Barack Obama and supporters, February 4, 2008+Arnold Schwarzenegger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If recent punditry is any indication, years from now we will have statues of Obama built like Arnold Schwarzenegger and dressed as Captain America, and “life-sized” at seven feet tall to boot. Enough words can make a clown a stately prince, it seems. Okay, that was overstated. But so is the gloating over severely questionable success being an attribute to him, if it exists at all.
To what propagandist wizardry do I refer? In reference to the whole Putin playing chess and Obama playing checkers comments early this year, “It turns out President Obama’s marble playing was a head fake.” Nice recovery. “I meant to do that.”
Seriously? There’s need to even debunk this in the usual sense, since the barrage of words out there is clever rhetoric and narratives firmly in the realm of unsubstantiated opinions and wishful thinking, not facts. Magically, Obama personally brought down the Russian economy by the European Union’s economic sanctions.
So this was due to what they call “Persistence in the Ukraine”? The actual end game is proof enough they are making it up. They are selling vinegar as lemonade by piecing together any positive fleeting statistics while ignoring the overbearing whole, in spite of a “recovery” being slightly more believable after EIGHT YEARS and the turning over of many seats to Red Senators. Or maybe we will wait until times change in one year or decade or more and point to this time as the decisive instigation of victory. Eventually a broken clock will be right.
It’s revisionism, hoping we forget that Russia clearly won the Syrian round as well in both result and international credibility, and, as subjective as it may be, is far more pertinent when it comes to such political matters.
But to be civilly honest, my words also constitute an opinion, and I offer it for consideration more than debate. The cases have been made and my fear is not that history will decide, but that it will continue to decide without honesty — on either side of any political fence — rather than on the facts.
For example, my criticism of Obama has never been partisan; his defense (and adulation) is based solely on proving an opposing party wrong. In my estimation, it’s contrived so those behind the banner can pretend they themselves have credibility for being as such. Gloating and denial is often a coping mechanism for embarrassment, and what I believe we are seeing in this round of partisan rhetoric. No substance, and the apt description truly is one of playing games..