Tag Archives: Obama

Pomp, Circumstance, and Tyranny

May 7, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment
The last time we were asked to address a commencement ceremony was way back in ’77, when our high school graduating class bestowed the honor. All we can remember of the speech are the jokes, the most obvious of which went over well enough, but we’re quite sure that even at such a tender age we weren’t so very stupid as to tell people not to fear tyranny.
That was the advice President Barack Obama offered to the graduates of Ohio State University on Sunday. After warming up the crowd with a few jokes of his own, mostly about football and other topics of local interest, Obama eased into his theme of citizenship. Much of it was typical commencement address fare, full of highfalutin and inoffensively vague statements about participating and persevering and so forth, and much of it was a typical Obama stump speech, extolling the many wonders of big government and such rhetorical flourishes as the Founders leaving us “the tools to do big things and important things together that we could not possibly do alone.” What caught our attention, however, was the typical swipe at the president’s critics.
“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works,” Obama said. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”
The president did not name these critics, although his audience was surely curious to know. Despite a steady diet of talk radio, conservative news outlets, and the company of fellow right-wingers, we can’t think of anyone who argues that democracy should be replaced and rule entrusted to some enlightened elite. We used to hear such talk often from our liberal friends, but that was back when a Republican was in the White House and we suspect those are not the people Obama was talking about.
There are plenty of people who argue that the government is becoming increasingly separated from the people, that it is sometimes sinister and at the root of many problems, and they make a strong case for gumming up the works, but we have never heard them say that the people can’t be trusted. We believe that certain individual rights should be constitutionally protected from the proper will, so perhaps the president meant us, but the Founders also gave us that tool and we expect that even Obama will be eager to use it when the topics of homosexual rights and abortion come back around.
If tyranny isn’t lurking around the corner, it is only because this country has traditionally been on guard against it. Immutable human nature compels those in power in to seek more power, and only the resistance of a stubbornly independent people can’t prevent them from doing so. Obama has not proved an exception to this rule of history, and it is hoped that even a stadium full of college-educated twenty-somethings will be wary.

– Bud Norman

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Red Lines in the Water

May 6, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Can’t anybody here play this game? An exasperated Casey Stengel famously asked that question of his hapless ’62 Mets as they limped to a 40-120 record, but it could just as easily be asked of America’s foreign policy team.
With Syria’s mass-murdering regime under attack from various Islamist rebel groups as well as Israeli air strikes aimed at the weapons Iran is shipping through that country to Hezbollah, and with Syria making veiled threats of escalation and Iran urging its neighbors to join in the fray, now is a good time to review the administration’s evolving relationship with these countries. It all began with proper respect for Syria and Iran, of course. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went so far as to laud Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as a “reformer,” and President Barack Obama was so eager for that bound-to-be-constructive dialogue with Iran that he politely ignored a popular uprising that might have succeeded in toppling the troublesome theocracy with a bit of American encouragement. After years of being spurned the administration at last abandoned the courtship with both countries, and adopted a tougher tone in occasional statements which culminated in Obama’s now-infamous “red line” declaration.
“For the Syrian government to utilize chemical weapons against its people crosses a line that will change my calculus and how the United States approaches these issues,” Obama announced at a news conference, later adding with his best poker face that “I’ve meant what I said.”
Syrian translators probably had some difficulty figuring out what calculus had to do with it, but they had no trouble conveying to Assad the message that Obama had promised to take some sort of action or another if chemical weapons were used against the rebels. With evidence emerging that Assad went ahead and did it anyway, apparently figuring that Obama did not mean what he said, administration officials are now busy explaining why no action is going to be taken. They’re demanding an exceedingly high standard of proof that chemical weapons have been used, and it seems that nothing less than a full confession will suffice, but they’re also anonymously leaking to the press that the president’s remark was “unscripted” and accidentally left out the “nuance” that president was referring to chemical weapons attack that caused mass fatalities. Another aide offers a more fran assessment of administration attitudes, telling the New York Times “How can we attack another country unless it’s in self-defense and with no Security Council resolution. If he drops sarin on his own people, what’s that got to do with us?” Perhaps such nuances will have a deterrent effect on the likes of Assad, and be similarly frightening to any adversaries that might be tempted to cross declared lines on Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, the U.S. border and elsewhere, but it seems unlikely.
Even without a telepromptered script Obama must have known, as he promised some sort of action or another, that were no good options left in Syria. All of the rebel groups that remain in the fight are Islamist, and although the Obama administration has been happy to assist the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in its takeover of formerly friendly Egypt it does not seem to be eager to replicate that success in still-hostile Syria. Allowing Assad to gas his way to victory is not a good option, either, but it is hard to imagine Obama rousing his himself to another Middle Eastern war, much less the nation or NATO, even with an unlikely Security Council resolution.
The Israelis might handle it, but reports indicate that they aren’t even telling the United States what they’re going to do until they’re doing it. While Syria and Iran were being treated with open-handed appeals for dialogue the Israelies were receiving finger-wagging lectures about housing policy, calls for negotiations starting at the suicidal ’67 borders, and snubs to their Prime Minister, so their reluctance to consult the administration is understandable. Conspiracy theorists will speculate about some covert cooperation, but the overting distancing that both countries are doing with one another sends a message that America cannot deter its friends any more than it can deter its enemies. Like drawing lines that are not intended to be enforced, and the continuing revelations of bungling and duplicity in Benghazi, it makes one wonder if anybody here can play this game.

– Bud Norman

About Pigford

May 2, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Yesterday was “Blog About Pigford Day” throughout America, but we couldn’t resist poking fun at the president’s self-pitying press conference instead. We don’t care for the neologism “blog,” especially as a verb, but we do feel obliged to help with the day’s worthy cause of drawing attention to the Pigford story.
Pigford, in case you didn’t know, is the shorthand designation for the fiasco that has resulted from the case of Pigford v. Glickman. Timothy Pigford was by all accounts a fine fellow and a hard-working farmer who believed he had been denied assistance by the United States Department of Agriculture because he was black, and Dan Glickman was the Secretary of Agriculture at the time the suit was filed many years after the alleged discrimination occurred. Glickman is also a local boy who served several terms as our district’s congressman, and we know him to be a fine fellow despite being a Democrat, but Pigford was able to definitively prove that the discrimination had indeed happened so in 1999 the government meekly agreed to a $50,000 settlement with Pigford and 2,000 or so other black farmers who had joined the suit with similar tales. At that point the case represented a victory for fair play on the farms, a good news story hardly worth writing about, but of course it did not end there.
For the next several years the government fought off lawsuits by Hispanic and female farmers who hoped to cash in on the Pigford precedent, and that effort came to an abrupt halt when President Barack Obama was inaugurated. The political appointees of Obama Justice and Agriculture departments overruled the vehement objections of the career officials to establish a $1.33 billion fund to compensate thousands of people who had never claimed bias in court. By now more than 90,000 people have filed claims, for a tab of $4.4 billion, and many of those claims are by people who were farmed at all.
The story was a pet peeve of Andrew Breitbart, the great conservative provocateur, and after his untimely death his eponymous news organization continued to undercover the many cases of fraud that inevitably followed the government throwing around billions of guilt-ridden dollars. The efforts of Breitbart.com have successfully tugged even the almighty New York Times into covering the story, with a pretty good report that acknowledges the widespread abuse of the program, but the organization nonethless called for a “Blog About Pigford Day” in order to whip up the appropriate outrage. We’re glad to help out, even if a day late, and since we’re writing this yesterday we’ve technically met yet another deadline.

– Bud Norman

Afternoon Delight

May 1, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Most soap operas hold no fascination for us, but the occasional presidential news conferences make for riveting afternoon fare. In the latest installment of this long-running series our hunky hero’s torrid love affair with the press runs into some unexpected trouble.
The story opens with the president giving the honor of the first question to the out-going president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which recently made a point of laughing at all the president’s jokes during its annual dinner and celebrity love-fest, and he assures the reporter that “I’m not mad at you.” After assuring the president that he also isn’t angry the reporter proceeds to ask about the “red line” that the president had declared against Syria’s use of chemical weapons and if it might “risk U.S. credibility if you don’t take military action.” The question seemed quite carefully put, as we would have demanded to know what in the world the president was thinking when declaring an ultimatum he had no intention of ever enforcing, but the president nonetheless seemed rather offended as he launched into a long-winded oration about how Syria’s use of chemical weapons would be a “game-changer” but that “By game changer, I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us.” One can only imagine the terror this must have struck in the hearts of the Syrian dictatorship that almost certainly has been using chemical weapons, but the press was too shaken to ask any follow-up questions.
Another reporter was so impertinent as to ask the death of an ambassador and three other Americans in a Libyan embassy that had repeatedly been denied requests for added security, specifically about the widely-reported allegation that whistle-blowers who survived the terrorist attack have been prevented from coming forward, and the president cut the conversation short by explaining that “I’m not familiar with it.” He could have reprised his former Secretary of State’s sneering reply that “What difference, at this point, does it make,” which won rave reviews from the press, so we suppose this claim of ignorance represents an improvement in administration policy.
Although the president was clearly annoyed by such pesky questioning, another reporter requested a response to Republican criticism that the government had been insufficiently vigilant in following up on Russian warnings about one of the men suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon. “It’s not as if the FBI did nothing,” the president huffily replied, “They not only investigated the older brother, they interviewed the older brother.” Satisfied that law enforcement could not have done more, the president set to wondering “was there something that happened that triggered radicalization and actual — an actual decision by the brother to engage in the attacks that we — the tragic attack we actually saw in Boston, and are there things — additional things that could have been done in that interim that might have prevented it?
After a lengthy discourse along these hard-to-parse lines, the president yielded to another question. More pestering ensued, with another reporting noting the legislative butt-kicking the president had received on his gun control efforts and wondering if “you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this congress?” Many commentators were immediately reminded of the “Are you still relevant?” question posed to Bill Clinton back in the golden age of presidential soap operas, and the president seemed rather testy when he responded that “If you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home.” To quickly dash the hopes of many Americans, the president during the nervous laughter that “As Mark Twain said, you know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point.” The president added the “little” and “at this point” to Twain’s witticism, but he made it clear that he still had enough breath for a lengthy gripe about those darned Republicans. Insisting that “right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill,” the president went on to blame the opposition for the great pain caused by the “sequester” budget cuts, the public’s failure to adequately feel the pain, and their inexplicable resistance to his demands, all seemingly to remind the press that they have no suitable alternative suitors.
The president also renewed a long un-kept promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, insisted that all is well the Obamacare program despite its author’s claim of a “train wreck,” expressed hope that millions of illegal Mexican immigrants will soon be able to vote for his party, and offered praise for some little-known, bench-sitting basketball player who has publicly announced his homosexuality. There wasn’t any time for economic questions, the president’s golf-and-party schedule being so very tight, but even without the always-hearted financial arguments the story book romance with the media was clearly strained. Can the relationship be saved? We’ll be eagerly awaiting the next installment to find out.

– Bud Norman

Laid-back

April 30, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
There was an abundance of news on Monday, but two stories in particular caught our attention. Neither was at all surprising, and compared to a bench-sitting basketball player publicly declaring his homosexuality they might not seem very newsworthy, but the juxtaposition of two was fascinating nonetheless.
One was a report that President Barack Obama has thus far devoted twice as much time to golf and vacations than to meetings devoted to the economy. We spotted this at the cheekily conservative Breitbart.com web site, which was predictably indignant about the presidential schedule, and at Britain’s primly conservative The Telegraph, which seemed to find the president appallingly lazy even by British standards, but lest you suspect these right-wing muckrakers were making it up they both cited an analysis by the Government Accountability Office. The agency is famously non-partisan, which means they tend favor Democrats, and it made generous estimates of how long it takes for Obama to complete a round of golf and how much time he devotes to business while on vacation, so the muckrakers are likely understating their case.
The other item that caught our eye, appearing in Vanity Fair, took a decidedly different view. The glossy magazine for glossy readers, which recently hosted the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after-party for “Hollywood A-listers and Washington insiders,” ran a “photographic investigation of the ‘lean-back’ president.” A fawning introduction gripes that “Barack Obama receives ample flak from critics who say that he is too buttoned-up and reserved to thrive in an office that historically has required its fair share of cajoling, socializing, and even arm-twisting,” but insists that “Obama can, in fact, be remarkably laid-back.” We’re not sure who those critics are who lament Obama’s reserve and lack of haranguing, schmoozing, and Chicago-style political tactics, although they are probably to his left, but apparently even Brietbart.com and The Telegraph have already noticed that he can be laid-back. To further emphasize the point, however, Vanity Fair’s photographer shows us the president with his feet atop the Oval Office’s historic Resolute Desk, sitting tie-less with his advisers, more shots of the feet on the desk, and another shot with his feet on some non-descript coffee table, all of which invite the reader to marvel at very cool the president can be.
There’s something to be said for a laid-back personality, which is quite endearing in poets, musicians, and certain other occupations, but it’s not a quality that is necessarily well-suited to a president. When the president is spending more time on his golf game than the economy that is laying back a bit too far. On the other hand, with this particular president the less time he spends meddling in the economy the better.

– Bud Norman

Comforting the Comfortable

April 29, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
There’s an old newspaper adage that a journalist’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Journalists are so fond of such nonsense that if you spend any amount of time with them you’ll soon grow weary of hearing it. After 35 years of working with newspapers we have vowed that the next time we hear anyone repeating this balderdash we will immediately go in search of a sockful of horse manure with which to pummel him.
It’s not so much how the adage negates a superior notion that a journalist’s job is to accurately report what is going on in the world, without regard to who is comforted or afflicted or by the truth, but rather that it’s so very out of date. The phrase apparently originated with Finley Peter Dunne, who wrote an Irish-accented column as “Mr. Dooley” way back in the good old days of yellow journalism when ethnic humor was respectable and journalists were not, and we wonder what the ink-stained wretch would make of the oh-so-comfortable scribes in attendance at this past Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
You’ve heard of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, of course, even if you make a point of avoiding all that boring political stuff in the news. The annual black-tie event has joined the Golden Globes awards and the global warming alarmist movement as one of those things that every self-respecting celebrity simply must do, and it now receives the same saturation coverage as any other show-biz event. This year Vanity Fair rushed to the internet with pictures of the “Hollywood A-listers and Washington-insiders” who attended the magazine’s after-party bash at the Kalorama residence of the French ambassador, and even the most staid news outlets were similarly star-struck. New York Magazine found it newsworthy that the First Lady wore a Lacy Monique Lhuillier gown, which is apparently some sort of fancy dress, and it  could not restrain itself from adding that “damn does she look good.”
Each year’s dinner features a monologue by a well-known comedian who is expected to poke fun at both politicians and reporters, thus allowing both groups to demonstrate what good sports and regular folk they are, but tradition also dictates that a gentler brand of humor be employed regarding Democrats. This year the honor went to late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, who hewed rigorously to tradition. One of his few Obama jokes made mention of the fact that both he and the president attended Harvard University, and he ended with a heartfelt thanks to the president for helping his hometown of Boston “heal” from the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Whatever healing powers the president exerted might not have been necessary if the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been less sensitive to Muslim sensitivities when following up on Russian warnings about the bombers, an aversion to Islamophobia that has been imposed from the very top of levels of government, but O’Brien’s partisan fun-poking should have been expected. We well recall that during the Bush administration O’Brien used to regale his television audiences by doing a presidential imitation that involved mimicking a mentally retarded person and saying “duh,” a Swiftian sort of satire that the proud Harvard man could have just as easily learned on the playgrounds of Kistler Elementary School.
The president also spoke, which is another yearly feature of the event. Tradition dictates that the presidential monologue be self-deprecating, but Obama seems unable to make fun of himself lest it be considered racist. He acknowledged an embarrassing 2-for-22 shooting performance on the basketball court during the White House Easter egg roll, but only as a set-up for a joke about the NBC ratings, and most of the jokes were aimed a political opponents such as a wealthy Republican campaign donor. The watchdogs of the press politely roared, of course, and by all accounts everyone seemed very comfortable.

– Bud Norman

Bush Reconsidered

April 25, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum will open today with much fanfare, including the presence of every living president, and it seems to coincide with a strange new respect for the much-maligned leader.
All the late night talk shows will make the predictable jokes about coloring books, and the still-seething critics will make their snarky comments across the internet, but red-hot Bush-hatred now seems as embarrassingly out of date as a five-year-old pop hit or commercial catch phrase. The coverage of the library opening has thus far been polite and occasionally even complimentary, with former Associated Press honcho Ron Fournier going so far as to write in The National Journal that Bush was a nice enough guy to hang out with, and even the usual critics in the mainstream media have been far more restrained in their histrionics than when Bush was in office. Blaming Bush for everything remains a favorite policy of the current administration, but they rarely mention the name these days, and even Obama himself felt obliged to accept an invitation to the big opening.
When Obama and Bush meet today they will have about the same standing in recent opinion polls, which will not provide either of them with much to brag about. The rough parity in the polls represents a dramatic turn of fortune for both men, though, as Obama came into office as a sort of messiah just as Bush exited as history’s greatest villain. Elite opinion still favors Obama, and still holds some sway over the great unwashed masses, so it’s all the more remarkable that public opinion is now about evenly split.
One explanation is that all presidents become more popular over time, but Bill Clinton was one of several exceptions to this rule. Another theory grudgingly concedes that Bush has done an exemplary job of leading a dignified private life and not meddling in public affairs in his retirement, which could also explain Bill Clinton’s declining poll numbers. Our pet theory is that the relentless demonization in both the news and entertainment gradually tapered off after Bush’s departure, some hard realities were exposed by the light of Obama’s glow, and the country moved on from Bush hatred.
We were supposed to hate Bush because of the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay and the toppling of Middle Eastern dictatorships and drone strikes and of course those half-trillion dollar deficits, which Obama denounced as “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic,” but it’s hard to hold those grudges while maintaining a proper respect for the successive administration. The Iraq War will also remain controversial, although the “blood for oil” shtick and many other arguments against it have been definitely disproved and the notion that everything would be hunky-dory if only Saddam Hussein was still in power is also losing luster. There’s still the economic collapse of ’08 to hang on to, but much of the public has gotten word that that happened not as a result of mythical de-regulation but rather a sub-prime mortgage boondoggle that Bush tried to avert, and the recovery that has since been affected has not been impressive.
The perspective on the Bush presidency will continue to change with the events of time, and with comparison to subsequent presidencies, then yet get another look if another Bush seeks the presidency. We have our criticisms of Bush as well as our praises, but we expect them to change and over time and we hope he enjoys his big event today.

– Bud Norman

Another Day, Another Tax

April 24, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
The proposed sales tax on commercial transactions conducted through this newfangled internet machine is not a matter of personal interest. Being old-fashioned sorts we prefer to handle the merchandise in some brick-and-mortar establishment and then make our infrequent purchases face-to-face with a friendly clerk, which also provides a much-needed reason to get out of the house, so the tax would have little affect on our finances.
Nor does the proposal strike us as especially outrageous, despite our instinctive aversion to taxes of any sort. Given the ravenous appetite for revenues of the federal, state, and local governments, it seems more remarkable that they hadn’t decided to take a bite out of this tempting e-commerce pie long ago. There’s even an argument to be made about fairness, as sales taxes are charged at all those traditional shops that employ brick-layers and mortar masons and friendly clerks. We suppose that internet shops also employ people, although for all we know they’re run with robots or trained monkeys, but in any case it is hard to see why the law should grant them a competitive advantage.
Still, there’s something unsettling about the recent enthusiasm for all manner of new taxes. In addition to the internet sales tax, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal includes caps on income tax deductions, further cigarette tax increases, limits on the tax breaks for contributions to individual retirement accounts, and a change in the way inflation is measured that also amount to a cut in the earned income tax credit. These follow the wide variety of other taxes hidden within the thousands of pages of Obamacare regulations, the cost of new regulations that the affected businesses will pass along to customers, as well as the countless new taxes cooked up at other levels of government, and although it doesn’t come close to balancing anyone’s budgets it does add up to a lot of money.
Obama famously vowed in his first presidential campaign that he would not raise any taxes on any making less than $250,000 a year, which is apparently the threshold of avaricious greed that merits punitive taxation, but even such friendly media as Politico and the Huffington Post have noticed that these tax increases reach down much further into the middle class. That vow wasn’t so famous as George H.W. Bush’s “read my lips” pledge, which the Democrats somehow successfully used to sink his re-election chances after he capitulated to a Democratic demand for higher taxes, but it was well known enough to have helped Obama get elected. Many people will be less enthusiastic about the president’s vastly expanded government if they understand that they’ll also be asked to pitch in more, along with those all those nasty rich people, and the sooner the realization occurs the better.

– Bud Norman

Taking Both Sides

April 23, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
One might have gleaned from the past election an impression that Islamist terrorism had vanished forever after President Barack Obama personally killed Osama bin Laden with his bare hands, but apparently this is not the case. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the Canadian government’s thwarting of an al-Qaeda plot to commit mass murder on a train heading to the United States are only the most recent events indicating that Islamist terrorism remains a problem.
Thus far the reaction to these events has been largely apolitical, as most of the country remains in one of those moments of post-terrorism unity that punish any attempts at partisan point-scoring, but the necessary arguments about how to proceed will soon commence. Already the well-rehearsed rationalizations are being trotted out in the liberal media, along with the usual hand-wringing about the great Islamophobic backlash that is ever feared but never realized, and the conservative press has begun easing into a full-throated critique of administration policies. All of the familiar points will be reprised, but the debate will be complicated this time around by the shrewdly political nature of Obama’s policies.
Obama has presented himself as a hard-nosed hawk who has continued such Bush-era protocols as indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act, ordered a surge in Afghanistan and prolonged the withdrawal from Iraq along the Bush timetable, prosecuted a terrorist-killing drone war with a ruthlessness that even Bush didn’t dare, and endlessly reminded the public of bin Laden’s death. At the same time he has cultivated a reputation as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning antidote to that awful cowboy Bush, and the impresario of conflict resolution who ordered a decrease in troop strength in Afghanistan and got us out of Iraq, won over Muslim hearts with his exotic background and eloquent apologias to Islamic culture, and banned such nastiness as the enhanced interrogation techniques that led to bin Laden’s death. As political strategy it has been a stunning success, with critics on both the left and right muted and the non-ideological center well satisfied so long as nothing was blowing up. A radical Islamist shouting “Allahu Akbar” killed 12 people at Fort Hood, Texas, but that was easily dismissed as just another instance of workplace violence, and an Islamist terror group killed an ambassador and three other Americans, but that was in some far-away place called Benghazi, Libya, and the Islamist governments being welcomed into power by the administration were reportedly an “Arab Spring,” so it seemed to be working.
Now things are blowing up, and too close to home for the media to ignore, and the policies don’t seem to be working to anywhere near the extent that the president and his supporters have promised. Specific questions will now be asked about the immigration rules that allowed the suspects into the country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s aborted inquiries into one of the suspect’s increasing radicalization, the legal procedures being used to try the surviving suspect, and other matters arising from the Boston bombing, but there will also be a broader debate about the totality of the administration’s policies. Some will blame the hard-nosed protocols carried over and expanded from the Bush administration, while others will blame the tendencies to legalism, appeasement, and accommodation, but it will be most interesting to hear Obama defend his combination of the two.

– Bud Norman

A Good Week for Conspiracy Theories

April 19, 2013 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Others might prefer a good old-fashioned whodunit, but for purely recreational reading we relish a good conspiracy theory. They have plots as carefully contrived as any mystery novel, feature villains and heroes every bit as clearly cut, and offer the same refuge from reality with the same reassuring implausibility.
The past week, however, has brought forth more conspiracy theories than even the most avid buff would want. Bombings at the Boston Marathon, ricin-laced letters sent to a senator and the president, an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, and the culmination of the gun control debate in a series of Senate votes on Wednesday all had the conspiracy theorists working overtime. There is no reason to believe that any of these events are related, but their unlikely confluence in the span of a few days seems to have heightened the suspicions of the conspiracy theorists nonetheless. Coincidences do no occur in conspiracy theories, a strict convention of the genre, and even the most random dots can somehow be connected.
A quick arrest in the ricin-laced letters case has blunted much of the speculation about the case, although any details that emerge might yet inspire more conspiracy theorizing. The suspect is an Elvis impersonator, a plot twist that the most ingenious mystery novelist could not invent, and thus far it is unclear what motives he might have for his alleged crime. He is reportedly a registered Democrat, which will no doubt come as a disappointment to those eager to blame such events on right-wing extremism, but the choice of a staunchly Republican senator and President Obama as victims suggests a bi-partisan sort of craziness that does not easily lend itself to conspiracy theories. Other reports suggest that the suspect is a conspiracy theorist, however, so perhaps his views will eventually spawn a good legend.
An accident is always a more probable explanation for an explosion at a fertilizer plant than a terrorism attack, especially when the plant is located in such an unlikely target as the small town of West, Texas, but that has not stopped the conspiracy theorists from all sorts of suspicious speculation. That the explosion occurred so soon after the Boston Marathon bombings fueled the speculation, as did the town’s proximity to Waco and it’s upcoming anniversary of the tragic conflagration that resulted when federal agents conducted a raid on a religious cult there, and within hours of the explosion there were several web sites dedicated to the possibility of terrorism.
Terrorism clearly occurred at the Boston Marathon, so all of the conspiracy theorizing has been devoted to identifying a possible culprit. Some are openly hoping that it turns out to be white people with extremist right-wing views, while others are assuming that Islamist radicals are to blame, and thus far neither camp has any real evidence for their theories. Photographs of two possible suspects released Thursday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation are a sort of Rorcshach test for conspiracy theorists, grainy and indistinct enough that one camp will look and see two white men while the other will immediately spot two men of Middle Eastern appearance, and in any case the men are only suspects and their ethnicity provides no proof of their motives. For what it’s worth the men’s rather hip-hop style of clothing strikes us as incongruous with right-wing extremism, but perhaps the right-wing extremists in Boston are more fashion-conscious than the ones we encounter here in the heartland. The debate will rage until some definitive proof emerges, and even then the true believers will continue to insist on their original suspicions.
As with every tragedy of this sort, allegations of a “false flag” government theory are also proving popular. The FBI news conference where the photographs were released was constantly interrupted by one of the more prominent peddlers of this theory, which is based solely on the usual wild conjecture and fevered fear of a government conspiracy behind anything bad that happens, and the notion is also gaining currency on some of the more fanciful talk radio programs. It’s a comforting notion that a nefarious cabal is secretly running the world, at least when compared to the sobering reality that the world is far too vast and complex for even the most diabolical genius to successfully run and tragedy is therefore beyond anyone’s control, and conspiracy theories of this sort will always appeal to the anxious people at both ends of the ideological spectrum. The side that is out of power, as the largely forgotten “9/11 Truth” movement demonstrates, will always be more prone to such conspiracy theories.
Which is not to say that people do not conspire with one another to achieve their common goals, a point that was acknowledged by both sides of the recent gun control debate, but these are usually limited conspiracies conducted in plain view and without any cloak-and-dagger conduct. In a petulant and peevish speech in the White House rose garden Obama seemed blamed the Senate’s failure to pass any of his pet proposals on the “gun lobby” convincing the public that his “common sense” measures were part of a government conspiracy to disarm the citizenry, which is a sort of conspiracy theory itself, and his vice president mocked anyone who doubted his good intentions as a paranoid gun nut and member of the “black helicopter crowd.” There are plenty of politicians and activists who do wish to disarm the citizenry, however, and there are reasons to suspect that Obama is among them, so it isn’t paranoid for those who cherish their gun rights to organize against an organized effort to do away with the Second Amendment.
Guarding against a government’s natural inclination for more power is not the same as suspecting a government plot behind every tragedy, and doing so through the democratic process as in the defeat of the gun control proposals is patriotic rather than treasonous. All these crazy conspiracy theories, alas, tend to discredit the valid ones.

– Bud Norman

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