Obama: Excusing Violence

It just occurred to me, after reading James Lileks excellent piece about Obama buddy, and former terrorist, Bill Ayers, that the reason todays Leftists sympathize with al Qaeda and Hamas and any other nefarious regime bent on suppressing their people, is because today's Leftists are or would like to be the regime. They never stopped being those people who, while rebelling against the regime, now find themselves with the delicious possibility of enacting their revenge as the regime.

Lilek's juxtaposition of a Chicago Trib editorialist, who writes with the objective nostalgia of grandma recalling porches and lemonade, with his own interpretation, says it all. Here's just one example, but you need to read the whole thing. It's sickening, really:

Second, you have to wonder why Stephanopoulos, who has been resurrected as a television commentator, thought to ask Obama about . . . Bill Ayers.

Lileks: Because of Mr. Ayers’ illustrious past as a domestic bomb-planter, perhaps. Strange as it may seem some people have a few questions.

Obama knows Ayers, a former radical and member of the Weather Underground who is now an academic in Chicago. They met years ago. They served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which provides money for anti-poverty efforts.

Lileks: These are magic words, meant to inoculate: Academic. Anti-poverty efforts. You may believe that an “academic” is someone devoted to a disinterested pursuit of truth bravely following logic down the harrowing corridors where ideology is the first casualty; you may also be a freshman in college with your tuition paid by your parents. There’s a touching naïvete about the description of Ayers as a college professor, as if that means he has entered a realm of pipe-smoking rumination about Truth and Beauty. Doesn’t that make him an Authority? Aren’t we supposed to question Authority? Note to Dick Cheney: get yourself to the Department of Political Science at the U of Wyoming, and watch those calls for war-crime prosecutions melt away. The editorial also notes that it's difficult to move in Chicago academic circles and not encounter Ayers, and no doubt truck drivers and housewives and guys heading to the office on the train nodded in agreement: boy, true dat.

Mayor Daly says,"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over.”

It was a difficult time. What a wonderful absolution. Oh, we all went a little mad. Some of us listened to Steppenwolf, some of us bombed government buildings and plotted robberies that killed people, some of us were rotting in Vietnamese prisons having our teeth bashed out by torture experts. Those days are behind us now, best forgotten. (Unlike the McCarthy era, which will be the subject of 163 movies about the blacklist next year, bringing the total to 45,203.)

You know, it may be hard to find a candidate who doesn’t belong to a church whose leader delivers eyebrow-singing speeches on the evils of America and also built a house Jim Bakker would approve, and it may be hard to find a candidate who doesn’t move with ease in the same social circles as some people who bombed the Pentagon, but it can’t be that hard to find one who doesn’t do both.

The premise of the editorial is about how the press was mean to Obama, after ten days of not talking to the press at all, mind you, and daring to ask him marginally challenging questions. How dare they question? Don't they know who they're talking to? Don't they realize that by bringing up tough subjects they could be standing in the way of history? Don't the journalists, bloggers and pundits see how historic Barack Obama is? Don't they realize that their nit-picking will undo the future of the greatest leader the world has ever known? Don't they realize how unfair it is to pick on Obama's pals?

The Leftists who support Obama and his merry band of former terrorist (Powerline link on the terrorism of Ayers, go read it), America-hating thuggish "academic" friends can do so because they were of the same ilk. They are the same ilk. The rebellion, the rhetoric, the murder, the mayhem is like sweet music to their ears. Obama's subtle turning of phrases, his willingness to tap into the well of resentment bears the mark of a true fearless leader.

But the leader has to have support. The leader has to have minions to excuse his bad judgment and encourage and justify the rhetoric and oppression. He has no shortage of those. Paul Auster writing in the New York Times recalls, fondly, his youth where he was a nascient protester and reluctant rebel, yet still believes the ideology today:

I hesitate to draw any comparisons with the present — and therefore will not end this memory-piece with the word “Iraq.” I am 61 now, but my thinking has not changed much since that year of fire and blood, and as I sit alone in this room with a pen in my hand, I realize that I am still crazy, perhaps crazier than ever.

At least Auster admits it, because there is zip that is rational coming from the Leftists today. Their ideology is as fraught and inherently contradictory as ever. Maybe that's where the crazy comes from. Glenn Reynolds says:

It was the poison of Vietnam that made people crazy. And, apparently, has kept them that way ever since.

People uncomfortable with authority figures tend to be the worst authority figures. Rather than wear the mantle of leadership responsibly they overcompensate and in so doing rule ruthlessly. Anyone who disagrees with the ideology is suspect. Paranoia, delusion and crazy reign. There is no shortage of crazy surrounding Barack Obama.