…and Obama’s strange love affair with it:

What is the explanation for this absolutely self-destructive, even idiotic, policy on our part?

There can be only one — the president of the United States is actually psychologically disturbed. He does not react in a normal manner. I know that’s a vicious and importunate thing to say, but the reaction to Egypt (and to Benghazi, for that matter) is not one of a psychologically healthy human being.

It’s more than the narcissism of which he is often accused, as bad as that is. It’s a form of extreme neurotic attraction to (notably Islamic) religious fascism. Obama is not a Muslim, but he has these deep feelings about it (some of them related to imperialism, others to his absent father, no doubt) that allow him to overlook, or rationalize, all that hideous misogyny, homophobia, and jihadist fanaticism, that loathing of democracy and freedom, even when it could not be more obvious. To Obama, those abhorrent — monumentally illiberal — behaviors and ideologies almost seem irrelevant. But they are the most relevant of all.

And then there’s this:

It’s not as if the MB is subtle. They have proclaimed who they are since their founding by Hasan al Banna in 1928 and have not wavered in any significant way since in their global jihadist goals. They have also been unstinting in their massive misogyny, homophobia and rigid support of Shariah law über alles (quite literally über alles, since the Brotherhood were — virtually the last still unrepentant — allies of Hitler in WWII).

You know, liberal stuff.

He would never say it of course, but the president must at some level admire the old ally of the MB. Interestingly, yesterday was the 79th anniversary of the plebiscite that gave him supreme power in Germany. I imagine the president is envious of 90% approval of 95% of the electorate. But not so much so that he’s unwilling to use his 53% from last year to behave as though he has just as much support for his dictatorial lawlessness in the support of his agenda.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Even ignoring the Nazi connection, his sympathy for the MB really shouldn’t be that surprising. His father was Muslim, he was raised as a Muslim. As I’ve said many times, I don’t believe that he is really a Muslim (or a Christian) because in order to be either one must believe in a higher power than yourself, and he’s far too narcissistic to be either. Plus, as Glenn notes, he “grew up on already-outdated anticolonial twaddle.”

[Update early afternoon]

Kristallnacht in Egypt.

Well, they are the heirs to the Nazis.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

This is key, from that last link:

Many forget that Hitler had a very uneasy relationship initially with the German military. It was the only viable force in Germany that could have deposed Hitler and the Nazis as they started to consolidate power. But the military never did so and Hitler acted quickly to take control of the military to prevent any such opposition from developing. It was only late in the war in 1944 that a small number of senior military officers finally tried to assassinate Hitler to get rid of him and end the war.

But what if the German military had acted much earlier? Hitler in essence consolidated his power in the two years from 1932 to 1934 through a complicated series of actions, including plots like the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, and the passage of various laws that effectively swept away all of his opposition. If the German military had crushed Hitler, his SA Brownshirts, the Hitler Youth, the SS, and all of the other Nazi Party affiliates in 1933, perhaps millions of people would not have died in a genocidal war and Nazi concentration camps. The history of Europe might have been completely different.

Fortunately, the Egyptian military has acted before Morsi and his own Muslim Brotherhood Brownshirts had the full opportunity to consolidate their power. Morsi and his clan are thugs with views no different than those who stood in the docks at Nuremburg from 1945 to 1949. If we can learn anything from the history of the 1930s and Nazi Germany, we should be hoping that the Egyptian military is successful in crushing the new version of the Nazis in the Middle East. That is the only way that a real democracy will ever have a chance to be born in Egypt.

Yes.