Obama's Disastrous Press Conference

The full grim spectacle is here; RedState's Streiff (who asks, "How disastrous was Obama's press conference?") offers his thoughts and a two minute clip which shows Obama's usual petulance when he is proven wrong, yet again.

Twitchy documents the live reaction to the presser, in which the press, for once, did not have Obama's act. In fact, they seemed to have his ass, asking the same question over and over, which annoyed him greatly, because he wouldn't actually answer it in any sensible way.

A man who keeps offering the same empty answers -- "allies have to step up," "a warped ideology on the wrong side of history," "contrary to our values," etc. -- cannot complain this petulantly about being asked the same questions.

The other thing people noticed is that Obama gave his typical bloodless "I'd rather be golfing" sort of listless drone about the dead of Paris and his alleged enemies in ISIS, but then, as usual, became interested and emotionally engaged when he was asked about his real enemies, Republicans and Americans.

Obama also re-stated what had already been put out over the weekend: That there would be no shift in our strategy in Syria. As they say in government, don't fix what's not working.

He also, incredibly, declared that he didn't believe he had shown "any [previous] hesitation to act."

He's a remarkable man, in all the wrong ways. He is the apotheosis of progressivism, the avatar and godling that is the living embodiment of all their cowardices, lies, hypocrisies, self-flatteries, and stupidities.

One self-flattery they're fond of is claiming they have "evidence-based" reasoning, not ideology-based reasoning, and that their minds are supple things that readily incorporate new information and plot new strategies accordingly.

Obama is the ultimate exemplar of this fiction. He claims that he's always interested in "whatever works" and he's constantly engaging in high-level cognition about the world, and yet no matter what the news, no matter how badly his strategies and ideological priors have been shown to fail, he clings to them with the devotion of a child to his woobie.

The 8-strikes-a-day "strategy" to defeat ISIS? Complete failure. So we're sticking to that.

Bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees, despite having no way to vet them and despite two such refugees participating in the Paris attacks? Complete failure. So we're sticking to that.

And on, and on, and on.

And all he can do is repeat the rote words, "twisted ideology" and "wrong side of history."

This is progressivism's greatest mind showing all its supple neuroelectric brilliance?

This pathetic Chatty Cathy programmed to only say six different things, no matter what the input?

Quoting David French again: Obama should not be the president of the United States. He was born to be the president of Oberlin College's department of diversity studies.

He views the world as nothing but a series of petty faculty squabbles and cannot conceive of murder and slaughter having any more meaning that someone shit-talking him in the faculty lounge.

Behold, the beautiful and delicate rhetorical stylings of our cultural and political elite. They’re the improvisational jazz musicians of American diplomacy, always ready with just the right word to solidify alliances, avoid unnecessary confrontation, and reassure Americans they know exactly what they’re doing in the face of bloody violence. This is what happens when the academic Left runs American foreign policy.

For those who’ve lived under a rock for the past four-plus decades, the American academy has been characterized by two prime impulses: one substantive, the other stylistic. First, there's the substantive claim that the problems of the world can largely -- if not entirely -- be traced back to America’s sins and the sins of our Western allies, most notably Israel. These sins have caused the peoples of the world to accumulate a long list of "legitimate grievances," and the problem of anti-American or anti-Israeli violence is therefore best dealt with by dealing with the underlying grievance.

Thus the fury at George Bush and the steadfast belief that it was American foreign policy and not a particular strain of Islamic theology that fanned the fires of jihad. Thus the fury at Israel when it asserts its right of self-defense, even to the point of blaming the rise of the Islamic State on Israeli/Palestinian relations, when the Islamic State is fighting its wars against Shiites, Kurds, Yazidis, and Americans.

Next, there's the sophomoric, malicious style of campus rhetoric, where stigma is the preferred method of argument. It’s hard to overstate the propensity towards name-calling even of "elite" academics, and the culture of the academy is one where groupthink is enforced and reinforced through vicious rhetoric. Their opponents can’t be merely wrong. Instead they are racist, bigoted, homophobic, or -- despite professed love of the disabled -- "Aspergery."

The arrogance is overwhelming, and the fake tough-guy posture of name-calling elitists is laughable to everyone but themselves.

posted by Ace at 03:02 PM

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