PrintSeptember 12, 2010
Obama's Wascally Wabbit Habit
What do you call it when somebody is so stuck on some idea that he keeps pursuing it regardless of the results? Obama's first two humongous economic stimulus plans failed, as his own economic advisor Christina Romer just admitted. Obama's brand new brainstorm? Let's throw another 50 billion dollars into the Grand Canyon.
Elmer Fudd had the same problem with that Wascally Wabbit. No matter what happened, he kept going after Bugs Bunny with his shotgun blazing away. But this is no oldie Warner Bros cartoon. This is beginning to look like serious money going down the rabbit hole.
Now take Obama's foreign policy. (Please!) It is the policy of self-flagellation, of bowing to an Arabian desert king, followed by a deep bow to the Emperor of Japan, followed by public self-abnegation before the real absolute ruler of China.
Now, there is a grain of truth in Obama's psychobabble policy. The grain of truth is that the United States is indeed the most envied nation in recent history. The reason is that we have won all the major wars since World War I -- though not by prostrating ourselves before Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Gorbachev, the Kaiser, and Saddam Hussein. Put that on top of our historic economic productivity and prosperity, plus the fact that we do not colonize our defeated adversaries, and we really end up putting the rest of the world in a position of helpless envy. Not because we do evil, but just the opposite: Because, in the reckoning of history, we are the most benevolent world power in the history of humanity.
Gee, sorry about that, guys.
ModErn Europe has turned its envy against us into hatred, as is its ancient habit. The French whipped up national hatred against the Germans, the Germans against the French, the Russians against everybody else -- it was endless. Today Europe claims to be unified under the wise and peace-loving rule of the self-appointed EU, and in order to cement its fragile unity, it has found a new whipping boy. That would be Uncle Sam. Europe's hatred for us is hostile-dependent rage, like a teenager who lives at home forever and hates his parents for turning him into an infant. When Europe runs into trouble, all its media suddenly stop screaming at us and wait for Daddy to fix the problem. Then they start screaming again.
The Muslims have a very different quarrel with us, and there Obama's Kowtow Policy is completely backwards and ignorant of Muslim history and reality. The Muslims hate us because we are infidels. Yes, they envy us, too. But the key to militant Islam is an imperialistic ideology, just as the key to Soviet foreign policy was an imperialistic ideology. If your whole religion is about converting all the infidels by the sword, all the way from Mohammed to the attack on the Twin Towers, you are not going to stand down when the Infidel Emperor bows down low to the King of the desert sands. You are going to interpret that as a sign that Allah and his faithful are close to toppling the infidels, with only a few more head-chopping terrorist actions to make the point really stick. And in the case of cringing Europe and American liberals, you are not far from being right. They really are psychologically ready to surrender. They believe in nothing, and nothing simply crumbles before something.
So Obama's Kowtowing Policy, such as it is, is exactly the wrong message to send to a militant imperialistic enemy. It is bass-ackwards.
When do apologies work? When there has been a real misunderstanding between two contending parties. If I accidentally bump into your car by failing to brake at a stop light, I owe you an apology. Apologizing can help to resolve the tension, and we can work out the problem of your scratched fender without getting into a fight.
When don't apologies work? When you are facing a home invader, a robber, or somebody who has decided that your bloody demise will serve the greater glory of Allah. For Israel to apologize to a screaming suicide bomber from Gaza is not effective, and it will in fact encourage more suicide bombers. Your average suicider isn't interested in getting that scratch out of his fender. He is interested in revenge, by killing you and your family as cruelly as possible. That is how he has been trained and brainwashed since childhood. This is not one of those "come, let us reason together" deals.
This is not hard to understand, children. Obama was would not apologize to a burglar breaking into his home at night. He'd be on the phone to the cops.
So it's not that Obama can't figure out what's obvious to a child of six. No. What we are seeing is Obama's personal psychology getting in the way of a rational foreign policy.
For Obama, bowing down to the slave-holding King of Saudi Arabia is not a rational policy move. It is just another way of expressing his personal rage at America.
When Obama apologizes for this country, he never blames himself. He's always blaming White America. According to Steve Rattner, the "Auto Czar," when Obama was going after General Motors and Chrysler, he was not trying to fix those companies. Rattner has now told the world that Obama was just plain "out to get" the car companies.
And there we have the answer to the question the whole country has been scratching its collective head about. Why does this guy act the way he does? Why are his policies so weird and ineffective? Why does he never listen to reason?
It's because he's still chasing that Wascally Wabbit.
I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. Obama is all about rage against White America. Capitalism is the Devil. Obama's America is not the real America of real people, but his personal stereotype of unalloyed evil. Obama doesn't see real white folks or real black folks, for that matter. He has this cartoon in his head, and everybody in it has a label called Good or Evil.
In Obama's America, there are no white abolitionists setting off a Civil War with 600,000 deaths to abolish slavery. There is no Abraham Lincoln desperately trying to make up for the historic evil of black slavery while still saving the Union. There was no vast body of white political support for the Civil Rights Acts of the sixties. There is no millennial history of Arab slave-raiding in Africa, a history that continues today in the Sudan.
Obama has mentally covered up all the good things white folks do, just as he covers up all the bad things black folks do. He has a fixed puppet play in his own mind.
Like the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls two millennia ago, there are the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, and you can tell who they are by the color of their skins.
I'm sorry to say this, but I don't see any other way to explain this administration and its endless habit of chasing Wascally Wabbits. Reality seems to have no impact on these people. They live in a never-ending morality play in which there is no forgiveness for past sins, real or imagined, and there is no human transcendence beyond the stock roles of the puppet theater.
When Obama leaves office, he will interpret his experiences exactly the way he did when he came in, because he is intellectually stuck. If he succeeds as president, he will take the credit for himself alone. If he fails, as he seems to be doing today, he will just blame the usual scapegoat. No blame ever sticks to this guy, at least in his own mind.
Obama began his political career in bitterness and a quest for personal vindication. If he does not discover a capacity for forgiveness and transcendence in his own heart, his will be a failed presidency. Obama's presidency could indeed signal the end of the civil rights movement; Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright have turned into a national jokes. Obama is on his way there. None of those individuals come even close to the image of Dr. Martin Luther King.
It is only decent to hope for some moment of personal transformation for Barack Obama, but so far it seems like a slender hope. Let's just hope he doesn't crash the ship of state before the voters turn him out.
