Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A Thinking President, Like Western Civilization, Would Be a Good Idea

A Facebook friend posted the above meme from The Rachel Maddow Fan Page.  The stupidity it displays boggles my mind, though goodness knows I shouldn't be surprised any more.  The comments under the Maddow post are even more repulsively fawning, but there too I shouldn't be surprised.

I'd be pleased to have a President -- for that matter, public officials at all levels -- who can wrestle with complex problems, who thinks first and sends in the tanks as a last resort.  Unfortunately we don't have one.  Instead we have a President who constantly threatens and often wages war, who consistently supports dictatorships over democracy, and who kills civilians by remote control and then jokes about it.  Instead we have a President who tramples on civil liberties, ruthlessly suppresses whistleblowers, and supports violent repression against peaceful protesters at home.  (Not just against the Occupy Movement, but against protesters at the NATO conference in Chicago in May 2012.)  And let's not forget how Obama loyalists slobbered over their guy after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

And that's just Obama.  Bill Clinton, the Rhodes Scholar, was also touted as a great mind by his partisans, but he was also a bloodthirsty thug who killed many innocent people while in office.  He and his wife, later to be the US Secretary of State, get along well with dictators, whom they regard as members of their family.  For that matter, Rachel Maddow herself is a militarist who would probably have joined the American Armed Forces if not for the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.  In general, Democrats have not distinguished themselves either as intellectuals or as peacemakers.

Which doesn't mean, of course, that the Republicans are any better; it only means that Democratic loyalists are in no position to cast the first stone.