It takes strength of will to recognize and accept the truth for what it is, rather than believing in fairy tales or mystical legends of Messiah spiritual journeys. Hussein offered Mead the “Great Return” of Democrat myth. How it should have been. How Democrats always thought their side was really about, in the Civil War.

A big brain on top of a weak spine, is going to do what again? I can tip that over and shatter the skull on the concrete like a broken egg. Of what worth is that in a war? Some war leader reads Sun Tzu and becomes just as good? That’s not how it works.

Mead and other intellectuals like him, are incomplete. Their weaknesses are legion. Thus it is predictable that they will Fall, for all manner of things. They are no Socrates, no Plato, and certainly no Aristotle.

Neither have paid the price for true wisdom or knowledge, certainly not concerning evil.

A factor is Afghanistan where Iran also has influence.

I have no way of knowing, but I don’t think I would ever, at any point, have been fooled by Obama. I didn’t care for Clinton, by the way. I voted for him because I was a Democrat, but I certainly didn’t fear Clinton.

Plus—very much unlike Mead—I was not a political junkie, a pundit, or someone who paid much attention at all to politics or government or history. The more attention I paid (which happened to have been post 9/11), the more I changed party affiliation. Mead is a scholar/writer on these subjects, and has been for years. He’s not just smart, he’s an expert on the subject, which I never was. That’s why I’m surprised he was fooled, and that’s why the analogy to me does not hold up.

My comment (@1:26 pm) wasn’t intended as a criticism, but a possible explication. I offer that the reason people can be fooled is because they believe in a certain way. A belief system only changes from internal impetus, not from an external imposition of logic or force.

With all respect, I also offer that you, by your own admission, were once one of the smart people who were fooled in a similar way. It took a personal epiphany for you to begin to see the dissonance that was already apparent to others. For you, the catalyst was admittedly 9/11; for Mead it was, perhaps the dissonance between his own knowledge of foreign affairs and the current results of Obama’s influence; only Mead himself really knows. You were not fooled by Obama because you had already discarded certain aspects of your former belief system; Mead apparently had not.

In any case, the individual must want to change, or at least question/investigate the current state of his/her belief. In recent posts, ACE (at Ace of Spades) has referred to liberal beliefs as “sacral.” By definition such a belief system is open to neither question nor compromise. Its just like the old joke about how many psycologists does it take to change a lightbulb? None; the lightbulb must want to change itself. You did, now Mead has.

IMO the answer to the question “How can smart people be so deluded and fooled for so long?” resides for each of us (liberal or conservative; male or female, etc.), in just how “sacred” we believe any of our various belief systems to be.

What if this guy (or the people who control him) are fundamentalist Sunni caliphate true believers? If the caliphate needs physical and expanding territory to gain legitimacy and incoming backers why not:

1) Abandon Iraq to instability
2) Destabilize somewhat stable, secular ME nations to create random chaos
3) Provide material support to Sunni jihadist organizations to directly or indirectly aid the right kind of people

Thanks to these steps, parts of Iraq and Syria are now, effectively, a caliphate, physical territory under strict sharia rule where Shiites and a good number of improperly pious Sunnis are being murdered.

But what about the rest? Why the kissy-face with Iran, a mortal enemy of Islamic State? Watching the Yemen situation made me realize: who else is an enemy of IS?

Oh yes, of course, Saudi Arabia and most of the remaining Sunni nations with sufficient means to repel the likes of IS. So why not empower Iran to confront Saudi Arabia, with which it has ongoing, iffy-at-best relations, and hope that any sort of all-out confrontation would weaken both of Islamic State’s enemies and give it a chance to gobble up more scraps of land?

I am totally aware that smart people (like Mead) can be fooled in that way. My question is more about the “how” of it than a lack of understanding that it does happen. I’ve never quite understood how people can be so perceptive in one area, or many areas, and yet so deficient in evaluating people and in recognizing evil or lies.

I wrote about Obama as a con artist back in November of 2009, here, so I’ve been aware of it for a long, long time.

Mead’s a smart man; I cannot understand why he was so fooled originally. But he’s not so fooled any more {Neo]

All [Mead] had to do was observe, learn about his past, and think. I’m serious; I don’t get how all these people didn’t see it. [Neo]

As SteveH responds above, intelligence doesn’t play an exclusive role because, as I’ve offered before we’re dealing with a belief system, not logical or rational argumentation.

Mead has the benefit of vast knowledge in foreign policy and note that much of his criticism and disappointment with Obama has to do with foreign rather than domestic policy. I suggest that Mead has not changed his foreign policy belief system, but rather now recognizes that Obama runs counter to it. What took so long? Obama is a con artist running a game [see Daniel in Brookline @ 10:03 above] and the dissonance between Obama’s actions and Mead’s belief system only became obvious as the results of Obama’s policies began to emerge. Remember the old adage that if one is in a room and can’t figure out who the “mark” is, then you’re the “mark”! It took Mead and others some time to realize this even though he and they may still be loathe to admit it. (see Ann @ 9:59 pm above).

For example, I believe that President Obama has a profound mistrust of military forces, and will use them as little as possible; I think he sees them as simply the trappings of a tin-pot dictator in a banana republic, which he, therefore, does not need or want. The flip side of this coin is that he seems to believe that talking can cure nearly anything, and that HIS talking, in particular, has special powers for solving otherwise intractable problems. (He ought to have learned otherwise, early on, when he used the full force of his personality to try to bring the Olympics to Chicago, and was laughed at and humiliated for it. Unfortunately, President Obama has not shown great capacity for learning from his own mistakes.)

It’s possible that all of this is due to malice; certainly, many have been perfectly ready to accuse him of just that. I’ve read convincing analyses of his behavior, describing him as nothing more than a phenomenally successful con-man. And perhaps this is so. But my gut tells me, as the aphorism goes, not to ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance and stupidity.

It would be interesting to address such questions to the all-but-unreachable Valerie Jarrett, the unelected power behind the throne, she of the apparently unshakable confidence in our President’s genius and soaring talent. “Ms. Jarrett, it is now increasingly acknowledged that the President’s unforced errors, such as the unprecedented capitulation to a sworn enemy of the United States, and the equally unprecedented hostile acts toward a staunch ally of the United States, are signs of either profound ignorance, or outright malice toward the interests of the United States. Ignorance or malice; stupidity or evil. You’ve said many times that Barack Obama is smarter than just about anyone… so which is it?”

I doubt anyone will ask her that to her face.