Obamassiah: America Is Not What It Once Was
“America is… uh… is no longer, uh… what it could be, what it once was.”
So the Obamassiah wants to be President of the United States because the country sucks, and its best days are behind it?
That message, appalling as it is, doesn’t jive with what his wife has been saying.
She was never even proud of America until her husband was running to be president:
(Read more after the leap)
So which is it?
Is the country’s past the only thing worth being proud of, or is Obamassiah’s candidacy (and by their assumption, the future) the only thing to be proud of?
August 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am
This is SO rich. The follow up question for Obama is, “Well, when was American what it could be?”
August 8th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
In the first place, jive is swing music. The word you apparently are looking for is jibe, which means to align.
In the second place, she didn’t say that. She said it was the first time she was really proud of this country. You know, like you’re proud of your kid from the day he’s born, but when he saves someone’s life, you’re really proud.
And as far as America not being what it once was, it’d be nice to be the land of the free and the home of the brave once again, instead of acting like a bunch of nazis.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
i’m really proud of my country all of the time, it’s MY country. It shouldn’t take some windbag getting the spotlight in order to make me really proud. Think of how proud britney, lindsay, and paris must be…
August 8th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Nazis?!?! Please show me where the internment camps are. Show me where we are rounding people up based on their ethnicity and killing them. Please show me that we are actively exterminating races. If you can’t, then you have no business referring to our country acting like a bunch of Nazis.
Honestly, how dare you! We are not living in a Hitler like totalitarian government. We may be a lot of things, including things that we can probably agree on that we’re not proud of, but comparing us to the denizens of evil shows just how uneducated on history you really are. We are nothing like Nazis!
August 8th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
goosfrabba, josh–he obviously got into the shallow end of the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn’t looking…
August 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Wait! Harldelos hasn’t answered the question yet. The question is WHEN was it that we were not “acting like a bunch of nazis” (who’s law is that, that if you invoke Hitler and Nazism that you automatically lose the argument?).
I am actually very interested in the answer to that question. I don’t think we are anywhere close to that level (yet), but we made a move in that direction at one point in our history and we have not completely recovered yet. That time, in my reading of history, started with President Wilson. I would like to know when Harldelos thinks we started that direction.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Actually, harldelos, in the second clip above the quote is NOT “really proud”, but is just “proud”.
August 8th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Joel: That is known as “Godwin’s Law”. It goes “As a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Its corollary is: “Once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress”
August 8th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Godwin’s Law; when you have to compare your opponents to Hitler, you’ve lost the argument.
It would be like me saying something along the lines of, “Well, the last time 200,000 Germans got excited and gathered for a political rally to hear a politician speak, it was a prelude to putting people in ovens.”
The Third Reich was, as Churchill memorably put it, “a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” It has fortunately not been met since, let alone by George W. Bush or Barack Obama (or Woodrow Wilson, previously, for that matter).
August 13th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Scott, as a rule, you should get a towel, dry off behind your ears, and learn what you’re talking about before you spout off. In this case, you want to read the post Mike Godwin made in rec.arts.sf-lovers on August 18, 1991. The subject line of the post was “Nazis (was Re: Card’s Article on Homosexuality”
When someone starts using Nazi as an insult, the usefulness of a thread has reached zero. In this case, it wasn’t being used as an insult but as a reference to the war crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg in 1946.
For instance, for the deliberate instigation of aggressive wars. We haven’t declared war, so we aren’t technically violated that provision; rather, our activities in Afghanistan legally amounts to terrorism.
For instance, for the extermination of racial and religious groups. In the attacks of 9/11, there were four, count’em, four juveniles who were killed, but in the first year of our activities in Iraq, we were responsible for 10,000 semitic muslim children under the age of 1 dying, largely from dehydration and illness as we polluted or destroyed water supplies in the desert.
For instance, for the murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war, such as we did in Abu Ghirab and at the coaling station at Guantanemo Bay, Cuba.
Instead of a president who doesn’t know what the meaning of “is” is, we’ve had a president who doesn’t want to extend the protection of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, because our prisoners were civilians, and doesn’t want to extend civilian protections, because our prisoners aren’t civilians.
This country could use a good, honest, conservative president. Reagan, Eisenhower, and Teddy Roosevelt fit that description. Dubya’s administration has not been very good, nor particularly honest, and it makes Teddy Kennedy look like a knee-jerk conservative.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I guess the nuance of my post escaped your attention. You know, the part where I was saying specifically that the Nazi comparison was not a valid one specifically because of Godwin’s Law. It’s sort of difficult for you to invoke Godwin’s Law when you where the one that first mentioned the Nazis, and not in a context of Nuremberg.
But if you want to pontificate at length about the liberation of Afghanistan being terrorism and assert that we are “acting like a bunch of nazis”, be my guest.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Once again harldelos, you are dancing around the questions. I want to know when you think we were NOT “acting like Nazis”. You note Reagan–a good choice, from my point of view. But if you want to use the “deliberate instigation of aggressive wars” (which has nothing at all to do with being a Nazi or fascist), the U.S. has not declared war since WWII, yet we have engaged in dozens of military activities in the intervening years without such a declaration.
You are really equating the death of civilians in Iraq due to water contamination with the systematic extermination of millions of people due to their race? Really? While at the same time we are building these same people power stations, water treatment facilities, and schools? And comparing Abu Ghirab and Gitmo to Nazi death camps?
Bush has not claimed that the folk in Gitmo are civilians. He has claimed that they are enemy combatants. They are explicitly not covered by the Geneva Convention. They are not covered by the US court system. The Congress passed a system of dealing with enemy combatants which are being implemented now.
I think your comparison of the Bush administration to Nazis fail completely. You are using the term as a term of derision, which, I believe, is what Godwin’s Law was talking about.