ANALYSIS: TRUE. By Rejecting Radical Islam, Obama Substitutes Political Correctness for Reality.
All administrations seem adrift at this point in their second term, because of health issues (Wilson and FDR), crises abroad (Truman and Korea, Ike and Francis Gary Powers, LBJ and Vietnam, Bush winning the Surge), internal crises such as Watergate or Iran-Contra, or in the case of the potential future “First Gentleman,” crises that emanated from his pants.
But this administration has been divorced from reality since its inception, and as Scott Johnson adds at Power Line, “Obama takes the criticism personally. Events have transpired to make him look like a fool (not that he realizes it). He is sarcastic and angry. He is condescending. He wags his finger as he lectures his critics. The straw man is the essential tool of his oratory. He cannot persuade anyone who is not already a true believer, for he is utterly obnoxious.”
All of which are reasons why, as Jonah Goldberg writes, borrowing from a favorite leitmotif of Nietzsche, the “Orlando Shooting Reaction Has the Feel of Eternal Recurrence:”
President Obama, who has spent his presidency yearning for the reality he wants rather than the one he has, once again downplayed any suggestion that this was another battle in the war on Islamic terror he does not want to fight.
“Over the coming days, we’ll uncover why and how this happened,” the president promised, referring to a killer who called 911 to proclaim his allegiance to the Islamic State and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” amidst the mayhem.
Obama conceded that it was an “act of terror,” but as John Podhoretz noted in the New York Post, referring to “terror” without a modifier is like a doctor discussing “cancer” without identifying its specific form or location; it is a way of talking around the problem without addressing it.
Which brings us to the latest utterance of Lonesome Ben Rhodes, Obama’s mouthpiece (or is it the other way around?): “Rhodes: ISIS Fight ‘Will Be More Effective’ Not Calling Them ‘Religious Organization.’”
You wonder how on earth we won World War II lacking such a round-the-clock obsession with hyper-nuanced language.