Mr. Transformation

The President of the United States of America
The President of the United States of America

Mr. Obama announced on the night of his epical election in 2008 to the presidency of the United States that he felt he was called to fundamentally transform the United States of America.  It wasn’t perhaps noticed by that remark that he intended to do the same to the world.

Well now, everybody’s listening.

Six years of Obama foreign policy and the world has definitely been transformed. Libya and Syria have descended into total anarchy. Russia, its relations with the United States “reset”,  forcibly  annexed 10,400 square miles of its neighboring country the Ukraine in taking Crimea and paid no price. Iraq is in the throws of an invasion of the Islamic caliphate and the United States supports Iranian ground troops in the country to support the Shia dominated government.  The United States works to improve relations with the communist mafia of Cuba and thumbs its nose at its closest ally, Canada, who desires to share its oil bounty with the Unites States in the largest job project in years, the Keystone pipeline.  And in the zenith of transformations, the United States is seeking to assure the islamic revolutionists of Iran a lifting of sanctions accompanying a long term path to nuclear weaponry, bypass the United States Congress in achieving this goal, and looking to break its long treasured shared vision with Israel and allow the U.N. to instead sanction Israel.  And he’s just getting started.

Those who would consider this to be a man who, based on results, hasn’t a clue as to what he is doing, are under a false assumption.  President Obama knows very well what he is doing.  He is transforming the world.  From his standpoint the world was in desperate need of transformation.  To Mr. Obama, and the ‘intellectual’ apologists of the far left, history has been for far too long unfairly tilted to the domination of the western world.  The western ideals of individual initiative, technological advantage, exploitation of natural resources and suppression of the collective impulses of less developed nations has led to an unnatural superiority.  The outward projection of this western advantage has been to subjugate, colonize, and otherwise globalize the natural regional advantages of various peoples to their detriment. This has led to unnatural circumstances.  The hegemony of the United States in policing the world. The presence of Euro-Judean government in the home of the arab nation, propped up there by Western force.  The inability of African and other third world nations to get past their post colonial births.  All influenced by the casual consumer decadent culture of the Anglo-European perception of cultural superiority.

The ultimate test for the president’s re-working of the world is the need to crack the code of the Middle East and in particular, the forty year need for the United States to be the policeman in order to prop up Israel, suppress Iran, and cap terrorist impulses.  The Unified Field Theory connects Israel and Iran inextricably.  Iran, the primary exporter and underwriter of terrorism can potentially be mollified if its natural regional hegemony is recognized for the 2500 year history it has been the region’s dominant player.  By accepting Iran into a world leadership position, it would naturally look to prosper in other ways other than Armageddon theories, and would build its economy while reducing its role in instability through terrorism. The need for aggressive nuclear ambitions would be reduced by the eventual political neutering  of its abject foe Israel, eventually sublimated by the achievement of a porous border policy that has been so effective in changing the dynamic of the US.  The risk that Iran would not play nice would be reduced by the obvious capacities of the US, China, and Russia to maintain their own spheres of influence.  The Europeans, long past any inclinations of cultural identity and immersed in their own population contraction with the resultant consequences, would be more than willing to trade a difficult moral dilemma in Israel for a period of peace and stability.

And that’s what’s so irritating about the Cotton Letter from the United States Senate and the inconceivable outcome of the Israeli election in re-electing Benjamin Netanyahu.  The constant threat of having to compromise the grand vision is what is so irritating to this man.  After all, he intends to show the world why he was deserving of that Nobel Peace Prize.  In the end, when the world is back in its natural balance, the world is going to thank him. Wait and see…

 

 

Not Exactly Camelot

New York Post front page          March 11, 2015
New York Post front page
March 11, 2015

 

“The rule of law in the U.S. is becoming the rule of lawyers.”
Niall Ferguson

 

In 1215, on a meadow field known as Runnymede outside the environs of present day London, England’s barons determined to secure once and for all the relationship of a ruler and his people. They secured King John’s signature to the document known as the Magna Carta, a charter that secured various freedoms, but more fundamentally, the principle that the rule of law was ultimately the final adjudicator of all citizens, whether they be king, or commoner. The concept of arbitrary rule was thus consigned to the dustbin of history, in all lands where free men were found.

800 years later, a copy of the Magna Carta lies in the National Archives next to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to remind one of how much is owed to this basic concept of freedom, and the common thread of principles that protect our liberties.

Unfortunately, the number of people who understand and want to protect the concept has dwindled to a pitiful few.

And one of them is definitely NOT the suggested potential anointed leader of the free world, one Hillary Rodham Clinton.  In a press conference yesterday the former Secretary of State of the United States and potential future President of the United States reminded all that if rule of law is your ideal, you might want to look for a leader elsewhere.  Not that this is new information.  The anointed one has been a rogue regarding the rule of law since she stepped onto the national stage some forty years ago as an assistant council on the Watergate committee , and flashed all the characteristics of her royal roguedum for the modern audience in case anyone forgot.

The press conference like all staged Clinton events was supposed to be a means by which Mrs. Clinton could bury any further conversations regarding her recently exposed use of a private e-mail service for both official and unofficial correspondence as Secretary of State, but her performance assured the issues wouldn’t go away anytime soon.  The brazen insistence that she had effectively addressed all concerns with her release of a portion of the email stream reminded us what this lawyer seems to be genetically missing – the idea that laws and the rules they engender are for everyone, and the rules for those who would govern particularly sensitivized to reduce the risk of corruption.  The Clintons, however, have always held the unique position that laws are arbitrarily interpretable, and that they were always the best positioned as to which ones they would follow and which ones they would skirt.  The former President Clinton at least brought his formidable personality and political skill to the game.  Poor Hillary has always been the edgier and more adversarially corrupt lawyer to the simplest of ethics, from the lying that led to her expulsion from the Watergate committee, to her role at the Rose Law firm regarding billing and the stonewalling on the subpoenaed records, the dark flailing about with the seamy Whitewater real estate affair as a victim of a far flung conspiracy, the cattle futures nonsensical explanation, and the hypocritical hatchet-job attacks on those that would dare fall under her husband’s lecherous influence all the while proclaiming her role as the Feminist in Chief.

The last 12 years have been a rehearsal for the job she has assumed hers, the Presidency.  She carpet bagged a residency in New York State to allow her to be handed the Moynihan Senate seat, ran for President in 2008 only to be swallowed by another more clever actor in Barrack Obama, then took the Foreign Policy role absent from her CV as Secretary of State under President Obama.  Having left the various messes behind for her successor John Kerry to deal with, she felt she had managed to position herself as inevitable for the top job.

The old Hillary problem however, her inability to do anything for a reason other than being self serving, simply could not be suppressed even when endowed with the most compliant and willing press.  The cracks were finally exposed with the tragedy of Benghazi and top came off with greedy need to make money the only way she has ever understood, having other people set her riches up.  The combination of incompetence and shady money deals needed a special capacity to control information and Mrs. Clinton found the perfect solution in likely becoming the first senior government executive to maintain all her interactions on a personal server despite her obvious role as a historical government figure. This ludicrous arrangement allowed her to erase any interactions she felt questionable or averse to the narrative of the most prepared public servant in history.  It made any conflicts of interest regarding her actions and the governments and people willing to give the Clintons millions through their foundation difficult if not impossible to trace,  All it would take would be for everyone to acquiesce to the idea that Mrs. Clinton could be trusted to protect the people’s business and separate the professional from the personal by her own rules of behavior.

And thus the press conference where she declared public records as the nation’s chief foreign policy representative to be the first in history held privately hostage, secure behind client attorney privilege.  She announced that no security breach on a private server was possible because it was physically guarded by the Secret Service, that 30,000 e-mails were destroyed as they related to her yoga schedule or daughter Chelsea’s weeding, or personally intimate interactions with her husband( who unfortunately denied having ever sent more than two e-mails in his life).   She declared there were no emails regarding her decisions leading to the Benghazi debacle and she could be trusted on that fact.  And she topped it all off, by saying as ‘ I am so forthcoming’, there would be no more access to her records or her server.  If you need to have your head explode, I recommend you watch the whole thing. The cliff-notes version however is here, and I suspect that will likely still be enough to have your head explode.

Now the watch begins.  I have always predicted that it was very likely Mrs. Clinton would not run for President because of the enormous baggage that would be exposed if she did so, and if she brazenly ran anyway, would show thee same fatal flaws that took her down in 2008.  That was before any of this mess.

In the end it always goes back to the rule of law.  You pay your taxes because its the law.  You don’t discriminate because it’s the law. You don’t steal because it’s the law. You don’t enter a country illegally because it’s the law. You don’t destroy evidence because it’s the law.  And it’s the law whether you’re the President the Secretary of State, or just another nondescript schlub.  And because the law deals with everyone on equal terms, it is as protective of your rights, as it is the most exalted leader of the land.

Are we going to throw that all away by electing a person that has never had a smidgen of understanding what I am talking about, or why that would even matter?  As Mrs. Clinton put so bluntly, “At this point, what difference would it make?”

All the difference in the world.

Martyrs and Absolute Rulers

Boris Nemtsov sight of martyrdom in front of the Kremlin
Boris Nemtsov sight of martyrdom in front of the Kremlin

I have returned from a brief sabbatical from Ramparts to find a world progressively in disarray. Acknowledging the responsibility that comes with Ramparts of Civilization being the currently ranked  #8, 785,839 busiest internet site in the world based on on-site traffic, I felt my loyal audience would probably be able to stand a short respite from my point of view.  For you few decerning readers though, the absence of commentary on the fascinating events of the last few days without the specific purview as to how it will effect the future of western civilization probably left you a little wanting and directionless.  I will therefore try to do my best in my own humble way to once again try to tie it progressively together.

We start in the year 1170 with Thomas Becket, of course.  Henry II of England had definitely had enough of Thomas’s irritating desire to point out his flaws, and did what absolute rulers are prone to do – make a spectacle so others might learn.  Making sure the appropriate command was sent in a way that would absolve him of the need for direct action, Henry proclaimed to his court, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Noting Thomas’s proclivity as archbishop in hanging near the nation’s grandest 220px-English_-_Martyrdom_of_Saint_Thomas_Becket_-_Walters_W3415V_-_Open_Reverseshrine, the Canterbury Cathedral, Henry’s most professional knight assassins traveled to Britain’s most sacred ground, to make sure Thomas would no longer be a thorn in Henry’s side, and that everybody would know it.  The assassins made short work of Thomas at the altar and left him for public display.  With this monstrous event, Thomas had been made martyr, and Henry made his point.  Like all absolute rulers committing public sin Henry thrashed about looking for  Becket’s killers, but didn’t look very hard.  Henry even did an appropriate amount of public penance in front of Becket’s tomb, to show his subjects his recognition of the extent of sin committed, but their king was still king in complete charge, and Becket’s influence in effecting  change lost to the mists of time.

And so we lived 845 years later with another display of martyrdom of an opposition leader paying the price for irritating the absolute ruler. In a very public display reminiscent of Becket, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by professionals in front of Russia’s most sacred church and the Kremlin, for the crime of pointing out the flaws of today’s absolute ruler, Putin.  This Putin knew his Henry II role well, already “taking over” the search for his killers, and lamenting the action so brazen at Russia’s sacred ground.  He has publicly apologized to Nemtsov’s mother. Well, as Shakespeare said, He “doth protest too much”.  The chances of Putin finding Nemtsov’s murderer is excellent, given the number of mirrors in the Kremlin. The chances of Russia finding justice with this increasingly malevolent dictator is considerably less likely, and the message is clear to all.  You defy the boss, and the boss will act.

Henry II and Putin have something else in common. Neither had any concern that the alleged leader of their world would do anything significant.  Henry had his Pope Alexander, who had appointed Becket bishop in the first place, but Henry knew the Church of England was progressively his church and Pope Alexander made a Becket a religious martyr, not a political one, and nothing was done.  So too does Putin have his Obama, who despite insult after challenge after provocation after crime, has stood silently as Putin has recognized his adversary for the foil that he is.

Russia is becoming a very dark place.  There is no place for brave patriots like Boris Nemtsov or, in absentia, Gary Kasparov.  The idea of liberty that so briefly shone when Boris Yeltsin rose onto the tank so many years ago and declared the dictatorship police state gone is a faint and withered memory.  In one of the most interesting twists of history, Boris Yeltsin, as his power was waning in 2000, determined to select his successor.  His assumed successor, his right hand man, a libertarian named Boris Nemtsov, was at the last moment set aside for an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, and Russia was changed forever.  Nemtsov’s Russia is now a Russia we will never know, and Vladimir Putin made sure of that.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Vice Premier Boris Nemtsov
Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Vice Premier Boris Nemtsov