February 18, 2010
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Two stupid anti-Obama arguments
There are certainly cases to be made against Obama. Never let me or anyone tell you differently. I’ve never heard of a President or leader of any nation that didn’t do things that weren’t worthy of strong criticism and Obama is no different. So if you have a reason based, fact based argument to level against the Obama administration, by all means do so. You might even find me in complete agreement with you.
BUT, the two arguments I hear leveled against the President MOST frequently are anything but reason and fact based. They are:
ARGUMENT A: President Obama is the most liberal, leftist, radical, transformative President EVER. He’s a dangerous extremist who is destroying/corrupting our nation as we know it. We’re on the verge of tyranny thanks to this crazy communist, socialist, marxist, maoist, racist, nazi, dictatorial President.
ARGUMENT B: President Obama, is a completely ineffectual, do nothing, lazy, weak, accomplishment-less loser. He hasn’t done ANYTHING. He’s kept none of his promised, wasted his time, and twiddled his thumbs while in office. He’s a liar and a hack. He’s all rhetoric. All words, no action.
Now, I personally believe that A and B are both totally false. We can, if you wish, go into depth into exactly why each of these arguments are, independently, demonstrably false. Perhaps I will write posts in the future delving into each.
But in truth I don’t blame someone who thinks that argument A is true. I mean if you’re really really conservative I suppose Obama’s weak centrism WOULD seem like radical liberalism to you. It’s understandable that if you haven’t been exposed to the vast wide range of ideas that are often conflated into an ambiguous “leftism” that you might not recognize centrism when you see it. Also there are those that just have a tendency to by knee-jerk reaction label anything they happen to dislike as “liberal” and don’t understand the real meaning of the term.
I also don’t really blame the people who believe argument B. While it’s certainly true that Obama has done a lot already in his first year, it’s understandable that a lot of what he has achieved has not been advertised and would not be visible to the average individual. There have been enough compromises, agenda changes, postponements, and outright broken promises in the Obama administration agenda that it’s totally understandable that someone might look at Obama and see a huge gap between his rhetoric and his accomplishments. While it’s still not at all fair to say that the President has done Nothing, I can at least kinda understand why someone angry because they still don’t have a job and still don’t have healthcare and see the economy isn’t improving etc. etc, might express that opinion out of sheer frustration. When you examine the facts, it becomes clear that it’s still wrong, but I can’t blame people for thinking it.
But what I CAN blame people for is believing BOTH A and B are true. That’s what people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do on a daily basis. Depending on the news of the day, they’ll either portray Obama as a do nothing hack OR as a radical extremist taking things over. So when Obama won the noble prize he was a do nothing who “hasn’t done anything”. And when he’s appointing people to advisory positions because he can’t get his nominees through an obstructionist congress, he’s a radical nazi appointing king-like Czars to rule ove us. We’re all doomed! And yet they see no contradiction in this whatsoever.
That in my mind is evidence enough to show that they’re hypocritical lying bastards. It should be obviously to anyone with half a brain that you can’t be someone who is irrevocably leading our country to its doom and at the same time be someone so feckless that he can’t get a damn thing done. The two are just utterly incompatible. If A then NOT B. And if B then NOT A.
You can’t express both of these ideas and honestly expect anyone to take you seriously.
Comments (6)
Remember all the past criticisms. He’s a Muslim, then he’s a radical white hating Christian blindly following every word of Jeremiah Wright ( who in my opinion never said anything that was completely wrong until AFTER Obama had to explain his association with the minister). Anyway, I used to contend that if you criticize Obama for Jeremiah Wright, you gotta drop the whole Muslim thing. That never happened. One cancels the other out, but don’t let anything like logic fuck up a good argument against someone (Besides, if Barack was a Muslim, do you think he would allow his wife to go out in public with her arms exposed? ) . As of now, there is still only one Muslim member of both chambers of Congress….Keith Ellison and he was sworn in on a Quran. I think people just see a black politician and conflate the stories. All we gotta do is change the name. Oh and Keith Ellison is proud of his religion as all the wacky Christians are, yet….during the campaign, Obama was somehow hiding his Muslim past? Anyway…like you said….If A, then not B. If B, then NOT A.
Fox news doesn’t report on any of his achievements and lies about what his policies are to scare people, and then “reports” both.
Interesting thoughts. I’d like to see feedback on this myself.
Self-contradiction, irrationality, and utter insanity are the staples of the Faux News looney bin.
Good post.
@Casbahmaniac - I was going to say something similar to this. Only, they think that he isn’t just an average Muslim, but rather an extremist Muslim who is working to get Al Quida to launch another terrorist attack against the US. I think a lot of them believe the Christian thing is a cover up (though they still won’t pass up a chance to criticize him on that).
Those rascally do-nothing nazi reds have been a problem for decades!