“I think this is madness… I believe the American people will repudiate this agreement as they learn more about it and Congress will therefore kill the deal. This is not any old vote. This is not like a vote on taxes or the debt ceiling where it’s debated for one election and then it’s behind you. Any Congressman or Senator, Democrat or Republican, who votes for this deal is putting his or her political fate in the hands of Ayatollahs for the rest of time."
The video:
I happened to be watching TV during the President's live speech announcing the deal.
ReplyDeleteHe basically said, Yeah, Congress should look at the deal very closely. But whatever, I do what I want.
So the trade is... long international arms companies. Boeing/Raytheon/Thales/XTS/HDW. And don't forget the tanks, Hummers and artillery.
Iran, KSA, UAE, and Israel will all want to stock up.
Where are the cynical hippies to point out that this treaty essentially frees up lots of money to spend on arms, and the arms manufacturers will benefit?
(Also Euro luxury brands, who are salivating at the prospects of selling to the Iranian elite once they get their hands on the $100B)
Yeah. This will turn out well.
"I have no idea why the west would have agreed to this."
ReplyDeleteBecause Obama is a flat-out traitor who wants to destroy the west? Because he makes pond scum look good? Because he is a real-life example of a Manchurian candidate? Because Obama hates the United States? Because we are racists who just don't like the fact that there is a black man in the White House (in the interests of equal time).
Matt, the thing about the "traitor" or "Manchurian candidate" view is that it assumes Obama shares the same world view as you - he' just on the other side.
DeleteMy belief is that Obama has a very different world view - which is, at it's root, pretty shallow and self involved. He is chiefly concerned with his own awesomeness, when it comes right down to it.
Traitor: Is Obama trying to undermine everything the country has ever stood for? Is he trying to do what he can to make it weak while emboldening its enemies? By your logic Benedict Arnold was not a traitor: he just had different view of what the United States should be.
ReplyDeleteManchurian Candidate: Barack Obama can do no wrong. He is a tool. He was pushed into the office because, due to his skin color, any criticism of him is dismissed as being racially motivated. It is suggested that we would be perfectly accepting of his policies if they were done by a white person. The only reason we are critical of him is because we are racist and we do not like the fact that there is a black man in the white house.
To say that I only make those comments is because I have a different vision than does Barack Obama is the same as saying there is no evil, only different views of right and wrong.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Maybe the RINOs in Washington buy it, but I don't. Sure he is shallow and self-centered. That makes him easy to manipulate. As long as he gets his ego puffed up every day he can be made to do almost anything.
Benedict Arnold did have the same worldview as Washington. Actually, all the main players in the drama had the same world view: they read the same books, shared the same values, enjoyed the same culture.
DeleteBenedict Arnold didn't see Washington as alien. Just wrong. Or at least wrong for Benedict Arnold (who was, as I understand it, also somewhat self involved).
It's perfectly reasonable to see Obama as a traitor. If he had been brought up as a traditional American, I'd say it was the only reasonable opinion.
But he wasn't. Perfectly reasonable-seeming people can have very radical ideas about right and wrong, if they absorbed radically different world views.
I've absorbed some very different world views in my life. I was in fact educated in some of the same was Barack Obama was. The horror is that I can see him not as a traitor, but as a reasonable guy. Self involved, but reasonable.
And I don't think that makes me evil, or you either, Matt. For what it's worth I think the world-view that Obama inhabits is pretty evil.
The TL;DR version of where he and I part company is that his views ultimately lead to totalitarianism. He and his fellow travelers see humans as flawed, and perfectible - perfectible by enlightened souls such as himself.
I see humans as flawed and irredeemably so - it's almost mathematically clear to me. Any human power that would change the essence of what it means to be human is itself evil, because that much power wielded by any human will ultimately serve vanity, and not empathy.
The Nazi project aimed to re-engineer the human being. So did the Soviet. Evil. Evil. And there is an entire strain of progressivism which sees these two simply as failed experiments, and so try, try again. Evil.
These progressives try a more incremental approach. Bending the arc of history towards Justice and all that. Little shifts toward "The Good", which they are uniquely adapted to discern through their superior sense of intellect and empathy. Incremental, but still Evil.
This view of Evil is why I'm for individual liberty as a core principle: any concentration of power strong enough to enforce virtue will inescapably devolve into the armed perpetuation of vice. Because humanity. Note this holds true even for definitions of "virtue" that I might agree with. And any political system which succeeds in avoid the trap of "human perfectibility" will admit to a great deal of temporal injustice.
So that's my view of good and evil. I stand on one side of it and the American president (and many others in leadership positions in government and media) stand on the other.
Those who believe humanity is perfectible by the hand of man frequently disagree with each other. So to do those who believe that attempts by man, to perfect man, are inherently evil.
But between these two camps lies a great chasm. I'm very comfortable with where I stand. There are those I disagree with, on my side, and those who I must view as ideological and moral enemies, on the other. No bridge can span that chasm.
Aaaand another thing. (Because apparently I don't go on and on enough...)
DeleteKerry - that John Kerry guy? Traitor.
Pretty much grew up in the same system as Bush. Is actually pretty "conservative" when it comes to my dichotomy - I don't think he believes humanity to be perfectible - even incrementally. Is is a fellow depressive on that score and would not dream of immanentizing the eschaton. He understands American Exceptionalism and the National Interest. Repudiates the former, undermines the latter.
Not evil, just a Traitor.