Political trompe-l'oeil

The paintings creating illusion of 3D reality on a 2D surface are fascinating. While looking online for ways to fix our living-room fireplace whose beautiful century-old face bricks had been mercilessly painted over by previous owners, I found suggestions to paint a trompe-l'oeil fireplace if a room was lacking a real one. This could be a solution particularly in an apartment, where a real fireplace is unfeasible or unusable. This also reminded me of the Pinocchio fairy-tale, where the painted boiling pot was so realistic that the hungry wooden boy's nose grew two inches longer out of frustration that he could not take the lid off.

In the Soviet version of Pinocchio, The Little Golden Key, whereby the story was transformed into a class struggle of oppressed and exploited puppets against their evil owner, behind the trompe-l'oeil painting there is a door that is opened by a golden key, and behind that door there is a wonderful puppet theater, miniature and mechanical, but as realistic as life. There is nothing at all, let alone reality, behind Obama's politics. 

Or behind himself, to start with. I am not even talking about his nonexistent credentials for being the choice to lead the most powerful and wealthy nation on earth. I am talking about his gaining and losing dimensions at will, as a painter can do to depictions of reality. The millionaire Obama, born from a native well-off Kenyan by a white mother and raised by a well-off Indonesian step-father and white grandparents under affirmative action and no influence of racism, is a trompe-l'oeil of poor black Americans who descended from slaves and only in the 1960's gained civil rights. In contrast, his millions of dollars, made with no responsibility for any business, disappear from the mental view of the masses. Of course, Romney's millions, to which he contributed his talents and efforts as a businessman, are an unforgivable vice. 

Romney's religion was the atheist progressives' favorite topic during elections: he was a "Bishop", possessed "magic pants", was a hereditary polygamist, and, in the most uncool fashion, used no intoxicants. It did not matter that Obama belonged to a fascist church, and had Farrakhan's friend and America-hater as his spiritual advisor, his daughters' godfather, as dear to him as his own grandmother. Because the Christianity of Mormonism is suspect in the religious Republican base, Obama's kind of Christianity could not be raised as an issue in the Romney campaign. Being the first president who had admitted to drug abuse to the point of being a junkie deducted no points either from Obama in the evolving surreality of America. 

The magic of illusion does not stop at home. Here is a recent example of how Obama and Arab fascists mutually benefit from each other, painting the trompe-l'oeil of peace-making. Muslim Brotherhood, by its Hamas arm, conducts terror war against Israel.  After years of bombardment by thousands of rockets causing mass posttraumatic stress disorder in children and adults, let alone fatalities, Israel finally intends to put a stop on this. A ground invasion and decisive elimination of the terror cadre and infrastructure - much more feasible than it was in the abortive 2006 Lebanon war - could solve the problem for a long time. To be sure, the calm would not last forever, considering that Islam doctrinally hates the Jews, the Land of Israel for the Muslims is Islamic waqf that can never be relinquished, and every true Muslim is duty bound to wage jihad against Israel as the Jew and an aggressor on the Muslim land. The removal of the terror organization would give Israel a respite and a chance to resume a semblance of normal life. Obama knows that but is not interested in the welfare of Israelis (and, for that matter, Gazans). He will paint himself a peacemaker by using what he knows will work with Egypt - a threat of withholding the $2 bln help to the fascist regime. Responding positively to that threat is a multiple win for Morsi: the money, the recognition by the US as a legitimate government, no loss of face because the result is presented as victory (everything short of radical defeat is a victory for terrorist Muslims), the showing-off of the ability to control the situation and manipulate the terror force. 

After I wrote this, Morsi showed the world another "win" of his: immediately after "arranging" the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel at the behest of Obama, he issued a set of decrees conferring dictatorial powers on him - the price of Obama's "peace". It is a win-win for Obama as well: he will dispense the tax-payers money to make a false vision of supporting Israel, but will not allow the weapons to be used for Israel's defense even though the case for that is clear; it will be the Jews' fault that the US has to spend more  money, which will feed into his antisemitic agenda; he will (already has) co-opt the Republican threat of depriving Egypt of the money while losing no political standing by that.  Although the rocket rain on Israel has stopped, the only loser in this game is Israel: it is a matter of time that the terror starts again, as it is Hamas's main goal, identical to its means. The intensity of the Hamas rocket bombardment of Israel justified invading Gaza with the potential of Hamas's liquidation or at least substantial damage. Now, if, or rather when, the bombardment restarts, there will be no such justification. Israel's threats are now empty: no benefit except from the temporary cessation of rockets is apparent - whatever empty promises they got from Hillary. No point in mentioning any Hamas's promises.

More peacemaker illusion by our Commander-in-Cheat: Obama's informing the Taliban enemy of the departure schedule renders unnecessary the losses the enemy would suffer through the continuous fighting. The low intensity of the war also protects Obama from the responsibility for active military actions - those could be dropped in full onto the successor. Alternatively, the enemy takeover that will render all US sacrifices senseless is postponed and would also be somebody else's, not Obama's, fault. 

The Benghazi story started as a very convincing trompe-l'oeil of the administration's victory over terrorism: it was all spontaneous and vaguely righteous if wrong reaction to a bad YouTube video blaspheming Islam that Obama had sworn to protect as one of his duties as a US President. Albeit slightly shaken, the illusion still works, because the discussion now is whether that was an intentional illusion or just some miscommunication between the diplomacy and the intelligence - not about the fact that Muslim terrorists successfully attacked a sovereign American territory and killed Americans - again - and again on 9/11.

There is no depth behind the painting drawn by Obama's junta to entice its willing followers - just the tireless populist slogans, largely translating into coveting neighbor's wealth, now that religion is a sign of backwardness just like it was in the leader of all progressive forces in the world, the Soviet Union. There is no reality behind the pitifully petty arguments the progressive intelligentsia puppets repeat after their political puppeteers, using at will the agitprop tools of Bolshevism. 

"Progressive" as a term originates from among those tools, the Soviet propaganda machinery, designating fellow travelers and - the same thing - enemies of capitalism, colonialism and Zionism (e.g., "всё прогрессивное человечество", "all progressive humanity"). In other words, allies of communism who have just not had a chance to enjoy political victory. Progressivism, like any totalitarian ideology, does not tolerate alternatives. It is thus eliminationist. The opponent is not to argue with, but to annihilate. The thought apparatus for such annihilation is there, and only a slight historical turn is needed - to incite and justify pogroms and "defend" order by abolishing the hard-gained American freedoms (does the arrest of the anti-Muhammad "movie"-maker tell you anything about the 1st Amendment?). By the time that happens, the masses will be only grateful for that to the dear fuhrer, scared by another "spontaneous" riot to death. This will finally puncture the canvas of the illusionist painting. No golden key will be needed to open the abyss hidden behind it. A bad dream? So thought the incredulous Russian intelligentsia in 1917 and later, relieved of its possessions for the sake of "fair share", of its freedoms for the sake of the triumph of communism, and of its freedom and lives for the sake of state security and order.

The Benghazi trial

"...weighed on the scales and found wanting." Daniel 5:27

Perhaps not since the Moscow show trials have we seen such rhetoric as directed by our progressive intelligentsia at the reactionary "right-wing". Which is only fitting, considering that those trials were exactly against the "right opposition". As well as against the "left" one. Here is what one of my progressive comrades is dreaming about: "I think joe [Biden] would headbutt him [Ryan] right in his perfectly shaved chest thereby exploding his blackened, right-wing heart." Apart from the suggestive body imagery, the only thing different is that the dreams of those who called for death of the enemies of the People in Moscow of the 1930's came true - often just before the dreamers themselves were tried as well and executed. This mind-paralyzing hatred, producing verbal vomit of vulgarity at the slightest attempt of the opponent to bring up information to the contrary, makes impossible any discussion.

Supposedly capable of thinking critically, intelligent scientists recite as if on command - without a second thought (or a first one) - the trivial and pathetically petty talking points offered to them by the party apparatchiks via the tame media: free contraception for women, dog on Romney's car roof, Romney's "magic underpants" and "binders". This is at the time when the terror attack and murders in Benghazi draw into the sharpest focus the incompetence, cowardice and dishonesty of Obama's junta. The free minds of intelligentsia suspend their abilities and repeat those talking points like a character in a science fiction novel by the Strugatsky brothers, The Snail On The Slope: suddenly a little violet cloud would form around his head, taking over control of his mind, and he would start announcing senseless but jubilant headlines about the Glorious Girlfriends' successes in the ongoing transformation of the Forest.

It is painful to watch the grimacing of the dissembling Obama Politburo, unable to disguise their lies, and the sad slant of Obama's speechifying head 1.5 months after the Benghazi events that the next day did not prevent him from enjoying his trip to Vegas and his laughing there at his own jokes. Or was a day not enough for the four deaths he observed happening in real time to sink in? To understand that he was responsible for them - that it was due to his and his coterie's negligence or willfully fatal decision that the people were dead? "Sacrificed their lives", as per the trite and false solemnity of Hillary Clinton's, whose honorary position of a former US president's wife, shared in part with others, made her eligible to be a foreign minister of the only superpower. The sacrifice was indeed made - but not by the ambassador and the fallen heroes who, denied any support, held for hours against the incredible odds, fighting mortar-armed thugs. They were sacrificed - by Obama,  Biden, Clinton, Panetta and who knows who else - on the altar of Islam-appeasing progressive ideology and self-congratulatory conclusions that "al Qaeda is on its heels". 

The Benghazi 9-11 would be the downfall of any administration - and not through its natural convenient removal by the upcoming elections, but by the public outcry demanding immediate impeachment and criminal prosecution. In the show trials of the 1930's in the Soviet Union, the guilt was invented - to get rid of Stalin's possible competitors and to suppress any dissent, the perennial dream of the progressive intelligentsia. The actual 9-11 crime and lies of Obama's clique should be enough to shatter that dream and put him out of his political misery. 

Everybody knows...

Everybody knows the deal is rotten.

                                             Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Everybody knows Obama lies, but admitting it requires comprehending the ugly reality of Obama's incompetence rather than unquestioningly worshiping him. This worship allows one to consider those lies pia fraus, pious fraud, and justify them fully. If the words are taken for what they fully are, one can see it was with regret that Obama said in his UN speech, "There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon". There was indeed no video Obama and his clique could use for these purposes - they lied there was. He inadvertently admitted that.

On top of these lies, Obama apologized for our freedoms: "I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete." See, they would really like to control, to cancel that pesky protection of free speech - but just cannot in 2012. Perhaps they'll be able to in 2013.

Don't forget Romney's carcinogenic properties and his Dog-On-The-Roof never-ending drama (I expect a Broadway musical to be made soon by Michael Moore). Dead ambassadors and invasions of sovereign US territory on 9-11 11 years after 9-11 are truly trivial in comparison. What jihad? All is quiet under The One's watch. Once the YouTube Muhammad movies are dealt with by the capable Obama censors, finally controlling the flow of information, we'll sing kumbaya and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.

Nobody should say Obama's presidency was a complete failure. Obama asked for an "incomplete" grade, and we have seen nothing yet indeed. It will be complete - and we'll be done too - if he gets his second term.

Losing a Facebook friend, Or Obama's new duties

"Wowie! Wowie-wa-wa-wow!" says Cristopher Walken's amazed character in "The Continental" - and so do I. Then, of course, Walken's ladies' man only pretends to be amazed that he is rejected. He should not be amazed, because he has just offended the lady. Neither should I. 

Well, I won't torment my scarce and thus precious readership with the prelude to my dramatic story any longer. Everybody, of course, remembers my Facebook "friend" (FBF) I mentioned before, a fine statistician but, regrettably, a leftist. I have just found out he "unfriended" me. He could not take me anymore. You can see my post on his page, linking to "Filmmaker Taken in For Questioning", and the discussion that ensued, which I know I will cherish as my last memory of the dear FBF. How have I found out I was disowned? Facebook mercifully does not notify its users of those friends who  cruelly reject them, and only checking the number and then the names allows the hapless loser to detect the loss. How then? I did check. I did  - not because I keep track of that number, but because of the question I had asked my now former FBF. That question was intended to drive him into eliminating me from his virtual friendship, as I am not fond of dramatic gestures myself. Here is that entry of mine: 

"Whatever have I already been in your astute analysis of my person - and now this, "UNPLEASANT"! "Most unpleasant" out of 427 friends, no less (for statistics, I'd love to know how many of them are rated simply unpleasant). And none of this astronomical number has apparently pointed out to you the deficit of common courtesy in your "interacting", while it's hard for me to believe I've been the only one graced with your rudeness. A question arises, why you continue keeping my unpleasant self among that selected circle, let alone interacting, while you quite obviously hate my guts. Even more mysterious is how you can expect any continued "interacting" after your first paragraph in your last post - not that it is unique in your stream of personal attacks." 

I really could not imagine "interacting" (as he put it) with him any longer - not because I was offended by the ad hominems filling his posts, but because that last fit of his philistine rudeness clearly showed me the futility of my talking with him. 

Here is what it was about: I tried to present the case that the "movie" had little if anything to do with the ambassador's murder. I started with suggesting that the arrest of the author of the video smacked of violation of the 1st Amendment, and made a point that the real cause of the murders was murderous Muslim fanaticism. He started with protecting the right of Obama to distance himself and the government from the "movie" (as if anybody even as fanatical as the Muslim mob could believe that the US government had anything to do with it), and defended Nakoula's arrest despite the obvious contradictions in the account he cited:  "federal probation authorities called on the local sheriff's office to bring Nakoula in for questioning", he was taken for "a voluntary interview", "never handcuffed, he was never arrested, never detained, never in custody -- it was all voluntary" (all lies, as he has suddenly become a "flight risk"). This was topped by the FBF's own contradictions: while taking Muslim fanaticism for granted and contending that there might have been a group that targeted the ambassador, he still needed the "movie" to play a role in that - he had to, because so spake Obama and his camarilla. Then, of course, there was his unbeatable if calumnious argument that my thinking is guided by my "requirement of incessant hatred of all Islamic people", and his keeping to the line that "in Libya the people knew something about the film and the film was used to get them to the embassy" (which was in fact the Benghazi consulate and a so-called safe house) even though it was a "military group". Contradictions do not matter when whatever "Obama says ... about the video, he is only trying to weaken that opportunity [for using the video] by making it clear to as many people as possible that the video was not created by the US government nor endorsed by it, and we also condemn it. By doing that he weakens the power of people like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah..." Imagine how much Nasrallah's power has been diminished by Obama's condemnations, unique in their sensitivity to Muslim and no other religious sentiments. 

I have no desire to gloat about my perspicacity in detecting Obama's clique's lying as well as its likely cause, which is their desire to get rid of their responsibility for criminal negligence and incompetent assessments and to mollify Muslims. There is no glory in understanding the obvious while Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Carney and Obama himself were still lying about the "spontaneous attack", and no happiness can derive from that event that has only recently become "an assault on America" after lying that "it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of or to U.S. policy." As we know now, there was no "protest" - to the "movie" or otherwise - in Benghazi. By now it has been recognized by the administration and even by the US intelligence that it was a preplanned terror act having nothing to do with any "movie" - real or imagined, - which was followed the next day by the obscene act of Obama's smiling and enjoying himself in Vegas. He must be forgiven his insouciance - he could not possibly think that anything as mean as that could be organized after all his reaching out and bowing to Muslims. That was exactly the sentiment expressed by Hillary in the aftermath of the attack: "how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" Indeed, how? One has to be a rabid Islamophobe like myself to be able to see that it is 9-11 and what it represents that in the triangle of 9-11, the Benghazi attack and the "movie" is the source of their co-occurrence. As I told my unlamentedly former FBF, YouTube is full of anti-Islam videos. The Bakoula video that was used could be replaced by any other. Anything - everything - can be used as the pretext for murderous Muslim mobs to start rioting in the realm of the "religion of peace", and no pretext is needed for Muslim terror against America, Americans, Israel, or any other country or individual who does not share Muslim values. Perhaps Obama should establish a department for finding parole violations or any alleged crimes for all of the anti-Islam posters on YouTube - that would surely disempower Hizballah, al Qaeda and the rest of the "hijackers" of peaceful Islam, so readily converted by them into the powerful mass murder weapon.

It would only be consistent with the fact that the president of the United States has turned from the sworn protector of the US Constitution with all its inconvenient amendments into the protector of Islam, declaring from the UN podium that "[t]he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". The only question remains is how exactly he intends to deprive them of their future. His language is different from that of jihadis only in that they clearly explain what should happen "to those who slander the prophet of Islam". Meanwhile, he slanders those who speak of Muhammad by calling them slanderers, because it is they who speak the truth: the "prophet" was a genocidal highway robber chieftain, extortionist, child rapist... - there are too many inhumanities of his to list them in one sentence.

As befits such a dramatic change in the duties of the US President, Obama's campaign logo has now replaced the American flag (before clicking, beware that your computer may freeze - only fitting: such is Obama's commerce). It remains only to put his iconic picture - with oddly familiar raised chin - on that mutilated emblem.

Which brings me back to my sad story of losing the FBF. What is convenient about the left is their robotic predictability. Because they are firmly held within the strict confines of their Manichean ideology, dichotomizing the world into the "left" and "right" as respectively good and evil, the entities at war, anybody familiar with this ideology can say with near certainty what their reaction will be to anything that concerns it. Because the ideology is totalitarian, virtually anything concerns it, and anything can become a point where the dimension of opinions breaks into the irreconcilable dichotomy. With him, it could have happened earlier - for instance, when he compared Republican education plans with Auschwitz, because Republicans "promote this working-student program". Or when he supported his correspondent's deranged viewpoint that people hold the anti-abortion position because it would "keep the labor supply up and the labor costs down" "for the bourgeois to take advantage of" (the progressive view should then be to increase abortion rate: that should really hurt Obama's "millionaires and billionaires"). In retrospect, our inevitable falling out took too long. Unfortunately, America's falling out with its FBF in the White House may take much longer.