Al Qaeda? Or us?
[Update a few minutes later]
The rise of Al Qaeda and the administration’s Benghazi lies:
…what accounts for Obama’s weird attraction for this “Muslim revivalism,” despite all its Medieval tenets and near-psychotic behaviors?
No, he is not a Muslim. I repeat NOT (just to be absolutely clear). Nor is the president a Christian, unless you count Reverend Wright as such, which is ridiculous (and we all know he’s under the bus anyway).
Obama is a postmodern agnostic par excellence. But like so many schooled in post-modernism and cultural relativism, he has an immediate and intense enmity for anything that smacks of imperialism — and an equally intense desire to be seen as supportive of (although certainly not to live like) the downtrodden of the Earth.
Which leads us back to Benghazi. You don’t have to be Muslim to love the Muslim Brotherhood or even, consciously or unconsciously, sympathize with the goals, if not the actions, of al-Qaeda. You just have to have been imbued with a blind hatred of imperialism. That’s all you need.
And as Dinesh D’Souza documented, he has that in abundance.
“You don’t have to be Muslim to love the Muslim Brotherhood or even, consciously or unconsciously, sympathize with the goals, if not the actions, of al-Qaeda. You just have to have been imbued with a blind hatred of imperialism. That’s all you need.”
More accurately, you have to hate what accompanied the latest bouts of imperialism in Western Europe, which coincided with the industrial revolution. Many who were desperate to order others about went off to the far corners of the world to do so, …leaving their “home countries” free from their political influence and activities. The rest then had less opposition to the freedoms needed for the industrial revolution to start.
The crazy thing is that while abhorring later European imperialism, those who ally with the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Caliphate pushers, are favoring those desperate for a revival of a particular form of a classical empire, instead of the mercantile empires of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Obama, and most on the Left, refuse to look at what the Caliphate really was, …a Muslim copy of the classical agrarian Roman Empire of Constantinople, with all its pretensions to universal authority and dominance.
Thus, they are angrily remembering an imperialism that was ultimately quashed by the advance of the continuing industrial revolution. At the same time they are welcoming the revival of something far more destructive of industrial society, a classical “universal” agrarian Empire, …the New Caliphate. They are pro-imperialism. It just has to be the *right*sort* of imperialism, alongside which an industrial society cannot exist.
It’s worth looking at the original quote that birthed the meme of Osama is dead, GM is alive:
Biden: “You want to know whether we’re better off?” Biden said to a cheering crowd of about 3,500 people in downtown Detroit. “I’ve got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.“
It really shows exactly how shallow the Democrat voter is in understanding the issues. While the bumber sticker remains factually correct; its value in today’s world is meaningless. Detriot is now bankrupt and the organization created by bin Laden is resurging. Bailing out GM didn’t save Detroit, and killing bin Laden was never the last word for Al Qaeda.
I think saving GM was bigger than saving Detroit the city. The US cannot hope to continue being a global power without a vigorous automobile industry. It is from this industry that comes the technology for tanks, personnel carriers and the like. At one point it also had direct ties to the aircraft manufacturing industry, even the naval industry, and it may have again. You people should not make the same mistake the English did when they lost their national automobile industry.
“The US cannot hope to continue being a global power without a vigorous automobile industry. It is from this industry that comes the technology for tanks, personnel carriers and the like.”
We have a national, Federal, Space program for the similar reasons:
It creates and maintains a cadre of thousands of trained and active, scientists, engineers, computer programmers and technicians which could – in about the space of a year – be mobilized for some strategic Manhattan-like (in scope, not necessarily in the direction of nukes) emergency project.
This is why, in my opinion, China has a vigorous Space program. Same with Japan to the degree they have one.
I don’t think it’s all about national prestige.
I think saving GM was bigger than saving Detroit the city. The US cannot hope to continue being a global power without a vigorous automobile industry.
These two things are not dependent.
BMW makes cars in South Carolina.
Toyota makes cars in Mississippi, Kentucky, Texas, and Indiana.
Honda makes cars in Ohio, Alabama, and Indiana.
Nissan makes cars in Tennessee and Mississippi.
I could go on, and I could also point out all the Ford facilities, but the US automobile industry is hardly reliant on GM for its existence. However, the two US companies bailed out build most of their cars in the Detroit area.
Continuing it was inevitable that jobs would be lost. If you look at the demographics in Detroit they peaked around the same time they started doing automated assembly with robots. Even if GM got nimble again those jobs are never going to get back. Not under the same form anyway.