http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Pristina_airport + the Russian MO, writ small or large, in just about every Red-Blue flashpoint since WW2.

I assume Obama knows the history, but he also knew the history of the Iraq enforcement, yet his proposed alternative as a state senator was that Saddam would just fade away if we let him be.

Under previous Neo posts, I’ve called Obama an avatar or company rep.

In 2012, Romney > Obama. But Obama the avatar of the Left’s first, non-stop, and always movement > Romney.

Obama is the actual President doing things, so he must be a center of focus. However, when people of the Right fixate on Obama as the creative source of the problem, they’re being misdirected. He’s a creation, not the creator.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Ukraine Illustrates Hard Truths Liberals Won’t Face. “Now we are in the almost unimaginable position of looking back at Jimmy Carter as an example of comparatively sure, savvy leadership. The Russians invaded Afghanistan and Carter armed the rebels. The Russians invaded Crimea and Barack Obama went on Ellen to hear the hostess gush about how much America loves Obamacare.”

—Glenn Reynolds 3/24/14 11:59

The link to Kurt Schlichter:

http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2014/03/24/ukraine-illustrates-hard-truths-liberals-wont-face-n1812563

One illustration I had with regard to the truly ephemeral nature of Obama’s 21st century diplomacy was as follows: I was watching some stock footage of Putin signing the charter annexing the Crimean Peninsula to Russia. I thought Obama should have someone draft a charter annexing Russia to the United States and the ceremoniously sign it.

What’s the difference? It points out that the charter is meaningless. Charter or not, what chance would the U.S. ever have to annex Russia?

It reverts back to the aphorism that possession is 9/10s of the law. Whether Putin has the authority (or doesn’t have the authority) to annex Crimea, whether he annexes or not depends not upon some signed piece of paper, but whether anyone of standing (i.e., more activist/stronger than Putin) permits him to do so or not. The charter, in Obama’s own words are “just words.” It’s the fact that Putin is willing to do something about it within a group that stands by idly. Putin is the activist in a group of passivists.

Another observation is that for a community organizer, Obama sure talks a good game but as a supposed activist he can’t seem to organize his way out of a paper bag.

Empty suit, but then again, we already knew that.

The surviving media will blame Bush.

Yep. Proper activism is different tools with different calibrations for different purposes, different settings, and different audiences. At times, simultaneously.

I agree with Matt_SE that “Are people today really worse than the generations that came before? I have my doubts.”

The more that things change, the more they stay the same, right? Well, activism is basically the art and science of manipulating the things about us collectively that stay the same. Activism is sociology weaponized.

Where I disagree with Matt_SE is the passive implication in his conclusion of “reality reasserting itself and teaching the old lessons to the new generation” – as though a distinct savior entity named “reality” will come around to shoulder the heavy-lifting of social change.

Nobody named “reality” is coming to save us.

While what Matt_SE says may be correct in a descriptive sense, in a prescriptive sense, social change will only be created by Americans together making the choice to act and then doing the actual uncertain, risky, ugly, dirty, perhaps self-sacrificial, failure-and-fix heavy-lifting to manufacture the social changes.

Matt_SE seems to imply there is a reliable cycle of societal death and rebirth that we can count on.

No, there isn’t.

If there was, we’d still have the Roman Empire, or we wouldn’t, because we’d still have the centuries, millenniums-spanning civilizations that came before the Greeks and Romans flashed in history.

Societal death is, most likely, inevitable. Societal rebirth is conditioned upon whether the society has the activists necessary to create the rebirth.

The founders were activists who achieved their ends by any means necessary. Whatever natural laws there may be enshrined in our founding documents don’t actually exist until and unless they’re reified by activists. The founders’ America will disappear like a whiff of steam, and forgotten like a dream, if absent the activists who understand what Jefferson meant.

Maybe Vallicella is reading Neo’s blog. At the same time, what we’re saying ought to be obvious to the point of self-evident.

Marxism, both the original ideology and the latter ideology-stripped method, is Darwinian. Really, if the Right is unable to adapt Marxist-method activism in order to compete for social dominance, then evolutionarily speaking, it doesn’t deserve to be the norm. And right now, people of the Right have difficulty even conceiving adapting Marxist-method activism.

I can’t even know for certain at this point how strong the Left really is because they’re not being tested by significant activist competition. I only know that (albeit) in a local setting my side defeated Left activists who supposedly had a multi-generational iron grip on a supposedly, hopelessly leftist community, and the only fundamental change I made from previous advocacy efforts was a dedicated application of Marxist-method activism.

In case you have not seen this [emphasis mine]:

Take the High Road with Liberals?

When liberals are up to their usual scumbaggery ought one take the high road with them, patiently making one’s case in gentlemanly fashion and rebutting theirs, assuming there is one, all the while ignoring their insults and slanders? In The Liberal Slandering of Paul Ryan Peter Wehner takes seriously and replies earnestly to the mouthings of the race-baiter Paul Krugman and others. But slanderous scum like Krugman are beneath serious reply and it is arguable that replying in measured tones only gives them a credibility they don’t deserve.

Once you grasp that it is a war, and that liberals will say anything no matter how absurd, then you will appreciate that mockery and derision are much more effective means of opposing them. But you must also provide solid arguments for the fence-sitters. In Six Arguments Only a Liberal Believe, John Hawkins supplies just the right admixture of mockery and derision to his substantive point-making.

I’m all for civility, but civility is for the civil only. [Posted by Bill Vallicella on Saturday, March 22, 2014 at 06:47 PM]

Has Vallicella been reading our discussions or what?

The link:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/

You may be interested in Charles Cooke’s piece today via RealClearPolitics:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373949/obamas-midterm-misconception-charles-c-w-cooke