influence in a world in which we remain the one indispensable power, but in which you've got a much more multipolar environment, is for other people to know that we understand their stories as well, and that we can see how they have come to certain conclusions or understandings about their history, their economies, the conflicts they've suffered. Because, if they think we understand their frame of reference, then they're more likely to listen to us and to work with us.
"So for me to acknowledge the fact that we were involved in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran is not to pick at an old scab or to do a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacking. It's to say to the Iranian people, We understand why you might have some suspicions about us; we've got some suspicions about you because you have held our folks hostage and murdered our people and threatened our allies. So, now that we understand each other, can we do business?"
We've heard some of this before, of course. America as the great force for good, liberating helpless people, healing the sick, and so forth, nearly all of it a crock of shit.
Even those foreign policy initiatives which trailed some honorable intentions, such as the Marshall Plan, were based on geopolitical concerns, banking, money, and power. The Marshall Plan did help revitalize Europe after WWII, but it was designed as a counterforce to communism and socialism, which were gaining adherents, especially in Italy and Greece.
What sounds new,' at least to younger people, is the tone of apology for those isolated, unfortunate events which America initiated against a government, such as Iran in 1953, which may have caused Iranians to "have some suspicions about us," since we overthrew their democratic government and replaced it with a butcher who murdered tens of thousands of his countrymen and oversaw the Savak, a secret police of unparalleled ferocity and madness.
He moderates it, however. We Americans, Obama intones, in turn have suspicions about Iranians because they "held our folks hostage, murdered our people and threatened our allies…" I guess these things just cancel each other out.
It is the language of the abuser, an equation of wrongs, a false apology. I raped you and you threw a pot of geraniums at me so we're even.
"Now that we understand each other…" Such a conceit. America "understands" Iran. That's why we impose sanctions which restrict the flow of medicine and food; that's why we station troops in 150 countries, because we "understand." Iran "understands" America, which ought to alert them to the consequences of resisting our instructions. Iraq and Afghanistan didn't "understand" us and now look.
"Can we do business?"
Obama invites us to "look at the ledger," proclaiming that America's policies have "liberated" people, that what we have done, as distinct from all other empires in world history, is sacrifice our own self-interest for the good of others. Far more good than harm, that's his "working premise." My working premise is Fallujah.
Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Honduras. El Salvador. Chile. Indonesia. Bosnia. Yemen. Mali. Syria. Central African Republic. Mexico. Viet Nam. Dominican Republic. Haiti. Cuba. Panama. Congo. Rwanda. Angola. Somalia. Uganda. Pakistan. Cambodia. Argentina. Peru. Ecuador. Bolivia. Venezuela.
Well, you can't please everybody.
Perhaps you remember the President's response to the first questions about NSA wiretapping the leaders of other countries. We only did it as a way of getting to know them better. Really, you can look it up. Presumably, that's the reason the TSA gropes you at the airport or train station, your government wants to get to know you better.
Remnick eventually offered to polish Obama's shoes:
"I asked Obama if he would say he was the first President to acknowledge these historical events in the way that he does.
"I think, if you look at Kennedy's best speeches, the notion that we are connected with folks around the world, and that we lead not simply by the force of arms but because of values and ideals, and that we have to uphold them, is part of what made Kennedy an inspiration not just in this country but around the world," Obama said. "And he may not have spoken about certain specifics in the same way, but partly that's because he lived in a more innocent time, in some ways."
Okay, here's where it gets kind of personal for me. "Kennedy's best speeches." This swine comparing himself to America's greatest President.
This, from one of those best speeches':
"What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana, enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I'm talking about genuine peace, the kind that makes life worth living…"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ootEGoVKy4.
Kennedy's June 10, 1963, commencement address at American University was an eloquent, extraordinary speech for disarmament and a call to rid the world of nuclear weapons. If you haven't heard it, you ought to. He gave his life for it.
For an American President who kills by remote control, who every Tuesday spends time deciding on the names to be added to a death list, who recently proposed that $1 trillion be spent on new nuclear weapons, who rationalizes spying on Americans without a warrant, to compare himself to John F. Kennedy, is an obscenity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUjJa9jnynA.
As usual, I am not able to tell whether Obama is actually off his noggin or is a long-dormant creature of some industrial-criminal conspiracy. The man gives incomprehensible answers when they're not simply lies. It could not be accidental. Either he really believes he's a force for peace, demanding that we fight the proliferation of arms while simultaneously increasing the export of American weapons to an all-time high, or he's the most cynical man who ever held that office. I read his words in cold print and he conjures Richard Milhous Nixon.
The Remnick piece is troubling for a lot of reasons. For what it reveals about the press, even in that magazine of some intellectual pretensions, with the writer fawning over a President whose policies are at least the subject of bitter controversy. For what it reveals about Obama and his sense of himself, how he sees himself as a historic figure. For how far we've fallen into the well, my country in its arrogant, violent global inquisition, its leaders dressing for glittering state dinners with unindicted corporate criminals, its dissident patriots imprisoned or on the run.