Thursday, September 05, 2013

Sure, The Obama Administration Pretends To Be Anti-Slavery



But given the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 how we can possibly trust them!

I have just been informed that the United States government is a big, hairy, lying, hypocritical bag of lying hypocrites for raising any objection to Assad gassing his own people

Why?

Because Veetnam!

Because Iraq! Specifically, the assistance Iraq was given by the Reagan Administration in using chemical weapons a quarter century ago.

And of course because Occupy Wall Street!

Just ask David Sirota:
...
You can ignore all of that and still call bullshit on the assumption that the West is somehow offended by the use of chemical weapons. How? By remembering that the West has a long and distinguished record of arming dictators with chemical weapons and of deploying chemical weapons against its opponents.
Yes, the same American government that asks us to believe it is morally opposed to chemical weapons used them in Vietnam, gave them to Saddam Hussein and helped him use them. More recently, the United States crossed its own alleged "red line" by using chemical weapons in Iraq, giving them to Egypt to use against protestors, and deploying them against its own domestic dissidents. The U.S. military also still has chemical weapons stockpiles. Meanwhile, the British government reportedly sold chemical weapons components to none other than Bashar al Assad in the midst of his civil war.
So please, let's stop pretending this is about some specific hostility to chemical warfare...
I believe two things are true.

Well, three things.

First, Dear Mr. Sirota:
 


Second, as things stand now, the idea of the United States unilaterally firing missiles into Syria -- even extremely well-targeted missiles aimed at things like helicopters and radar installations -- is stupid, probably futile and might end up making a horrible situation even worse.  

Third, Purity Caucus Heroes like Mr. Sirota have been getting drunk on the "Worse That Boosh!" jug for so long that is now impossible for them to imagine a Barack Obama who saw what happened in Syria and just wanted to do something about it, even if there really may not be anything to be done that won't be futile or actually make things worse.   

No, their Barack Obama is always a villain --

-- whose motives are always nefarious. 

And if sufficiently nefarious motives are not readily available, like the Teabaggers and the Hate Radio goons from which they take their cues, Purity Caucus Heroes like Mr. Sirota will just make some up.  Out of indignation.  And spin.  And adjectives:

Bullshit Assumption #4: The proposed Syria attack has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. defense budget.

The Pentagon and the military contracting industry are freaking out that for the first time in a generation, there's the possibility of cuts to defense spending. And it's not some theoretical possibility - it's real. Public opinion surveys show majority support for such cuts, and the sequestration fight has inadvertently made those cuts imminent.

What better way to halt the budget-cutting train than to start a war that blows up the tracks?

Now, sure - a war in Syria is not a pure "Wag the Dog"-style conspiracy by greedy defense contractors. It is never that simple. But it is also hardly a coincidence...

To repeatas things stand now, I believe the idea of the United States unilaterally firing missiles into Syria seems stupid, probably futile and might end up making a horrible situation even worse.  That is true.

It is also true that nothing about the phalanx of hysterical straw men which Mr. Sirota has marshaled to his cause improves the chances of persuading anyone who is not already a member of the Purity Caucus that firing missiles at Syria is a dumb idea. 

However should anyone who is not already a charter member of Purity Caucus accidentally stumble across Mr. Sirota's truly remarkable assertion that the tear gassing of Occupy protesters by cops resides in the same moral or chemical universe as the indiscriminate nerve gassing of civilians to death by the Assad regime...or Mr. Sirota's remarkable assertion that the entire incident may well have been ginned up by Pentagon ribbon-clerks looking to goose their budget...there is some, small danger that those people might assume that opposition to firing missiles at Syria is the province of puerile idiots.

And I would rather they not make that assumption.

Then again, I may be wrong.

After all, the Obama Administration pretends to be in favor of women's suffrage, but given Elihu Root's chauvinist remarks in 1894 about women's suffrage -- 
…Mr. President, I have said that I thought suffrage would be a loss for women.  I think so because suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, the gentle and peaceful fall of the snow-flake, but suffrage, if it means anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and politics is modified war.  In politics there is a struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything which is adverse to the true character of woman.  Woman rules to-day by the sweet and noble influences of her character.  Put woman into the arena of conflict and she abandons these great weapons which control the world, and she takes into her hands, feeble and nerveless for strife, weapons with which she is unfamiliar and which she is unable to wield.  Woman in strife becomes hard, harsh, unlovable, repulsive; as far removed from the gentle creature to whom we all owe allegiance and to whom we confess submission, as the heaven is removed from the earth.
-- and the prominent position Mr. Root held the cabinet's of both William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, how we can possibly trust them!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This isn't about what politicians say. This is what it's about.

Jack said...

Holy hell, Driftglass. You nailed it again.

This shit Sirota and his asshole fans are pulling is such transparent BS. I honestly can't believe they get away with it.

It's really this simple:

(1) They hate Obama; they despise him. They think he's the focus of evil in the modern world.

(2) Therefore, it's obvious that everything he does is done for the most nefarious possible reasons.

I was on a far-right libertarian-wacko YouTube channel a few days ago - after Holder announced the Federal Government wouldn't interfere with states that had legalized marijuana. Holder (and, by extension, Obama) had given them exactly what they wanted. But they could not acknowledge it; they could not be happy with a victory if it was Obama giving it to them. So the formula kicked in:

(1) Obama is pure evil and wants to ruin life on earth for everyone.
(2) Therefore, he is allowing states to legalize weed ... because (thinking, thinking) ...

This is the most interesting part of the whole process - they part where their heads start spinning and they just start making shit up. This is the ground where Sirota and Greenwald operate, in that uncomfortable spot right after a faulty premise, where any conclusion you draw is doomed to be false. (Faulty premise, faulty conclusion.)

Here are some of the actual comments "explaining" why Holder would not enforce marijuana laws in states where it had been legalized:

***
Of course he can selectively enforce laws. That's what any despot would do.
***
Why would they step in and stop the industry before it has had a chance to build up and create a ton of wealth? No, the feds will wait until they can later come in with some bullshit reason and STEAL THE WEALTH!
***
i guarantee the feds will do what they want at a time that best benefits them. don't listen to them
***
Yea that only means they are going to say that so everyone lets down their guard and then boom, fill the prisons for more victim-less crimes.
***
BUT YOU CANT OWN A GUN SIMULTANEOUSLY!! thats their agenda..
***
They don't care about a few stats beginning to legalize weed. Soon it will be martial law nation wide and it wont matter. When you gain an inch they take a mile.
***
That just means they won't try and do it legally, i.e. through the courts. That doesn't say anything about strong-arming and intimidation using police/swat like they've been doing.


So, Obama gives them exactly what they wanted. But since they think he's evil and that all his motives are nefarious, they are forced to start making up crazy shit. Alex Jones has built an entire empire on this formula, and now a tiny but vocal faction of purity sluts are swirling down the toilet to join him.

The same happened when Obama announced he would go to Congress to seek approval for military action against Syria. He gave the sluts what they wanted. (What we all wanted.) But instead of being happy, their conviction that Obama is evil forced them to invent all kinds of insane theories to explain the move. Here's how one of our own sluts processed the news.

Compound F:

Obama is possibly bringing the case to Congress because Cameron got his butt handed to him. He needs to spread the blame for his impending crimes as broadly as possible. I do see this as an improvement over unchecked executive power, but it's hard to say what Obama's calculations entail. He could be trying to torpedo an act of war, but that seems far-fetched given his history and recent stern rhetoric.

Yeah, man, that's it! *bong hit*

I really don't see any difference between Snowden, Greenwald, Sirota, Alex Jones, Rand Paul, or any of these other assholes: They all operate the same way and are all doomed to make up insane theories to explain Obama's actions because they start with the fundamentally flawed premise that Obama is evil and all his motives are nefarious.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

No, no, you have it all wrong.

The Mensa candidates at dailykos.com have it figured out: the planned attack on Syria to divert attention away from Snowden/Greenwald's ongoing revelations of NSA spying.

No, seriously, as far back as 1998 they conspired with the French to plant monitoring chips in our cell phones and now they want a big explosion so we will take our collective eye off the ball.

And "phalanx of hysterical straw men" - gotta' love it.


Unknown said...

Apparently the evidence being offered for Assad actually having used chemical weapons is about on par with the story of Saddam's WMDs.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18559-how-intelligence-was-twisted-to-support-an-attack-on-syria

DocAmazing said...

So apparently all of the permanent government positions--the bureaucrats, the civil servants, the military officers--were purged in January 2009, when President Obama was sworn in. Right?

If not, then we have continuity of government. The very same people who were doing evil shit for the Reagan Administration--and those they hired and trained--continue their positions. The election of a Democratic president did not dislodge them nor send them out into the wilderness.

It's nice that you have such faith in the Obama Administration. I fail to see how they've earned it, and extending the benefit of the doubt to them isn't any smarter than questioning their motives.