I am continually astounded by Barack Obama. Is he the world’s greatest political actor? A totally blind America-firster? The canniest and most in control of his emotions U.S. politician since FDR or Abraham Lincoln? Certainly the speech that I just witnessed contained real emotional content. He is horrified by the murderous impulses and tendencies of the American underbelly and he is torn up by the death of Newtown’s innocents. Torn up.
But at the same time, he only mourns the lives of American children. Of American innocents. (Publicly.) How many more innocents’ blood is on his hands from the drone war and the other U.S. military adventures upon which he has signed off? Is he that blind? That line-level stupid? I refuse to believe it. His depth of emotion and obvious understanding on many levels belie that idea. So where does that leave us?
I really don’t know.
Do you?
What a Sphinx.
Is a puzzlement.
AG
Please.
If you have…please tell me.
I am mystified.
AG
Not that mysterious. Compartmentalization.
A pro-military religious guy informed me that “thou shalt not kill” means that “thou shall not murder” and not “thou shall not kill.” The Newtown victims were murdered and therefore, are to be properly and publicly mourned by the nation. The innocents bombed by US drones aren’t murdered — they aren’t even targeted for killing; so, we have a special term for their deaths.
Maybe. But i think he’s too smart to run that game on himself.
AG
Fluid intelligence and “smart” aren’t cognitively synonymous. Plenty of smart people exist with rigid “frames” (to use Lakoff’s terminology) with limited to no bridges among them. There are biologists that reject evolution and physicists that are devout Christians. Then there are those with fluid intelligence that nobody, including themselves, are considered smart.
Most likely, he sees the deaths caused by drone strikes as sad but necessary progress against a worse tragedy/problem, that of intolerant and politically violent Islam. Some of them may be innocents, but it is ever thus with war, and an internal peace can be made with regrettable moral acts. This is especially so because it is not in the job description to care about the victims personally.
That is, however, precisely his job as President as regards the children and families of this country. It is obvious but well worth stating that he grew up here, campaigns here. He knows the American people sooo well, and caretaking the lives of these families is something he thinks about all the time. It is the whole weight of his considerable effort to improve their lives.
The lives of tribespeople in Yemen or the Afghan/Pakistan border regions, not so much.
Yeah, but…
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that deaths in remote places now come back on the killers with frightening speed and force. The whole idea behind the Islamist “resistance” movements has been to break the spirit and economies of their enemies. It worked very nicely w/Russia in Afghanistan and it’s not doing too badly here either. On the evidence of our broken social and financial systems? Not too badly at all.
Obama is too intelligent to miss making these kinds of connections. I believe that there are other forces working on him that are putting him in this bind.
Or alternatively…he is a true master of deceit. If he is, that speech was his masterpiece. It would have brought tears to a stone.
AG
AG, I don’t find you hard to follow but I do find it hard to accept/believe that you don’t understand what’s operative here. The violence has struck at the very heart of society—the children—and not only that, but children in a nice all-American town in New England. Of course Obama is an America-firster. What else could he possibly be? He runs the place (along with a lot of like-minded compatriats), it’s his job to look out for his own. The drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and I don’t know where else are seen in the same light: he is protecting the US and by extension the ‘world’ from potenital violence of the September 11 sort. Inevitably civilians, including children, get killed (not murdered, note well). Now, if he does nothing or next to nothing about guns—I suppose by now he has publicly mentioned the word—then you will know what kind of a man he is and how he thinks. Despite the speeches and the emotions, I expect little, he’s a coward and an actor, so there’s my judgment. That’s not to say he’s a bad president. In fact he’s really good at the job. He understands astonishingly well the intricacies of the public and private forces at work in the country. He might even have finally understood that he nevertheless has to make choices which will anger many others, not to get reelected but to ensure what they call his ‘legacy’. His rooms so are full of elephants and other beasts—fiscal cliff, Israel-Palestine, Iran, etc.— it’s a wonder that they haven’t trampled him by now. That’s testimony to his abilities as President. But still he will have to choose when push comes to shove otherwise more and more people will feel the disappointment of his loudly proclaimed promise: he must ban assault weapons of all kinds and brands. He won’t go down that road.