The Audacity of Self-Delusion

I listened to the State of the Union address tonight in awe.

Contrary to the facts on the ground daily reported even in the government-compliant major media outlets, Obama proclaimed the U.S. economy robust, the Iraq and Afghan wars at an end, and that peace prevails on the planet courtesy of the U.S. military. Indeed, because of the military's great success in securing world peace, the President urged colleges and universities to open their doors to the Pentagon's recruiters. Why one would have to enlist in the military now that peace prevails is something he failed to explain.

Moreover, he declared that the United States government is in solidarity with the Tunisian revolution (after years of backing the Ben Ali regime against the Tunisian people) and that, in some mysterious, unspecified way, the United States deserves credit for the cessation of the Sudanese civil war (after years of fomenting that war through its proxies in the oil rich regions of the south).

Those are just a few of the audacious claims contained in Obama's speech: claims that the President could make only if he is clinically insane or a pathological liar. Or, perhaps, like George W. Bush, Obama is simply surrounded by ennablers who tell him what he wants to hear, so that he has no need to pick up a newspaper.

The speech was truly remarkable; I don't think I have ever heard a U.S. President better illustrate the Tacitean adage that crime once exposed must take refuge in audacity. It was a desperate gamble by a desperate administration: to offer the American people a fantasy-narrative about the state of the union and the world in the hope that the populace will stop paying attention to what little news is actually reported and simply drink the kool-aid.

I cannot help but recall the iconic photo of the Jonestown suicides, of dead bodies sprawled on the ground beneath a placard quoting George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

We are there. Obama, in collusion with the rest of the American political class, has brought us there.