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Why Honduras matters (cont.) — 34 Comments

1. Synova’s thoughts get better each time I read them.

2. Let me just add, for the sake of completeness — this would not be so big a deal, had President Obama not made such a fetish of showing everyone what they wanted to see, telling everyone what they wanted to hear. (Remember, during the campaign, he proudly described himself as “a mirror”, and portrayed this as a strength.)

   As a result, we really don’t know what he thinks about a great number of things. We know what he ought to think, based on his election as a state Senator, U.S. Senator, and now President of the United States… and that’s what a lot of the arguments in his favor boil down to. (People ask what Obama truly believes on some issue, and his defenders retort that his views must be mainstream, and to think otherwise of a properly-elected senator and President is ridiculous.)

   Since Obama has made most of his life unavailable to us — in terms of his school transcripts, early records, and such — we know about him only what he wants to show us… and what we see him do. And since he’s been a legislator, lecturer, and community organizer all his adult life, his track record of actions began in January 2009.

   I believe he has wondered aloud why the press scrutinizes his every word and gesture so carefully — even more carefully that Presidents generally expect. The reason is that he hasn’t given us any choice.

   We know, for example, that Sen. John McCain is a man who can choose the honorable path over personal gain — we know this because he’s done it, at great personal cost. We know that Sen. Joe Lieberman has the courage to turn his back on his own party in the name of what he believes is right — we know this because he’s done it. We know that Gov. Sarah Palin can take on the entrenched fat cats in her own party, at great risk to her own career, and defeat them — we know this because she’s done it. We know that all three of these people can work effectively with the opposing party, even if it means spurning their own — we know this because they’ve all done it.

   We know none of these things about Barack Obama.

   So if Obama frightens us with his words and actions, it’s in large part because he hasn’t seen fit to show us what he will do and what he won’t do. We’re afraid of the unknown, and Obama is unknown.

   The day will come, I am certain, when Obama will feel the tide turns against him. People will accuse him of things, and he will reply: “But how could you believe me capable of such things? I am your mirror. Is that what you see when you look into the mirror?” And the people will reply: “We know what we see, Mr. President, when we look in the mirror. But you are not a mirror, and we no longer believe that you reflect us.”

   What, I wonder, does Barack Obama see when he looks in the mirror?

   respectfully,
   Daniel in Brookline

3. Honduras matters because the Obama administration clearly backed the wrong side. Their first instinct was to support the would-be dictator against the rule of law. In Iran he just waffled, but in Honduras he clearly took sides — the wrong side.

   This is extremely disturbing because it bodes ill not only for Obama’s foreign policy but for his domestic policy as well. Obama and his close advisors revealed themselves in this situation and the picture is not pretty at all.

4. Daniel in Brookline, bravo.

5. bravo, Daniel in Brookline

6. Daniel in Brookline:
   (Remember, during the campaign, he proudly described himself as “a mirror”, and portrayed this as a strength.)….What, I wonder, does Barack Obama see when he looks in the mirror?

   The mirror didn’t just appear during the campaign. It also describes him at Harvard Law.

   He reminds me of that misued Gertrude Stein quote about Oakland, her hometown:

   “There is no there there.”
   (The context of the quote was that returning as an oldster she didn’t recognize her childhood area as it had had been so built up , so it was more in the “paved pardise and put down a parking lot” sense. I mean the quote in the manner that most interpret it: nothing there.)

   He doesn’t know us. He views us the way an anthropologist looks at the natives, trying to ascertain the proper phrase to placate us.

   Here is Nico and the Velvet Underground doing I’ll be Your Mirror. One of the few rock and roll albums I ever purchased.

   Regarding Honduras: it may be the case where his doing nothing may be the best course. While he fell into the laps of Thugo and the Castro brothers on that one, at least he didn’t do anything but open his ignorant mouth. Though I like what he said about those who want to get the Yankee out of Latin America are angry because we didn’t intervene this time. But it would have been better in the beginning had he waited before he aligned himself with Thugo and the Castro brothers.

   I wonder what he will say about the proposed trial of Mousavi in Iran.

   Unfortunately, inaction in foreign affairs will not always lead to a good result.

7. Wow, thanks Neo. 🙂

   Frightened might not be the right word, but angry is wrong for me. I’m not angry. The health care thing makes me angry. Maybe alarmed is a better term for my reaction to Obama’s support of Zelaya.

   It’s not all that alarming when regular people don’t understand the necessity of, say, the electoral college as a balancer of large states vs. small states interests and issues because its a bit debatable if the college is effective that way… but the calls for direct election by majority popular vote… it’s not at all hard to see how that would cause extreme regional imbalance and potential unrest. There seems to be more people all the time who think that our term limits for President are way too short. Sure, so our state controlled education fails to teach adequate civics (and isn’t *that* a conflict of interests!) and people have heard so often “democracy good” and “majority rule” that it’s understandable if people haven’t questioned it.

   But someone ought to wonder, at some point, why elected “presidents for life” are either from oppressive dictatorships, communist hell-holes, or collapsed socialist economies.

   There is a *reason* that a whole lot of people in a whole lot of countries (the free ones!) either set up constitutions including them or otherwise enacted term limits.

8. Honduras matters because of what is shows us about Obama’s instinctive likes and dislikes, what dishes he wants to taste from and what dishes he would reject.

   Dictatorship is his dish, and uppity peasants insisting on democracy is not.

   Be Warned.

9. And even if it’s understandable for people not to understand the value of checks and limits to majority rule… it’s not understandable when that person is the President.

   Someone said about the Town Hall protesters that “this is a democracy, not mob rule!” A commenter at QandO responded… “I thought democracy *was* mob rule.”

   And it is.

   We only have freedom at all because our Constitution protects individuals and minorities against the majority.

10. P.S.–You want to know why gun shops are having a hard time keeping AK47’s in inventory, and ammunition sales are though the roof? This is why.

11. Zelaya was claiming the right of the PEOPLE to vote to suspend the Constitution and keep him in power.

    That he was rigging the election makes no difference at all to the fact that, no, the people can NOT vote to suspend the Constitution. That is why the Constitution is there.

    And Obama’s first instinct was to support Zelaya and the will of the people.

    “Alarmed” works.

12. I’m reading Pipes Concise History of the Russian Revolution.” Highly recommended for insight into Bolshevik tactics. Alternatively, just read today’s newspaper – the tactics haven’t changed.

    Bolsheviks claimed that any and all opponents were “hirelings” of “capitalists,” packed meetings with their supporters to make themselves seem to have overwhelming support, and seized power, and then comported themselves as though someone had ratified their right to it.

    Sound familiar?

13. Sorry, forgot to close the italics.

14. Interesting read occam… i havent gotten to that one, does it go into depth as to the latvians participation? the riflemen, or administrators?

    anyway, your right… nothing has changed, nothing does change with them. for actual change would mean to evolve away from their ideology.

    replace man with ideology and the saying that a reasonable man changes and adapts to the world
    a unreasonable man expects the world to change for them, therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men.

    its a horrible saying, but thats the kind of mentality. a constant bias in a random walk will eventually pull the system all the way to one side or another as its effect accumulates.

    they play games using the things that they think people pay attention to en masse. so they like votes. many dont pay attention to candidates, or other issues… but everyone pays attention to the final count. so they hammer the importance of that not the qualifications and other things leading up to such.

    let me know how good it is… 🙂

15. i’m all for going back to State Legislatures choosing the Senators. The people often do not know what is going on, but State Legislatures might be more inclined to keep track of Federal Unfunded mandates to the States- and keep the Senate on a 10th Admendment leash.

16. jon baker:

    One of my pet peeves is the 17th Amendment. I’d love to see it repealed. Originally, as the Founders intended, the House of Representatives was popularly elected, while the Senate was chosen by the State legislatures, to represent the States’ interests. The two bodies of Congress were very different, by design.

    The popular election of Senators was a huge step away from a Republic and towards a pure democracy, which the Founders abhorred. It laid the groundwork for the massive expansion of Federal power at the expense of the States.

17. Obama saw that Zelaya had a plan to stuff ballot boxes and arrange for unlimited terms in office.

    So, what’s not to like?

18. Daniel, I disagree strongly that we don’t know what Bam-bam is like.

    He’s been real consistent in his choice of associates and mentors — all hard Left. And in his moves and actions since he ascended to the presidency — all hard Left.

    Why can’t you see it? it’s in letters three feet high and right under our noses.

    As for his famous (and incredibly patronizing) affectation of “listening to and understanding” all sides, that’s a con job. Transparent as glass, when you see him in action.

    Watch the knife, not the hand.

19. The point I was trying to make yesterday is reflected in this Wall Street Journal report from June, excerpted below. But if a someone is animated merely by a dislike of Pres. Obama (and an ability to read his mind, and to know his instincts–always cast in the worst light), than any action of his can be read in a negative way.

    WSJ, 6/29/09
    “…Latin America analysts said the Honduran coup will complicate President Obama’s efforts to re-engage a region where anti-Americanism has flourished in recent years. They said Mr. Chavez is likely to seize on the crisis to depict Central America as under attack. As a result, analysts said Mr. Obama will need to aggressively call for the reinstatement of President Zelaya, despite U.S. concerns that he is seeking to mirror Mr. Ché¡vez’s campaign to secure limitless rule.
    “‘It’s very important for the U.S. to come out against the coup and make the point that the U.S. supports democracy unequivocally,’ said Kevin Casas-Zamora, Costa Rica’s former vice president and a senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “This would prevent Ché¡vez from stealing the show.”

20. Beverly,

    I don’t think we’re disagreeing all that much. I said that everything we know about President Obama in terms of his actions (as opposed to his words) are based on things he’s done since the 2008 elections.

    Personally, I don’t see Obama as evil, or as a coldly calculating socialist determined to march us in lockstep towards Marxism. I see him, rather, as a con man, a narcissist, and a largely incompetent playboy… which, in many ways, is better. I don’t think he cares as much about where the country goes next as he cares about where he goes next.

    He’s nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is, or as he’s tried to persuade us that he is (with precious little evidence). He has no executive experience of any sort, and he’s inexperienced enough not to realize what a huge problem this is. (For example, he still has not learned that the President doesn’t have the luxury of speaking without thinking.) I think he sees the Presidency as a shiny new toy, and now that he has it, he’ll try to do the things he’s always wanted to do, the things that, he thinks, none of his predecessors were smart enough to do.

    (He’s now beginning to see, if not to understand, that the things he wanted aren’t so simple after all, and that his predecessors may actually have known what they were doing.)

    If we can get inside his head, we can try to predict what he’ll do next. In my opinion, we get pretty close if we just assume that, to President Obama, it really is all about him. That’s why he won’t acknowledge mistakes, and tries to explain his about-face policy changes as though they were not changes at all. That’s also why, with respect to the growing unrest in re ObamaCare, he’s responding as though it’s a personal attack on him. This also explains the unbelievable hubris and narcissism of my favorite Obama quote: “I like being President, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it.”

    So what will happen next? I think he’ll continue to misstep, in large and small ways, and he’ll overreach to correct the mistakes he can’t ignore. The American people will become more and more disillusioned with him, Congress will eventually follow suit, and in the end he’ll be a lame-duck President before his time, left wondering what happened to all his landslide popularity. (Inevitably, of course, he’ll see none of this as his fault.)

    For in the end, what he has to offer us, mostly, is a collection of half-baked and failed ideas, and a world-class charisma with which to sell them. That can work for a while. As Harry Truman once said: “The American people can always spot a phony. Sometimes it takes them a little while, but they always spot one in the end.”

    The ones that really make me angry are Obama’s unpaid representatives in newspapers and TV stations across the country. They have a vital function to perform — to hold a politician’s feet to the fire — and they’re not doing it. Sure enough, the American people have looked for someone who can do the job… and are abandoning newspapers and network TV news in droves. I suspect that, in decades to come, there will be case studies in J-school about how a Presidential candidate was able to hypnotize so many of them, so effectively, for so long.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

21. So, the impeachment proceedings against Nixon was a coup? good to know that the Democrats at the time where intent upon seizing power from an elected offical.

22. Interesting read occam… i havent gotten to that one, does it go into depth as to the latvians participation? the riflemen, or administrators?

    It does indeed, Artfldgr. Perhaps I was sensitized to Latvians by your earlier post, but it does seem like they’re everywhere. Here’s a quote (p. 162):

    On Friday, January 5, Petrograd, especially the area adjoining Taurida, resembled a military encampment as troops armed to their teeth deployed around the palace and on the streets leading to it. The principal force consisted of Latvian riflemen, who had adopted a pro-Bolshevik stance and in the next two years would render the new government invaluable services both in the interior of the country and on the front of the Civil War.

    And much like Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, the book is interesting in a topical way (I thought it might be – one of the reasons I decided to read it now) as an insight into Red tactics, such as reflexively disparaging their opposition as “hirelings” of capitalists, the Tsar, the Germans, and even…the Americans.

23. “…Latin America analysts said the Honduran coup will complicate President Obama’s efforts to re-engage a region where anti-Americanism has flourished in recent years. They said Mr. Chavez is likely to seize on the crisis to depict Central America as under attack.

    The quote above begs the question. There was no Honduran coup. The coup was foiled.

    “‘It’s very important for the U.S. to come out against the coup and make the point that the U.S. supports democracy unequivocally,’ said Kevin Casas-Zamora, Costa Rica’s former vice president and a senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution.

    The Brookings Institution? Got it.

    Btw, the U.S. does support democracy unequivocally (or did, at any rate). That’s why we need to support the Honduran government, Supreme Court, and people against Zelaya.

    “This would prevent Ché¡vez from stealing the show.”

    So let me see if I have this straight. We should let a Chavez fellow traveler seize control of a democratic country so as not to give Chavez (darling of the left, and Tsar of Obama’s reading list) a talking point to try to help his fellow travelers …seize control of democratic countries. Is that right?

    We really need to get a better class of Red. This is like playing chess with a chimp.

24. md:
    My take on your WSJ quote is 1) nameless analysts, save for the Costa Rican, are cited; 2) the analysts are talking about the Honduran “coup”; 3) Obama must out-Chavez Chavez to gain Latin American favor; 4) the Costa Rican wizard is at Brookings.

    This stinks.

    That it appeared in the WSJ just means to me that the writer there is subject to the same corrosive influences as elsewhere in the MSM.

25. thanks… i am going to put it on the list to read to see if i can fidn more detail. in a way, i am searching for my real grandfather… 🙂

    you will find later, if the book goes that far, that after the revolution they were taken care of well, and then suddenly stalin hated all of us because we wanted to be free… and because some wanted freedom, those on stalins side were automatically considered traitors.

    the people who served and created the revolution, the FIRST ONES TO BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF BY THAT SYSTEM, were murdered then.

    its not that your sensitized cause of what i said, other than to know what latvia is at all. its that you have not read the full histories, where they tell you who was actually doing what rather than refer to them in a general way.

    in western history books that have been revisioned, thats washed out. the reason being is that it describes the very nature that one learns about was there from even before the state was hatched!!! that there has never been anything different… the purges and things didnt start with stalin, they were started with lenin as a means to power. from day one to today… NOTHING has changed… you still have the checka, vchecka, kgb, now renamed again, as fsb… whats in a name? call it eugenics and everyone screams at the evil, call it abortion and everyone fights to expand it.

    names and such are not real… they are mental symbosl, and all mental symbols are not real. your thoughts are not real. etc…

    the point that your learning in fine detail here and NOW will be sensitive to is how the ruthless nature and the using of people is their core.

    once you start to understand that, and that the latvians after the creation were the only ones that lenin and stalin and such could trust. so they filled the offices of the checka, they became the administrators and designers and coordinators of the mass terror and its tortures.

    so maybe latvians might know a thing that americans dont… maybe we have tales from our society of those that served inside and were betrayed.

    obama by the way is a splittig image of Derzinshkies left hand man…

    keep me posted… i am fascinated and want to keep my knowledge correct.

    THANKS!!!!!!!!

26. Personally, I don’t see Obama as evil, or as a coldly calculating socialist determined to march us in lockstep towards Marxism. I see him, rather, as a con man, a narcissist, and a largely incompetent playboy… which, in many ways, is better.

    Obama is a con man, a galloping narcissist, and incompetent, God knows, but he himself is irrelevant. He’s a spokesmodel. Period. The Reds picked up a born newsreader from central casting, groomed him (although apparently not enough), and propelled him into the Presidency to advance their cause, whether wittingly or otherwise. If he becomes a liability to them, look for a tragedy to ensue, which they would blame on anti-Red Americans. The propaganda value alone would be enormous.

27. i would suggest reading george keenans long telegram… it goes into their natures and is VERY accurate… its a VERY level handed view of it.

28. occam, sounds like you got farther along in the book. 🙂

29. Artfldgr, I’m halfway through the book, but there are already intimations that the Latvians were later sold out.

    Glad you like the reading suggestion. It’s recompense for your own excellent suggestion of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which I just finished and found to be excellent (and exhaustively referenced).

    Another topical point from Pipes’ book: the Reds intentionally inflated the currency into oblivion to destroy all savings and make everyone dependent on them for work to survive. They did this by simply printing money to pay for everything they wanted, without bothering to generate revenue to back the currency thus created. Uh oh…

30. “They said Mr. Chavez is likely to seize on the crisis to depict Central America as under attack. As a result, analysts said Mr. Obama will need to aggressively call for the reinstatement of President Zelaya,”

    The only reason that Chavez has any traction is that our intellectual “liberal” betters are swooning over him and ignoring what he’s doing to his economy and ignoring the restrictions on freedom in that country because when they say they believe in freedom they lie. They believe in benevolent government caring for its children… and if children need to be restricted then so be it!

    Chavez will portray himself as under attack and will manufacture enemies if he needs to because that’s how he stays in power and that’s how he builds influence in other Central American countries. Compromising our own values and *legitimizing* his in a futile attempt to keep him from finding enemies in the shadows is shortsighted, even cowardly.

    There are a multitude of things that Obama (or any US President) could have done when asked to take a position and if Obama is such a piker that he couldn’t figure out a way to emphasize the importance of term limits in support of peace, freedom and prosperity… then we are really doomed aren’t we.

31. md: That’s an utter absudity. Zelaya is Chavez’s man. Reinstating him plays into Chavez’s hands, and strengthens him. The quote you offer is sophistry and convoluted claptrap.

32. As an indication of Zelaya’s being Thugo’s tool, consider this quote from Patrici Rodas, Zelaya’s foreign minister.

    “Un saludo a nuestro comandante Hugo Ché¡vez. Sin él, sin su apoyo, esta repercusié³n medié¡tica no habré­a sido posible”
    A salutation to our comandante Hugo Chavez. Without him, without his support, this media blitz would not have been possible.

    OUR Comandante. Last I checked, Thugo didn’t have a Honduran passport.
    It is interesting that the MSM has ignored the way in which Zelaya got booted out of Mexico.

33. Here is the source for the above quote.

    http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2009/07/patricia-rodas-woman-who-married-zelaya.html

34. oops: this is the link:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124619401378065339.html

    Neo: I say no more, but you know that sophistry and convoluted claptrap is relative, and is practiced, as it ever has been, across the political spectrum.

    OC: Red? Chimp? thanks.

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