Is the Shrub smarter than Obama?

I love the American Elite: they are blinded by their confidence. I was in a conversation today and was told, without a sense of irony, that Obama could handle our parliamentary system because he is far brighter than the republicans, and that Scott Walker dropping out is good because he was horrible. The person involved comes from a one-party state: he does not consider how the policies of the elite are destroying the USA.

However, the elite is not the Democrats: it is the Bipartisan, and this is shown as an alternative comes from below, be it the Cuckservative meme in the USA or the anti-immigrant reform in the EU.

The most telling development in this ongoing dispute, however, is not the reaction of liberals. Predictably, they seem pleased by the opportunity to once again smear their opposition as closeted KKK members just chomping at the bit to harm black bodies in the public square. (And a civil war amongst your enemies must seem like a positive development.) No. The most telling development has been the reaction of the establishment GOP punditry, who are attempting with equal enthusiasm to smear their opposition as closeted KKK members just chomping at the bit to harm black bodies in the public square.

This is telling because it confirms the essence of the cuckservative critique, which is that the conservative establishment in America is functionally indistinguishable from the liberal one. The same voices on the Right who have “called out” the Left for shouting “racism!” instead of participating in actual argument are now following the playbook of that very same Left to the letter. Pathologize your opponents as bigoted monsters. Shout them down using emotionally overheated rhetoric. But above all do not engage the factual realities of their arguments.

And of course the argument that the GOP is a spineless, ineffectual opposition to the Democrat’s blitzkrieg in the kulturkampf has plenty of realities to draw support from. Social conservatism in 21st century America is dead in the water. Abortion has triumphed. Homosexual marriage has triumphed. The push to normalize and celebrate transsexualism is moving forward with barely a speedbump in sight. Every year we import vast swaths of immigrants, both legally and illegally, who have no ties whatsoever to the traditional social mores of the United States nor any stake in seeing them preserved for the future. And in this morass Republican politicians seem far more intent on making more money for a rich donor class than opposing these cultural and demographic death spirals.

I don’t care about Obama’s credentials. They matter not a whit: he is not a professor, where his publication record matters, nor a lawyer, where his bar certification matters, nor something useful like a nurse or janitor. He’s a politician, and politicians are judged on their results. He gets offended: Blair, Cameron, Key and Harper (and whoever is the PM of Australia this week) have to front parliament and be accountable.

Mark Steyn gets this correct, particularly with the SJWs who think you cannot be rude to royalty, instead of having a duty to challenge them.

As to whether he’s a Christian, have you asked him whether he has attended even semi-regularly any church other than that of Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright? A man is free to attend the Westboro Baptist Church but if he chooses to do so I’m not obligated to defend his Christianity. And frankly, whatever the President’s personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama’s watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless – for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.

Obama is infantile. Like Wilson (or Stalin) he is letting ideology get in the way of his national interests. The USA is a great power, still, despite a lot of stupidity. Us smaller countries cannot afford to make as many mistakes, or elect infants[1]. Spengler on the quality of US politicians.

There are a lot of reasons I don’t watch Republican political debates. One of them is that I might throw a whiskey glass at the television screen every time one of the contendors tries to show how tough he or she is by excoriating Vladimir Putin. Big talkers. My fellow Republicans oscillate between the view that Russia is about to implode and the view that Putin is about to make war on NATO. Both views are equally silly. Putin is playing a weak hand skillfully, trying to keep Russia in the game as a world power (if not a superpower). He also rules the one Christian country that has been fighting a war with Islamic terrorists for decades. After years of colossal American blunders in the Levant, there’s no way we can exclude Putin from a seat at the table. That’s a fact of life, and all the bloviating in the world won’t change it. It’s also a fact that Russia has interests which sometimes run counter to ours and sometimes coincide with ours. Where our interests coincide, we should work with Russia; where our interests diverge, we should foil Russia. That’s called Realpolitik and it’s what great powers do for a living.

Because the Obama administration is so beguiled by its anti-colonial, blame-America version of Wilsonian idealism, Putin just might play the pivotal role in the Levant during the next eighteen months.

It almost makes me nostalgic for the Bushes. The elder knew not to interfere overmuch with the middle east and practiced realpolitik. The younger was as Wilsonian as anything, but would listen. Obama listens to… no one. Because credentials. Because ideology.

And because of this, he is less effective than those who sat in the chair before him, despite their flaws and errors. The world needs a grown up running the USA, or there may no longer be united states.

Democrats note: that is not Clinton. Republicans note: that is not Trump.

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1. Yes, I know I am not American. Kiwis merely fight for the Western alliance, they do not run it. But the Western alliance leadership matters even in the antipodes.