The State of the Union Address: A Study in Lies and Omissions
Barack Obama’s state of the union diatribe on Tuesday night was a portrait of self aggrandizement and mean-spiritedness, and ignorance of dangers that threaten the entire globe. But, then again, should anyone who has been paying attention for the past six years be at all surprised?
There were so many lies, so many exaggerations, so many examples of a lack of the kind of class, dignity and fairness befitting the leader of the free world that it would take many more words than are generally allotted to outside-the-beltway essayists to pen a commentary on more than only a few of them.
Keeping that in mind, I would like to examine just one of dozens of available comments that simply screamed for examination by the mainstream media, almost all of which remained unchallenged. The search for truth, and the ferreting out of lies, have apparently become passé in most journalism circles these days. And then I will attempt to point out a few pressing issues that our president somehow neglected to discuss.
President Obama stated on Tuesday night that ‘We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York, but surely we can understand a father who fears his son can’t walk home without being harassed.' Yes, that was the President of the United States talking, in part, about a local law enforcement incident that occurred in one of the fifty sovereign states – after a grand jury that was convened in that sovereign state ruled that there were no grounds for indictment of the so-called 'harasser.’ A police officer attempting to subdue a criminal, and then defending himself from attack by that very criminal, is now defined, by the American president, as a ‘harasser’ of innocent children. The president of the United States was referring to a ‘son’ who had stolen from a neighborhood store owned by a man who was half his size, a ‘son’ who had bullied that man as a common thug might bully a child, and who had then attacked a policeman to the point at which the policeman believed his life was in danger. That ‘son’ had committed a crime and refused to submit to, and then attacked, a law enforcement officer who was simply performing his job.
Why should the president of the United States become involved at all in this local crime/law enforcement incident? Why should his attorney general do so as well? And some of his closest executive branch advisors. Beyond possibly a personal expression of dismay at the violence that occurred in Ferguson after the incident, why should an American president become in any way involved or vocal? And yet this president not only did so for weeks after the confrontation, but he brought it up in a speech before the United Nations as evidence of his growing list of America’s warts, faults and indignities. And he now sees fit to resurrect it yet again in his state of the union address before congress and the world. The president of the United States apparently has little respect for, or confidence in, local law enforcement or the American judicial system. He feels the need to micro-manage, and off-the-cuff comment, far beyond his constitutional power boundaries, far beyond what would be considered dignified or presidential.
Why is that? The president of the United States sees virtually everything uniquely American through a personal prism that is distorted by abject, hyper-focused racism, disrespect of any authority other than his own, contempt for any vestige of personal liberty or personal responsibility, and an insatiable desire to distort the truth so as to force it to conform to a mold of his own making. His over-riding personality traits consist of unbounded arrogance, delusions of grandeur, a sociopathic need to crucify those who disagree with his pronouncements, and an overwhelming desire to destroy anyone he deems to be an enemy of his agenda. Meanwhile, that same president of the United States is determinedly turning a blind eye to the fact that a large portion of the globe is on fire, both literally and figuratively, as a result of his inept, impotent involvement in the affairs of sovereign nations and his purposeful ignoring of – even, in some cases, abetting of – grave, unprecedented threats to human life and liberty. The stability of entire nations is at risk. Madmen are amassing power and weaponry that, in time, will threaten the entire globe, and, in time, will be uncontainable.
Much of the unrest and bloodshed in the Middle East is a direct result of this president’s policies there. After each of his actions in that part of the world over the past six years he has seen fit to declare ‘successes,’ of sorts, and yet everything he has touched, every nation he has ‘helped,’ has deteriorated. His Middle East strategies are half-hearted, or careless – as are most of his attempts at any kind of ‘leadership.’ They produce stalemates, at best. And yet loss of life – sometimes large losses – are always the result. Evil loves a stalemate, because the forces of evil are never half-hearted. As one of many examples, witness the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and the subsequent dramatic rise in the power, financial strength, adherents, bloodthirst and brutality of ISIS.
America’s friends are under attack while the President of the United States chooses to devote his time to political campaigning (read: consistently lying to the American people in order to justify his abominable programs) and searching for, and broadcasting to the world, faults in America’s past and present, while America’s enemies no longer fear reprisals from the leader of the free world. He is, after all, far too busy microscopically seeking to find fault here at home. Simultaneously, our enemies’ coffers, and their numbers, are growing by the day, as are their brutality and fearlessness. Yet the president of the United States tells the American citizenry in his state of the union address that climate change is America’s greatest concern. Nowhere in this president’s state of the union address were Al Qaeda or ISIS, or the growing threat of radical Islam, even mentioned. Instead, priority was afforded to events in Ferguson, Missouri and the unproven, political concept of climate change.
I cannot remember a time when American power, such as it now is, was so inconsequential, so impotent. Nor a time when the gulf between an American president’s view of the world, and reality, were so starkly divergent. Radical Islam, intermittently declared ‘on the run,’ is consistently regrouping, reorganizing, strengthening, and threatening nations and peoples throughout the entire globe. We are becoming increasingly desensitized to hearing about thousands of brutal, torturous murders worldwide, while being fed a steady diet of diversionary ‘concerns.’
This president’s half-hearted, ill-conceived foreign policy, especially as regards the Middle East and the threat of Islamic terrorism, has resulted in a major free-world leadership vacuum. Even more than a stalemate, terror and upheaval thrive on such a dangerous vacancy, and have an unrelenting way of filling such a vacuum. They are emboldened by weakness and indecision. They take, at any cost, what should never be theirs, and they rarely relinquish, except at great cost to others, occupied ground or subjugated peoples.
America’s greatest concern is not climate change. America’s greatest concern is the virtually unbridled power being wielded by a dishonest, incompetent tyrant who bears no allegiance to either the country he leads or the concept of human liberty – a man who consistently betrays every foundation upon which our beloved republic was built. The state of the union is deplorable, the man who delivered his version of it on Tuesday night is an abomination, and his words are an affront to every thinking person on the planet.