Obama is a socialist! Obama is a fascist!
He enacted a government takeover of health care. He’s cutting Medicare.
He’s a big spender. And he wants to destroy our military by reducing its budget.
He’s in the pocket of Wall Street. He’s anti-business.
Plus he destroyed our economy and jobs before he even got elected president.
[feel free to submit other contradictory prognostications on the president in the comments. Extra points if they were said by the same person.]
11 Comments
In the same way the anti-Obama crowd got comfortable early on with calling him things like, “Dear Leader” in sarcastic criticism of those who voted for him, I’m now seeing an overwhelming persecution of Ron Paul supporters on the Internet, who are frequently and without pause labelled as “disciples” and “worshipers.”
“He’s in the pocket of Wall Street” might not be a contradictory prognostication given some of the wall streeters he’s picked to advise and work for him and his slow to begin investigations approach to those mostly responsible for our economic demise.
As for the rest, I’m with you.
The issue isn’t whether or not he is in the pocket of Wall Street. The issue is whether he can both be in the pocket of Wall Street and be anti-business.
As far as I can tell, Wall Street owns our entire government (including Obama, but no more than everyone and everything else).
Whoops, read this without the brackets, didn’t realize it was targeted at the paradoxical claims. If you want a good source for contradictory accusations about the President, all you need to do is find video of that one guy who used to be on Fox News. What was his name? Glenn Something. Oh, well.
Is it possible to be in the pocket of Wall Street and anti-business at the same time if the government favors certain businesses (the pockets of which govt is in) over others? That would be my fear.
But I must agree with the main thrust of your post, that simplistic accusations “big spender”, “anti military”, etc. don’t work, and the details matter. It would be great if such seeming contradictions would lead the Republican faithful to realize that the world is not as clear cut, black and white, as their political operatives would have them believe.
Most arguments worth having cannot be fit into a Twitter post.
With regard to the socialist v. fascist claim, quite a few conservatives (usually well to the right of, well, right) claim that these two ideologies are both on the left, regardless of how opposed the two lines of thought may be, people see authoritarian & authoritarian and think it’s all the same. But hey, not like education should be a priority.
Dan does make an interesting point that Wall Street itself may, in fact, be anti-business.
Woops, need to add a caveat: quite a few conservatives I’ve spoken to.
It makes sense when you realize that Republicans don’t consider money used for military purposes “spending.” Doublespeak, doublethink, double your pleasure, double your fun.
Thatguy, the other problem with the “Socialist vs Fascist” fallacy is that it’s *not even* “authoritarian vs authoritarian”. Maybe if the comparison was “Stalinist vs Fascist” there would be a possible point of departure. As it is, “Socialist vs Fascist” is a uninteresting collection of words.
Exactly, socialism is an economic construct while fascism is a form of government.