Posted on 07/25/2008 11:41:13 PM PDT by fightinJAG
WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.
It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed to find the ugliest photograph of Mr. Obama ever taken. It caught the senator at a moment that might be exhaustion but looks like conceited smirking. When Der Spiegel featured Mr. Obama on its cover in March, the cover line was “The Messiah Factor.” Must one add that this, too, was not meant to be taken at face value?
Europeans will be as relieved as 72 percent of Americans to see the end of the Bush administration, but their attitudes toward the Democratic candidate are far from being the same as the ones he arouses at home. Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable.
In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated. But genuine worries about demagoguery are not all that’s at issue. The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Everything is worse now than 1939-47, and worse now than at any time during the Cold War...... that’s what our ‘wise’ leftist twits want everyone to believe.
btw, why the HELL is it so great for socialists to celebrate the Berlin Airlift while disdaining and loathing the man who in our time stood fast to bring (potential for) freedom to 50+ millions in Iraq and Afghanistan???? Talk about Euro-centric biases, George W. Bush has far more in common with the best of Harry Truman than Obambi and his fans ever will.
I believe that feeling will turn into..."saudade" for the Bush administration in short order.
The likes of an Obama administration will make quick work of our nation with a socialist congress in control.
The likes of a McCain administration? Show me the Veep...
The big thing that the Germans and Obama share in common is their belief that Saddam should have been allowed to stay in power, or that the “insurgents” and Iranians should have been allowed to rule Iraq if Saddam couldn’t, or that the Iraqis don’t deserve to rule their own nation. This is an important point for them. The irony of the fact that Americans were the key to keeping Berlin free and are today keeping others free escapes them. Meanwhile these ingrates, naifs, utopian double-think dullards, panty waists, philistines, dilettantes and poltroons preach that Baghdad deserves abandonment as soon as possible so Iraq can live a life like Germany in the 1930’s - chaos ending under with a likelhood of a kooky dictator. Their unwillingness to consider the consequences of their ideas is completely lost on these self-proclaimed wiser-than-Bush men and women. The Left today and the fawning sycophants in the media who praise Obama are guilty of group “think” that aids the enemies of liberty and civilization. These world weary sophisticates sure have a tough time with the real world when it won’t conform to the vacuous gibberish of the poet Obama.
excellant, articulate post.
Where’s the Barf Alert?
YES.
This historical example, both of what happened when Germany was left to its own devices in the inter-war years and what happened to Germany when the U.S., after fighting a long and costly hot war, nevertheless stayed the course with an Army of Occupation (yes, many wear the AOC ribbon today) that stabilizes Europe even today.
Actually, I took the author as describing her observations of the German popular thought, not her own views.
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