What Happened To Obama?

[Formaldehyde]

Is it in the top 10? Top 20? doesn't seem that way to me.

That doesn't say much for the US if essentially imprisoning 110,000 innocent people for 4 years in tents and shacks in the middle of nowhere isn't even in the top 20.

But does it really matter if it's not even in the top 100? Was it morally wrong to do so or not? Should we feel embarrassed and ashamed or not? Even more importantly, should we make sure all school children know about it so it never happens again?

To be fair, Japan never was going to invade the US either. But people didn't realize it at the time because of fear.

It was far more than fear. It was due to paranoia, bigotry, and ignorance which wasn't countered by the authorities at the time, because they wanted them to feel that way to help fuel the war effort. They even generated propaganda to magnify those prejudices.

 

[Cutlass]

That doesn't say much for the US if essentially imprisoning 110,000 innocent people for 4 years in tents and shacks in the middle of nowhere isn't even in the top 20.

But does it really matter if it's not even in the top 100? Was it morally wrong to do so or not? Should we feel embarrassed and ashamed or not? Even more importantly, should we make sure all school children know about it so it never happens again?

Yes, we should. Just as we should never forget that many of the top leaders and founders of the US were slave holders.

But does the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, owned slaves completely discredit what they accomplished in creating the United States, its Constitution, and its government?

And if not, then why does the internment completely discredit all that FDR otherwise accomplished? Because the reason the internment is being tossed around so much now is not that it was in and of itself one of the biggest crimes in American history, but because of the desire to discredit everything else that FDR did during his tenure.

It was far more than fear. It was due to paranoia, bigotry, and ignorance which wasn't countered by the authorities at the time, because they wanted them to feel that way to help fuel the war effort. They even generated propaganda to magnify those prejudices.

It was also a marked failure in understanding just what the extent of Japanese power was.

 

[luiz]

Yes, we should. Just as we should never forget that many of the top leaders and founders of the US were slave holders.

But does the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, owned slaves completely discredit what they accomplished in creating the United States, its Constitution, and its government?

I think that interning people because of their ethnicity in the 1940's is worse, from a relative POV, than holding slaves in the 18th century. How many countries had abolished african slavery by the time of the American Revolution? None that I know of; France would only do it in 1794 (Massachusets freed all slaves in 1780) and Haiti in 1804. So the US Founding Fathers were in line with everybody else. What was done to the Japanese-Americans in WW2, however, would be unacceptable in several countries at the time.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Yes, we should. Just as we should never forget that many of the top leaders and founders of the US were slave holders.

But does the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, owned slaves completely discredit what they accomplished in creating the United States, its Constitution, and its government?

And if not, then why does the internment completely discredit all that FDR otherwise accomplished? Because the reason the internment is being tossed around so much now is not that it was in and of itself one of the biggest crimes in American history, but because of the desire to discredit everything else that FDR did during his tenure.

No, of course it doesn't completely discredit them, any more than it completely discredits Obama for inheriting the economic mess from the previous administration, and being the victim of silly partisan congressional games. A Republican president would have likely responded even worse after Pearl Harbor.

It was also a marked failure in understanding just what the extent of Japanese power was.

It was really nothing of the sort. The extent of the Japanese military was quite well known for decades. Much of the American navy was assembled at Pearl Harbor to specifically counter that threat, as the US government continued to deliberately provoke them to attack. While the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise (they were supposed to attack the Philippine Islands or Malaysia instead), and it set back the ability of the US to immediately respond to a Pacific theater war, it certainly didn't take us long to rebuild and completely annihilate the Japanese military.

There never really was a great "Jap" peril, much as there never was a Spanish one, a Soviet one, an Iranian one, a Panamanian one, an Iraqi one, an al Qaeda one, or an Afghan one. It is simply quite easy to convince the American public of nearly anything, especially after a sneak attack. But the leaders and the professional analysts certainly knew the truth in all these situations, except perhaps in a few incidents where the former weren't terribly bright. They simply decided it was in their best interests to continue to keep the American public in the dark and to deliberately mislead them; to prey upon their xenophobia and bigotry to accomplish their own goals.

This is why the American public should never forget the past, since it keeps repeating because they typically do. These dark incidents in our past need to be highlighted and studied in great detail, instead of downplayed and largely ignored.

 

[Berzerker]

The financial crisis wouldn't have happened as it did without mistakes made by both republicans and democrats. Democrats for example famously turned a blind eye to the faults of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

and Angelo Mozilo/Countrywide and their champion Barney Frank

and he keeps getting elected anyway

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Point 1:

Economically, the Democrats under his leadership are to the right of Eisenhower/Nixon/Ford Republicans. Don't kid yourself, the changing political nature of America (and Canada, Britain, everywhere) has not been complicated. It has become consistently more liberal on race, sexuality, lifestyle, and other social issues. It has become consistently more right-wing on economic issues. Even "liberals" (including Obama during the primary) praise the economic brilliance of the lovable half-wit Reagan.

At the time of the primaries it was fairly clear that Edwards and Kucinich were far more correct in worldviews (even if the former turned out to have catastrophic personal issues). What I didn't foresee was that Obama was even worse than Hillary.

Point 2:

There was an absolute racism going on when Obama was elected. People just couldn't foresee a half-black, half-white, Kenyan-Hawaiian-Indonesian-Kansan being a conservative. Well, he is. That, of course is the irony of the progressive support for him. These open-minded people were closed to the possibility that people from different backgrounds can have tastes that are utterly different from your stereotypes of that background. No matter how many times Obama said things that betrayed his beliefs and style, all these colour-blind do-gooders remained blind to anything but colour. Clearly old white men can't be open-minded progressives. That only belongs to women and minorities.


Final Thought

Nothing happened to him, this is what he always was. And if he is faking the conservatism for political gain, then he has done it VERY thoroughly and consistently. In that case, he's also a coward and a fool.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Final Thought

Nothing happened to him, this is what he always was. And if he is faking the conservatism for political gain, then he has done it VERY thoroughly and consistently. In that case, he's also a coward and a fool.

This is the most important point. We aren't seeing a new Obama, we're seeing Obama for what he always was. He can't go back, because he never changed.