Mort Zuckerman: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur

US News & World Report ^ | June 18, 2010 | Mort Zuckerman

[Wpin]

President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president. Why? Because the United States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another, so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional threats. Click here to find out more!

Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism, corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for.

The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush.

[hinckley buzzard]

“The president is well-intentioned...”

Heard the same crap on Hugh Hewitt Show last night. It seems to be a contagious disease.

[hinckley buzzard]

Zuckerman is worried about Israel, and jusifiably so. But if obama was strong on Israel Mort wouldn't care about the rest. The "progressives" after all are committed to the very diminution of America that obama is bringing about.

[hinckley buzzard]

I also know people who still defend and admire Obama. They seem so ignorant don’t they?

Never forget--liberalism is the politics of denial. They simply exercise the ability to selectively blind themselves to unpleasant realities.

[Danae]

He has gnawed off both of his own feet is what he has done.

Did it to himself he did! Yes! /Yoda channeling

[RipSawyer]

Amen, you nailed it.

[RipSawyer]

Gone is the DARK CLOWN that had me blind
it’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day

[RipSawyer]

“The Great Pretender”

When I read your post I started to try and write a sarcastic set of lyrics but then I looked up the real lyrics and realized they could have been written FOR Obama it’s an almost perfect song to describe him.

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Pretending I’m doing well
My need is such
I pretend too much
I’m lonely but no one can tell

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame
You’ve left me to dream all alone

Too real is this feeling of make-believe
Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I’m not you see
I’m wearing my heart like a crown

Too real when i feel what my heart can’t conceal

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I’m not you see
I’m wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you’re...
Pretending that you’re still around

Someone who has the skills should make a video of Obama singing this song...oh, wait, look at this, you would have a very hard time improving on this, Freddie Mercury as the Great Pretender. It is disgusting but it knocks my socks off, the perfect satire of Obama done before anyone ever heard of him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbIcfFD30Ms

[RipSawyer]

I agree totally, some people don’t seem to realize that as Eastwood said, “A man’s gotta know his limitations”, the failure to do so precludes him from being really smart.

[RipSawyer]

Post no. 14 which is only three words inspired me to go looking and I found this video. It is somewhat disgusting but it is almost a perfect parody of Obama done long before anyone ever heard his name. If you can stand to watch it it is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbIcfFD30Ms

[RipSawyer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbIcfFD30Ms

[RipSawyer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbIcfFD30Ms

[The Comedian]

“The president is well-intentioned...”

Stopped reading right there. I don’t know why these journalists, pundits, and editorial writing weasels have to start out every justifiable criticism of the incompetent, finger-pointing a$$ clown with some assertion of decncy or “brilliance”. He is not intelligent. He is not well-intentioned, and most importantly, he is not a leader.

Hitler was well-intentioned. Mao was well-intentioned. Charles Manson was well-intentioned. It's a completely disposable phrase.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

"Just laughing and gay like a clown..."

Oh yeah! He's laughing alright...and is he ever GAY!;-)

The dog, Bo, was overheard repeating, "Must remember! Do not turn backside to gay human, do not turn backside to..."

[TauntedTiger]

This is Mort Zuckerman. So you had to expect he’d throw in a few of these types of lines about the One being “well-intentioned” and “smart.”

What’s amazing is that he wrote the rest of this piece—that says a lot about where things are headed. It gives me hope. (Unfortunately, the article itself was frightening in its analysis.)

[RipSawyer]

Did you watch the Freddie Mercury number? It disgusts me and yet draws me at the same time. I swear I can see Obama sometimes when I’m watching Mercury. That video was done long before we ever heard of Obama but to me it could have been done this week as a parody of him.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

I had never seen it before but went to Youtube and watched it.

Freddie is a Queen, but what an incredible talent.

The video is extraordinarily well choreographed and arranged!

Thx for mentioning it. It ought to be Obama's theme song!

Here's the link for anyone interested...Freddie Mercury "The Great Pretender" video.

Warning! Do not watch immediately after a large meal!!! Side effects may include projectile vomiting!;-)

Otherwise, this is the best rendition of "Great Pretender" ever made IMO.

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for the kind words. I have pondered long and hard the implications of your question and I can come to no definitive answer except that I know we must build from the bottom up in trying to grab hold of the liberal mind. It all starts in the garden of Eden and the biblical allegory tells us that man is in rebellion against God. The liberal is unreconciled because he is a God player and he is a God player because he is unreconciled.

Thus, the root of the problem for the Democrats and for the media, which is another word for them, comes from their obsession to play God. Ann Coulter said at the end of one of her books "they would be God." From this fundamental dichotomy between them and us comes all of the strife and all of the strivings of the left.

They cannot leave off because their politics is but an expression of their psychic and spiritual state. They cannot recognize the potential tyranny which their policies court because they believe they have godlike powers to retrieve any situation. They believe they can make the waters recede.

Some time ago I posted this reply which is long but if you have an interest in looks at it from a different angle. Perhaps you can offer some insight respecting the observations I make about Russia:

The author is articulating something profound about the state of the modern Democratic Party but I think there are one or two and more layers of the onion which we might peel away. For example, the author concludes:

The contemporary Democratic Party has corrupted itself so far in its American self-loathing that it is in every sense at odds with the Constitution its elected members have sworn not only to abide by, but to protect.

I judge this observation to be very true but there is an underlying explanation which is very revealing of the psychic state of the Democrat party which offers us both hope for its eventual healing and considerable alarm that it could ultimately be our nation's undoing. First a stipulation, I'm about to charge the Democrat party with a psychic state of mind which a critic might parallel to those open letters printed in mainstream newspapers just before our presidential elections which declare - no, which diagnose -the Republican candidate to be somehow mentally lacking. I confess I have absolutely no credentials to diagnose anyone's mental condition, much less the state of an entire political party. So I concede that what follows is my own prejudice.

Why has the modern Democratic Party "corrupted itself so far in its American self-loathing"? The author claims that the loathing has proceeded so far of the members of the party act contrary to their sworn oaths. I'm not here to argue the truth of this proposition, I assume it to be so as to do virtually all of the posters on these threads because the evidence, especially arising out of the war on terror, has become so pervasive that it can no longer be dismissed. Why do Democrats loathe America so much? Are they aware that they loathe America? Are they aware that they are violating their oaths to the Constitution because of their loathing?

If you are not a poster on these threads and you do not share our virtually universal opinion about Democrats, I invite you to read this thread which alleges that a former Democrat speaker of the House, a former Democrat president of the United States of America, and a sitting Democrat Senator have all, singly or as part of a conspiracy, treacherously undermined the national security of the United States to advance their party's electoral chances!

Kennedy-KGB collaboration

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1727448/posts

I have no doubt that these three Democrats at the very same time they were undermining their country's national security actually believed they were behaving patriotically. The author cites Hillary Clinton's earsplitting screech as evidence of this. For them, white had become black, up had become down, evil had become good and good, evil. The author describes this process of rationalization and ultimate distortion of reality as it occurred in Russia until every human instinct was perverted into its exact opposite meaning. I can recall writing notes to myself on a flight homeward from Moscow in which the single overwhelming reaction that I drew from what I saw was the utter, debased cynicism of the Russians.

How ironic that the author cites the perverse cynicism of the Russians as part of his description, although not necessarily an explanation, of the debased state of the Democratic Party. But the Democrat party is more than debased, worse than merely cynical, it is in a psychic state in which it can do no other. The Democrats are entrapped and they can't get out. Rare are the David Horowitzs of the world who can break free. One author has described this syndrome as being in a "psychic cage."

That's author's thesis is that this psychic cage did not settle upon the psyches of Democrats by accident but was the deliberate, calculated contrivance of THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL which was established in Germany in 1923 with the funding of a millionaire, a George Soros like figure, to create the conditions to bring the Russian Revolution to Germany. He assembled a group of brilliant Jewish intellectuals and established what became known as The School for Social Research which identified those parts of society which acted to retard the coming of the glorious socialist Revolution. These intellectuals then set out systematically to "deconstruct" those impediments to communism: the family, the church, the school, the nation, capitalism, western civilization. Coming to power in 1933, Hitler, who if nothing else could always recognize an enemy, suppressed the group as much for their Jewishness as for their philosophy which caused a kind of modern Frankfurt School diaspora into the rest of the Western world, primarily the United States and Britain. Here the refugees found remarkable influence, becoming associated with the OAS, Columbia school of journalism, Harvard, the State Department and etc. The cancer metastasized.

They took their ambitions to make the world ready for communism with them and by now they had invented some formidable weapons. To deconstruct the first impediment to communist revolution, the family, they attacked patriarchal authority and sought to substitute matriarchal authority. From there it is an easy jump to attack all authority. That was handy for the next cultural institution they wished to undermine, the church. We all know what happened here. Together, the church and school construct for us our epistemology, what we know and how we know it. If we can destroy that, we have destroyed everything and left man soulless. The author quotes Dostoevsky:

Well, my fact is precisely that Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but an attack on the very essence of things, on the things themselves, not merely on their order, on the established order in Russia, but on Russia herself.

We are now very nearly at nihilism. So we see today in our universities, for example, abnegation of their whole purpose and the abandonment of the scientific method, logic, or historical actuality for a so-called "critical theory." Reality means nothing, everything is relative, utterly disposable. The author of the Psychic Cage describes how the universities were seduced and converted before they even realized what had happened to them. One might say the same for the National Council of Churches, for example.

This phenomenon has been described with many terms besides the critical theory such as, cultural Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism etc. and they all seem to fall under the rubric of "political correctness."

I think it is important to understand how insidious is the brainwashing which found its roots in The Frankfurt School and blossomed with the boomer generation. We in the West are beginning to understand, at least intellectually, the phenomenon of Islam, it's fanatical, anti-rational, murderous-suicidal tendencies. We're beginning to see that the phenomenon is not a matter of rational choice. Interestingly, the Germans make the same argument as they outlaw Scientology claiming that it is a cult which disarms the rational powers of its victims. The Germans ought to know about these things for they learnt from the masters, Hitler and Goebbels. When you succeed in tearing away every prop that lets men know what he knows and believe what he believes, you have achieved what Dostoevsky has described-a psychic cage.

So this is how the modern Democratic Party got itself into its present fix, a soulless zombie. Contemporary political scientists might describe it more prosaically, a party without a core message and possessed only of a methodology and a very destructive methodology at that. I do not know whether this means that it is unlikely to get a message or that it's likely to take on any message. Is it likely in its cynicism and nihilism to turn upon itself and destroy itself or is it likely to become dangerous and aggressive? At least we know what we are dealing with and why. We know that we cannot persuade these people with logic. We must "un--deconstruct" the psychic cage, bolt by bolt and nut by nut until the cult-mentality becomes open to human discourse.

By way of illustration, those of us who abhor abortion often scratch our heads at the obduracy of its defenders. We have even described it as a sacramental act in some perverse religion in an effort to explain the otherwise inexplicable. We can make no logic in the face of its ghastliness. The left is untroubled by this even to the point of condoning partial-birth abortion and they scream hysterically at the apparition of posters bearing images of aborted fetuses. We are on different planets. We must understand that these people have not just smashed the order of things, they have smashed the things themselves-as Dostoevsky said.

And so we now understand why Senator Kennedy could sell out his country's national security to advance his own march to the presidency.

The scary part of all this is that we are immersed in a war of survival against mindless, fundamentalist Islam while a political party which represents nearly half the electorate is dysfunctional.

[sauropod]

Not only the world, Mort. Not only the world...

[Grunthor]

“Mort Zuckerman: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur”

Most people at home do as well.