Our first black president is one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. This is no small matter. It’s a tragedy, in fact, and one we’re all going to have to deal with over time.
The evidence is overwhelming. The chief executive is incompetent and corrupt. His stewardship of the economy is miserable. Poverty has increased on his watch and the income gap between blacks and whites has widened. He’s turned a debt crisis into a debt catastrophe. The workforce has dwindled to its lowest in over 35 years. What should have been a rocket-like recovery has become a damp squib.
His foreign policy is in shambles, too. The horrifying reconquest of Iraq by once-defeated terrorists is wholly the fault of this commander-in-chief. Nearly twenty thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed or wounded in Afghanistan since he took office — and for what? The Russian reset reset the hopes of the Soviet Union. The Syria red line was a death-dealing embarrassment. The Iranians are still building nukes. Where in the world are things better — where are they not worse — for Obama’s leadership?
And Obama’s scandals and lawlessness are a disgrace. Corrupting the IRS to target Americans whose politics he doesn’t like. Refusing to enforce laws he disagrees with — which essentially strips our elected officials of their legislative powers. Piling up dirty deals to pass a dreadful health care law no one read and no one wanted. Changing the rotten law by illegal fiat. And, of course, Benghazi: that fatal pile-up of incompetence and lies. Shameful.
Andrew McCarthy has published a book called Faithless Execution arguing for the president’s impeachment. Truth Revolt’s own Ben Shapiro has published a book called The People Vs. Barack Obama arguing for the president’s criminal prosecution. These authors aren’t half-baked internet radicals. I know these men. They’re men of intelligence and probity. It’s the situation they describe that’s radical: a moral failure in the Oval Office that makes Richard Nixon look like Solomon the Wise.
None of this is news. Even Democrats know it. Even journalists can see it with both eyes closed.
But the blackness of Barack Obama makes his failure not just appalling but also taboo.
Because Obama is the first black president, our media watchdogs spin his incompetence and ignore his malfeasance. Because he is black, his political opposition stands hamstrung before his high-handed acts of what can only be called tyranny. Because he is black, both McCarthy’s call for impeachment and Shapiro’s call for prosecution will surely go unheeded. Neither will ever happen, because Obama is black.
This is not a question of race. It’s a matter of narrative. America’s history of mistreating its black citizens is real. Slavery, lynching, legal segregation, state-sanctioned oppression — all real, no matter how you try to soften it. Americans have worked hard to put these transgressions behind us. And in the imaginative world of narrative, the election of our first black president was the triumphant proof that we’d succeeded.
Leftists tend to live by such narratives. They think if they can prove Trayvon Martin’s killing was racially motivated, it says something about the country. It doesn’t. Whatever happened to Martin, we don’t live in a country where whites kill blacks for racial reasons anymore. We don’t live under threat of being killed in a mass shooting. We don’t live in a country where conservatives — or leftists, for that matter — commit acts of terrorism. Islamists routinely commit terrorism. With everyone else hereabouts, it’s an anomaly, universally condemned. Spinning isolated events into a narrative that suits your emotional leaning is a fool's game. Or a leftist's, as I said.
But right wingers ignore the power of narrative at their peril. Stories are the way people think — all of us; yes, you too. And we should not be too quick to dismiss, or laugh off, or discount the pain decent Americans feel at what they see happening in the White House.
The fact that our first black president is a failure is a genuine tragedy for all of us, not just the left. It’s a potentially redemptive narrative that’s gone terribly, terribly wrong.
It hurts us all when a good narrative goes bad
Our first black president is one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. This is no small matter. It’s a tragedy, in fact, and one we’re all going to have to deal with over time.
The evidence is overwhelming. The chief executive is incompetent and corrupt. His stewardship of the economy is miserable. Poverty has increased on his watch and the income gap between blacks and whites has widened. He’s turned a debt crisis into a debt catastrophe. The workforce has dwindled to its lowest in over 35 years. What should have been a rocket-like recovery has become a damp squib.
His foreign policy is in shambles, too. The horrifying reconquest of Iraq by once-defeated terrorists is wholly the fault of this commander-in-chief. Nearly twenty thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed or wounded in Afghanistan since he took office — and for what? The Russian reset reset the hopes of the Soviet Union. The Syria red line was a death-dealing embarrassment. The Iranians are still building nukes. Where in the world are things better — where are they not worse — for Obama’s leadership?
And Obama’s scandals and lawlessness are a disgrace. Corrupting the IRS to target Americans whose politics he doesn’t like. Refusing to enforce laws he disagrees with — which essentially strips our elected officials of their legislative powers. Piling up dirty deals to pass a dreadful health care law no one read and no one wanted. Changing the rotten law by illegal fiat. And, of course, Benghazi: that fatal pile-up of incompetence and lies. Shameful.
Andrew McCarthy has published a book called Faithless Execution arguing for the president’s impeachment. Truth Revolt’s own Ben Shapiro has published a book called The People Vs. Barack Obama arguing for the president’s criminal prosecution. These authors aren’t half-baked internet radicals. I know these men. They’re men of intelligence and probity. It’s the situation they describe that’s radical: a moral failure in the Oval Office that makes Richard Nixon look like Solomon the Wise.
None of this is news. Even Democrats know it. Even journalists can see it with both eyes closed.
But the blackness of Barack Obama makes his failure not just appalling but also taboo.
Because Obama is the first black president, our media watchdogs spin his incompetence and ignore his malfeasance. Because he is black, his political opposition stands hamstrung before his high-handed acts of what can only be called tyranny. Because he is black, both McCarthy’s call for impeachment and Shapiro’s call for prosecution will surely go unheeded. Neither will ever happen, because Obama is black.
This is not a question of race. It’s a matter of narrative. America’s history of mistreating its black citizens is real. Slavery, lynching, legal segregation, state-sanctioned oppression — all real, no matter how you try to soften it. Americans have worked hard to put these transgressions behind us. And in the imaginative world of narrative, the election of our first black president was the triumphant proof that we’d succeeded.
Leftists tend to live by such narratives. They think if they can prove Trayvon Martin’s killing was racially motivated, it says something about the country. It doesn’t. Whatever happened to Martin, we don’t live in a country where whites kill blacks for racial reasons anymore. We don’t live under threat of being killed in a mass shooting. We don’t live in a country where conservatives — or leftists, for that matter — commit acts of terrorism. Islamists routinely commit terrorism. With everyone else hereabouts, it’s an anomaly, universally condemned. Spinning isolated events into a narrative that suits your emotional leaning is a fool's game. Or a leftist's, as I said.
But right wingers ignore the power of narrative at their peril. Stories are the way people think — all of us; yes, you too. And we should not be too quick to dismiss, or laugh off, or discount the pain decent Americans feel at what they see happening in the White House.
The fact that our first black president is a failure is a genuine tragedy for all of us, not just the left. It’s a potentially redemptive narrative that’s gone terribly, terribly wrong.
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