The Master Diplomat, Seeking Support from a Rival Nation (Republicans), Chooses to Insult Them
"[T]o my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America's military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just,"
........
"To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor."
Come witness the Master Diplomat use his silvery tongue to insult the very people whose support he's asking for.
In a speech that had been good, for an Obama speech, avoiding his usual gassy nothingness in favor of tangible nouns and clear verbs of the sort he apparently was taught were poor form in college, Obama chose to drop this little insult:
And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America's military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.
Note that Obama's "friends on the left" believe in freedom and dignity in all people. People on the right don't, apparently.
What do people on the right believe in? "Military might." Pure force. Note that he decouples military might from any moral purpose -- he doesn't say "your commitment to keeping the nation safe" or "your commitment to a patriotic defense of America." No, such moral approval is stripped away so that Obama can speak neutrally of the one thing Obama thinks conservatives care about, naked martial power.
We share this love of naked martial power, shorn of any moral or ethical purpose, with some of his other friends on the right, such as Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler.
His friends on the left, see, support the values which might be attained by exertion of raw military might, such as "freedom and dignity of all people," but his friends on the right are just about having the biggest bombs and stuff.
Even when he's supposedly "reaching out to us," this Master Diplomat and Coolly Brilliant Poet-Warrior steadfastly refuses to pay the right the slightest degree of respect.
And this man represents us in our dealings with foreign actors. Imagine how his similar haughtiness plays overseas. Imagine how it's already played for five years, and how it will play for another three.
Smart diplomacy, huh?
Hey wingers, get behind this war. It's got the three things you Bitter Clingers can't get enough of-- Guns, Spooky Religious Nonsense, and Killing Foreign People.
Now, Friends on the Left, you can get behind it for the true moral purposes which flow from reason and higher functions of the brain.
But Friends on the Right, we'll appeal to your Lizard Brains and Blow Up Some Shit because you folks seem to like that sort of thing. Why, we'll even give you some of those ribbons and parades that your Simple Ilk seems to crave.
I mean, Friends on the Right, let's face it, you don't believe in Freedom and Dignity for All People. No, that's a higher goal, and higher goals are promulgated by Obama's Friends on the Left.
People on the Right, you will provide the muscle for achieving the goals of Obama's Friends on the Left.
See, we can all work together and achieve big things. Obama's Friends on the Left will provide the thinking and moral reason, and Obama's Friends on the Right will provide the gruntwork, simple mechanical actions, and crude delight in high explosives.
Friends on the Left, Obama calls you to your better angels.
Friends on the Right, Obama promises you some Sweet Fucking War Footage on CNN. Guncamera shit, Hoss. And you know you love that.
Friends on the Left, think of the children that can be saved.
Friends on the Right, keep in mind that a lot of the people we'll be dropping bombs on look reasonably similar to Trayvon Martin. Pretty good, right? Yeah you bet it is!!!
Friends on the Left, Obama wants you to believe what you always believe in: the Greater Good for Mankind.
Friends on the Right, Obama promises you that he will sate your bestial need for violence and simian dominance games.
And they say this man seems somehow "foreign," as if he's "alien" to American culture, and speaks American as a second language. Why, they couldn't be more wrong.
ace.mu.nu
Megan McArdle: Gee, Obama Sort of Went Out of His Way to Insult People Whose Support He Sought, Huh?
Via JeffB., it was pretty noticeable, it turns out.
After he had spent a few minutes stumbling through the war-is-peace argument, he turned to persuasion-by-insult:
"And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.
"To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough."
Maybe this convinced some left-wing Democrats, though you wouldn’t know it from my Twitter feed. But only at the expense of backhanding Republicans. His argument was, in essence: Republicans, you may not care about the freedom and dignity of foreigners, or children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor. But you sure do love war and the military! We’re going to restore dignity, freedom and life to some foreigners by bombing them -- couldn’t you overlook the fact that foreigners will benefit, as long as we get to blow some stuff up?
I don’t think that argument is what he meant to make. That’s why it’s so breathtaking. Presumably our tin-eared president, and his blinkered speechwriting staff, didn’t even hear him juxtaposing people who care about freedom, dignity and dead children, on the one hand, and bitter clingers who are committed to military might, on the other.
She also notes:
Keep that in mind as the revisionist history begins emerging from some quarters -- i.e., our patiently brilliant president once again demonstrates his mastery of n-dimensional policy chess.Watching him blunder on easy, gimme moves makes me doubt he's playing 2-dimension chess, nevermind the n dimensional variations.
ace.mu.nu
A Different Take From Neo-Neocon: Actually Obama Insulted Everybody
Ehh... he seems to have given one side a lot more credit than the other.
But she does make a good point about Obama's Favorite Trope. You know the one: Straw Men on one side, Straw Men on the other. And Obama, in the center, in the spotlight. Like a hero.
[A]lthough Obama’s contempt for the right is obvious, he also expresses a certain amount of contempt for the left. It’s just a somewhat more covertly-expressed contempt.Each are simplistic appeals: let’s have those big guns for the bitter clingers of the right, and the little suffering children for the bleeding hearts of the left; the cold warlike aggressors versus the warm touchy-feelers. Meanwhile the great thinker, Obama, plots his brilliant course in Syria, playing four-dimensional chess with Putin.Four dimensional? I'm assured by Ezra Klein there are at least six physical dimensions to his chess game, plus time.
Sorry I keep harping on this. I think this says a lot about Obama's temperament -- not first class, as it turns out -- and his much-vaunted power of persuasion.
This reminds me of a joke I did one time in like Real Life and stuff. A friend just gave me the greatest compliment I'd ever received, something very personal and flattering, to a group of people, and then I put my hand on his shoulder, and generously offered in return, "And my good friend here has a really nice truck."
Now I could get away with this because he was a close friend and also a ferociously funny one and understands the Rule of Funny: If it's funny, you have to say it. And he himself laughed the hardest at it. In fact, he was the only real audience for it. I didn't care if a bunch of strangers got it.
But Obama's not my friend and wasn't trying to be funny and make me laugh, as I made my friend laugh.
And he just told me I had a really nice truck. Tricked out with bombs n stuff.
Meanwhile, a Democratic strategist calls this bus accident one of the most humiliating episodes in presidential history.
A Democratic strategist who works closely with the White House, and who requested anonymity to avoid political retribution, told me, "This has been one of the most humiliating episodes in presidential history." ... As he faced an international and constitutional crisis, Obama and his team were in a familiar state: isolated, insular, and alone.Thinking More... Neo-Neocon is on to something. I just realized the point of Obama's horrific formulation: Another implied self-brag.
See, the Left understands Freedom and Dignity.
The Right, crude-minded simians that they are, understands Military Might.
But only Obama, the Moral and Physical Hero, understands the beautiful union of the two.
In the personhood (?--personhood? Maybe not personhood, maybe something grander) of Barack Obama, we find the perfect synthesis of all virtue.
ace.mu.nu |
