From talking to friends, most stopped "loving"* Obama years ago shortly after there was no visible difference to Bush in foreign policy, human rights, wars, etc.
* (the only President Germans loved is probably Kennedy, the most misunderstood Reagan)
An incredibly good point. He ran in 2008 mainly on the message of "we're not Republicans". However, his message then - and now - lacked substantive policy changes and improvements for governance. It was more of the same, which means growing bloat and overreach of the Federal government. People are now waking up during his second term, when he can do what he wants (e.g., pledge $7 billion to build a power plant in the African desert, spend $100 million to vacation in Africa, etc.)
I think a lot of people back then - like me as a teenager in the 80s - thought Reagan to be pure evil. Today the view on Reagan is more differentiated, his later view on nuclear war, the reunification, what he wanted to achieve vs. the cold war hardliner and Thatcherism capitalist, Bitburg, Pershing II, SDI.
Once you look past all the Reagan PR the image is even worse than it ever was. The very nature of our the challenges we are facing today as a society can largely be traced back to his throwing open the doors to unrestrained abuse across society. The problem with excess is that it is exponentially unsustainable.
What kind of excess are you referring to? I'm viewing this in a somewhat simplistic way right now, but if I have an excess (in savings) of 10$ this week instead of 1$, then I don't quite see how my excess would be 10²$/1²$ = 100 times more unsustainable. I might be taking that too literally though.
From priceless quotes like "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minut..., there was always the impression/worry that the Reagan administration was a bit trigger-happy and Western Europe (particularly West Germany) was about to be turned into an atomic wasteland at any time.
Of course the actions by the administration were more constructive than the rhetoric but I certainly grew up in fear of imminent nuclear war.
While I agree that that's a time-tested generalization, this isn't an immutable fact. It's the result of letting the wrong people into office for the wrong reasons for too long in too many places.
If we had enough people (with enough money, unfortunately) running for office and then behaving responsibly and in the best interests of their constituents, we might be able to start reversing this trend. Unfortunately, that's a whole lot of time, effort, and -- of course -- money, and not only are all of those difficult to come by, the will to start is hard enough to come by. That's an opportunity you have to create, there's virtually no payoff, a low likelihood of success, and a high probability of upsetting a great many very powerful people.
Not true. Just image: If he had closed Guantanamo, killed less supposed terrorists using drones, ensured Manning was not tortured. - I expect most of us (people overseas) would be mostly happy with him. It could have happened, even in America.
Well after Bush he was a refreshing for a while. And his campaign promises made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana to a post US led world - the skill of Theodore Roosevelt (the only great american of the 20th century) with the goodwill of Woodrow Wilson.
And when you say i will close Guantanamo Bay in a year - you tend to believe that kind of stuff.
The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more accurately be "we used to love him until we realized he lied to us."
That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see this happen long into the future.
I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises.
You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.
It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as:
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).
When considering the motivations of another person, I always take a close look at the amount of cynicism I'm applying to that person, and then I ask myself whether there is another possibility.
We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions.
So we have two possibilities:
1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual
2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity
He said he would do a lot of things in his first fours years, none of which came to fruition.
-- Said he could cut the deficit by half in his first term. Instead he actually added over 5 trillion to it.
-- Said he would reduce unemployment to under 8%. Today, it still hovers around 10% if you take into account the people who stopped looking for work.
-- Said the stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs. Instead, we actually lost 1.1 million jobs AFTER the stimulus.
-- Said he would make health care more affordable. You simply can't add millions of people to the health care ranks and expect rates to go DOWN. Simple supply and demand economics.
-- Said his investment in Green energy would create 5 million jobs. After spending $90 billion, instead of 5 million jobs, we had several solar companies go bankrupt after securing guaranteed government loans, many of which left tax payers on hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The comparison to Wilson is more apropos than you think. Wilson was not a good guy. He was a raging racist and thought Fascism--as it was then growing in pre-WWII Europe and before the genocide issue was impossible to ignore--to be the ideal course for America. And he was quite fond of locking up political opponents without charges: The Espionage Act was used to shutdown newspapers and lock up citizens critical of the war effort. Yes, I would absolutely compare Obama and Wilson, but not in terms of "goodwill".
I'd say even more people back home felt that way. Things got really weird in 2008, with Shepard Fairey straight-facedly producing the same sort of propaganda he parodied with "Obey Giant".
TBH I regret not seeing it before. He gave off every whiff of a man who sought power for its own sake. But he was glib, he was black, and at the time he seemed better than the alternatives.
"They", as much as many others around the world have not trusted him for a while now. I don't think anyone has burned through so much good will. I would even argue that it was a quicker burn than Bush's after 9/11 because it was simply based on solidarity and empathy.
That being said. Those societies that are now disenchanted with him and America are naive fools who need to wake up and smell the stench. America is not your friend. We are an abusive friend, at best. The worst thing about it the relationship is that because we are never held to account or responsible and get away with anything and every abuse towards our "friends" like the spoiled rotten brat we are; we never grow and learn how to actually be a true friend or even civil. Friendship is a two sided relationship; this is a cry for help, please smack us around and shame us deeply so we can be humbled and build back up a sane character.
Why would Country A ever care what Country B thinks about their leader? This would only ever be an issue if it was stopping a leader getting their foreign policy objectives achieved.
Germans would want the US leader that has the most benefit for Germany, not the US.
Yeah, I'm quite sure Sadam Hussain would agree with you but unfortunately he lost his head when the US government decided it didn't like him as much as it used to.
It is very naive to not understand that the leader of the US has a large impact on the world at large. Having an administration who have all but said that foreigners do not have any rights isn't good for anyone.
I hardly think they've said that foreigners don't have any rights.
The leader of the US does have an impact on the world at large, that's true. However his priority is the USA. Just as the priority for Merkel is Germany, UK of Cameron etc etc.
I think he meant the straw that breaks the camels back would be them saying that, because they've said or demonstrated almost everything in the direction.
Spying even on their allies (Right to Privacy),Guantanamo Bay (I'll just bunch this up as general human rights), various Wars on bogus reasons (Rights of a sovereign nation), TSA Detentions of Foreigners (Right to Freedom), etc.
So they've demonstrated that they don't seem to care much about the rights of foreign citizens, and also in some instances the rights of their own citizens, for example the abuse of Manning, the fact that Snowden has to seek asylumn, etc.
Everyone spies on everyone, even allies. You think Germany doesn't? That's just life in the big leagues. Even Sweden's foreign minister acknowledged this.
As for the other stuff you mention, I don't agree with your premises. I don't believe the wars were bogus, and I'm comfortable with terrorists being held in Gitmo.
I remember when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on the promise of him bring peace rather an actual accomplishment. It makes it almost laughable that his government has caused so much distrust amongst other nations.
And more importantly it's painful listening to a bunch of computer programmers spout off about politics and world events. I value 4Chan's analysis of current events more than Hacker News' and that's not even a joke. There are very few things more irritating than a spoiled rotten 20 year old's explanation of how the world works.
Please you guys, stick to talking about javascript. You're ruining this site.
"Gentlement, go back to your machines, this matter is of a higher sphere, and shall not be of your consideration".
Let's find some common denominator. I agree with you that there are 20 year olds on this site. That was about as much as I could find.
Now if you leave out the indirect reference to "spoiled rotten" people frequenting your site, we'd even have more room for agreement, because I do disagree with you on either of them. I know, I might smell a bit rotten if I didn't have time for showers on a 2 week death march, but I'm not showing any necrosis yet. I'm pretty sure the sour taste in my mouth doesn't stem from me being spoiled either, but rather from your chunky oratory.
But on a more serious point, what is spoiled is to expect that this entire site caters to you.
You want javascript? I'm sure there are half a dozen posts on the front page, with another dozen on the second page ("I have to scroll? But I don't want to scroll").
You know what I think is rotten?
Telling other people that politics, things which concern them directly and indirectly, shouldn't be discussed by them. Ironically, there's a reference to the GeStaPo on the article we're discussing. They kinda had a knack for that as well.
41 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] thread* (the only President Germans loved is probably Kennedy, the most misunderstood Reagan)
Anyone who has fallen out of love with Obama probably wasn't looking hard at him in the first place.
Of course the actions by the administration were more constructive than the rhetoric but I certainly grew up in fear of imminent nuclear war.
This mobile version even has two versions of the canonical tag [1][2]. All HN has to do is read that tag.
[1] <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-lov... />
[2] <meta name="canonicalURL" content="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-lov...
If we had enough people (with enough money, unfortunately) running for office and then behaving responsibly and in the best interests of their constituents, we might be able to start reversing this trend. Unfortunately, that's a whole lot of time, effort, and -- of course -- money, and not only are all of those difficult to come by, the will to start is hard enough to come by. That's an opportunity you have to create, there's virtually no payoff, a low likelihood of success, and a high probability of upsetting a great many very powerful people.
And when you say i will close Guantanamo Bay in a year - you tend to believe that kind of stuff.
The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more accurately be "we used to love him until we realized he lied to us."
That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see this happen long into the future.
You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.
I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).
We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions.
So we have two possibilities:
1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual
2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity
I'm not sure which is more terrifying.
-- Said he could cut the deficit by half in his first term. Instead he actually added over 5 trillion to it.
-- Said he would reduce unemployment to under 8%. Today, it still hovers around 10% if you take into account the people who stopped looking for work.
-- Said the stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs. Instead, we actually lost 1.1 million jobs AFTER the stimulus.
-- Said he would make health care more affordable. You simply can't add millions of people to the health care ranks and expect rates to go DOWN. Simple supply and demand economics.
-- Said his investment in Green energy would create 5 million jobs. After spending $90 billion, instead of 5 million jobs, we had several solar companies go bankrupt after securing guaranteed government loans, many of which left tax payers on hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
And yet, he still got re-elected.
Unless you actually read his proposed policy documents, which made it pretty clear that he had no clue what he was talking about.
TBH I regret not seeing it before. He gave off every whiff of a man who sought power for its own sake. But he was glib, he was black, and at the time he seemed better than the alternatives.
That being said. Those societies that are now disenchanted with him and America are naive fools who need to wake up and smell the stench. America is not your friend. We are an abusive friend, at best. The worst thing about it the relationship is that because we are never held to account or responsible and get away with anything and every abuse towards our "friends" like the spoiled rotten brat we are; we never grow and learn how to actually be a true friend or even civil. Friendship is a two sided relationship; this is a cry for help, please smack us around and shame us deeply so we can be humbled and build back up a sane character.
Germans would want the US leader that has the most benefit for Germany, not the US.
It is very naive to not understand that the leader of the US has a large impact on the world at large. Having an administration who have all but said that foreigners do not have any rights isn't good for anyone.
The leader of the US does have an impact on the world at large, that's true. However his priority is the USA. Just as the priority for Merkel is Germany, UK of Cameron etc etc.
Spying even on their allies (Right to Privacy),Guantanamo Bay (I'll just bunch this up as general human rights), various Wars on bogus reasons (Rights of a sovereign nation), TSA Detentions of Foreigners (Right to Freedom), etc.
So they've demonstrated that they don't seem to care much about the rights of foreign citizens, and also in some instances the rights of their own citizens, for example the abuse of Manning, the fact that Snowden has to seek asylumn, etc.
As for the other stuff you mention, I don't agree with your premises. I don't believe the wars were bogus, and I'm comfortable with terrorists being held in Gitmo.
And more importantly it's painful listening to a bunch of computer programmers spout off about politics and world events. I value 4Chan's analysis of current events more than Hacker News' and that's not even a joke. There are very few things more irritating than a spoiled rotten 20 year old's explanation of how the world works.
Please you guys, stick to talking about javascript. You're ruining this site.
Let's find some common denominator. I agree with you that there are 20 year olds on this site. That was about as much as I could find.
Now if you leave out the indirect reference to "spoiled rotten" people frequenting your site, we'd even have more room for agreement, because I do disagree with you on either of them. I know, I might smell a bit rotten if I didn't have time for showers on a 2 week death march, but I'm not showing any necrosis yet. I'm pretty sure the sour taste in my mouth doesn't stem from me being spoiled either, but rather from your chunky oratory.
But on a more serious point, what is spoiled is to expect that this entire site caters to you.
You want javascript? I'm sure there are half a dozen posts on the front page, with another dozen on the second page ("I have to scroll? But I don't want to scroll").
You know what I think is rotten?
Telling other people that politics, things which concern them directly and indirectly, shouldn't be discussed by them. Ironically, there's a reference to the GeStaPo on the article we're discussing. They kinda had a knack for that as well.