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| Hey, he actually dressed like that! |
The left dismisses automatically and easily anyone willing to denounce President Barack Obama as a “socialist” a “colonialism critic” or an “extremist”. For starters, “socialist” has become a very dirty word in America, but a good deal of its population is still yearning for a country more alike to the European welfare state, i.e. social democracy, a.k.a. “socialism”. For that segment of the population that can’t be absolutely a bad thing, even if Europe is imploding because of the long-standing consequences of the welfare state policies enthusiastically embraced by the now-indignant Europeans that want to “soak the rich” even more, as if it would solve the structural problems arisen from living beyond their limits and financing it with debt that is impossible to be repaid.
If “colonialist criticism” implies that those countries that became colonial empires committed an irredeemable, unforgivable sin, no matter what they do after that, no matter how much in “reparations” they spend, making a dead-end guilty trap ideology, there isn’t much to be said when confronting circular logic, except that it is an excellent weapon to keep reason at bay.
A child cannot be labeled as an “extremist”. A child cannot choose parents or legal guardians. A child attends school and tutors, but it is not the child’s personal choice. In that order of ideas, it’s not Barack Obama’s fault if his childhood mentor was Frank Marshall Davis. Or that most of his upbringing happened in a leftist environment. But his adult choices and associations are another story.
The most ridiculous posture of the mainstream media is pretending that Barack Obama’s adult choices and associations are to be treated as mere happenstances. You see, if Barack Obama is working with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, move along, there is nothing to see there. If he lauded “Students Against Militarism”, an organisation that encouraged breaking the law, well, it just was more “educating and organizing” stuff (sounds more like agitprop for me, I have to concede). If he hangs with radicals Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah, what’s the big deal? President Obama is still a friend of Israel, isn’t he? If Obama asked while at Harvard Law School to “open your hearts and open your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell” and you don’t agree with Critical Race Theory, then you must be a bigoted racist.
There is not a pattern of radicalism. Absolutely not, reassures us the mainstream media and the intelligentsia.
Still, and thanks to the new media, the bigger picture is finally emerging.
If “colonialist criticism” implies that those countries that became colonial empires committed an irredeemable, unforgivable sin, no matter what they do after that, no matter how much in “reparations” they spend, making a dead-end guilty trap ideology, there isn’t much to be said when confronting circular logic, except that it is an excellent weapon to keep reason at bay.
A child cannot be labeled as an “extremist”. A child cannot choose parents or legal guardians. A child attends school and tutors, but it is not the child’s personal choice. In that order of ideas, it’s not Barack Obama’s fault if his childhood mentor was Frank Marshall Davis. Or that most of his upbringing happened in a leftist environment. But his adult choices and associations are another story.
The most ridiculous posture of the mainstream media is pretending that Barack Obama’s adult choices and associations are to be treated as mere happenstances. You see, if Barack Obama is working with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, move along, there is nothing to see there. If he lauded “Students Against Militarism”, an organisation that encouraged breaking the law, well, it just was more “educating and organizing” stuff (sounds more like agitprop for me, I have to concede). If he hangs with radicals Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah, what’s the big deal? President Obama is still a friend of Israel, isn’t he? If Obama asked while at Harvard Law School to “open your hearts and open your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell” and you don’t agree with Critical Race Theory, then you must be a bigoted racist.
There is not a pattern of radicalism. Absolutely not, reassures us the mainstream media and the intelligentsia.
Still, and thanks to the new media, the bigger picture is finally emerging.
