The sheer number of accusations against Obama is pretty insane, even if you disregard the ones stating he's the anti-Christ or some lizard-creature from outer space.
With Obama, apparently, we have the first homosexual Communist Muslim atheist Kenyan devil-worshipping President who doesn't parent properly.
Take that, Rest of World!
Seriously though, I wish that someone would take some time to look into it, really study it.
It's a truly interesting social phenomenon. Maybe after he's out of office and the smoke clears....
Of course it doesn't start with Obama: for most of Clinton's term, The Republicans, Newt Gingrich and Kenneth STarr investigated Clinton for various rumors and scandals--that's how we got Monica Lewinsky, remember? They weren't investigating Clinton's sex life: they were investigating an investment he made.
In the end, they went with the sex and jumped on the plagiarism thing.
And of course, I'd be a partisan hack if I didn't admit that the hatred I and others felt for George W Bush during his term bordered on the irrational.
Remember when he lost in 2004? I literally wept. Perhaps a bit overdramatic!
But then I had just moved to Europe and if there's one thing that unites Europeans it's hatred of George Bush. I didn't want to get the blame! Hey! What about 49 perccent of Americans who didn't vote for him(or the the 51 percent in 2000, don't get me started on that!!! Don't tar us all with the same brush, Euros!*
There were more than a few comparisons of Bush and Hitler back then among Democrats and the international community. I always said that wasn't fair: he was more like Kaiser Wilhelm than Hitler.
But now, he's gone and I realize he was just a president, not an emperor or a king. He screwed up, and we're all paying for it now.
In retrospect, I feel that the European hatred of George Bush, though couched in righteous anger and fear for an imperial US too big for its britches was more about the arrogant approach to diplomacy that categorized the early Bush administration in the first four years.
Assholes(pardon my French) like Rumsfeld Cheney, and the execrable John Bolton seemed hell-bent on saying things to piss off Europeans, especially the more nationalist nations of the Western EU(France!)
And Europeans felt the lack of respect keenly.
Of course, looking at the circumstances why France, Germany, Russia and even Canada opposed the invasion of Iran makes you think that morality and ethics and International Law had less to do with it than just good old-fashioned self-interest. But at least that self-interest did coincide with the wishes of the People, so the self-righteous bench they sat on did have some kind of authority.
And I think the rich irony of France and the UK practically dragging the US, kicking and screaming, into the short action in Libya and then having to step aside for the US because they ran out of bullets plays into this, at least in my thoughts.
Countries are hypocritical. Nothing really new here.
But this is about OBAMA.
However vehemently and dramatically we might have opposed Bush, nothing compares to the flack Obama gets.
I'm actually worried about him. NOt while he's in office but afterwards.
For long I've thought that Obama's career was only just beginning; after he gets out of his office he would be able to utilize his (considerable, undrestimated) power as world icon to do a lot of good for the world and for the USA.
But in the last few years, thanks to Facebook which might be the most effective method of measuring racism I've ever seen, I've discovered that there is a portion of white Americans who are really uncomfortable with black people in general. Who work actively towards jailing them. Even if it's just spreading propaganda on Facebook.
They don't call themselves racists, they don't think they would do this to someone who didn't deserve it, but they do this. .
When you call for standing up to an oppressive government in one post and then in the next support the government's VERY questionable shooting of a shoplifting bully(as if that was an execution-worthy offense), I literally get chills.
There is a deep fear that runs through some white people, a fear that says: good or bad, the best thing to do is lock 'em all away. A fear that justifies doing this even to innocent people.
And, of course I see everything through an American prism. Or, more specifically, through an American-emigrant-to-Europe prism.
Maybe it's human nature. Maybe it's not even fear. Maybe humans have a cruel streak that will exercise itself when it's in a position of power no matter what.
But the Obama accusations seem a lot like fear to me.
I just wish the human race could get over this shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment