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backscatter712

(26,355 posts)
Tue Jun 11, 2013, 12:31 PM Jun 2013

The way I see it, we have four types of politicians to work with. Which type is Barack Obama?

Here are my four categories.


  1. The Idiot or Loon: Examples include Louie Gohmert, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. These people are best for their comedy value, but worst in that they still somehow manage to get in positions of enormous power, and when they do, they make everyone's lives miserable

  2. The Machiavellian Sociopath: Examples include Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell. Maybe they're playing dumb, but really, they're sharks. They use demagoguery to manipulate voters into electing them (voters they secretly hold in contempt), they are ruthless, and when they get power, they're your worst nightmare.

  3. The Awesome Activist: Examples include Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. These folks are rare, so when we see them, we need to treat them like gold, protect them fiercely, and support them fanatically. And they're targets - the Sociopaths hate them, and they manipulate their teammates, the Idiots and Loons to join in the attack.

  4. The Businessman: Examples include Michael Bennet, Barack Obama. These are the guys we should focus on for the NSA thing. These are the guys who really get most of the work done. They're regular folks. They have a talent for politics, they want to do the right thing once in a while, but they also look out for number one. They try not to do too many things that make it hard for them to sleep, but when business conditions demand it, they do it. The fact is that while these kinds of people can be difficult, we CAN work with them.

    Pres. Obama made what he sees as a business decision to keep the NSA running as they are. The way I'm interpreting it, he moved from George W. Bush's approach of full-scale war to deal with terrorism, to an intelligence/dirty-tricks approach using NSA spying, dirty tricks, like Predator drone strikes, special-ops like the attack on Osama Bin Laden, and so on. He calculated that this approach would be less messy and bloody and cause less blowback than Bush's wars. And he's right. But at the end of the day, it still sucks. It just sucks less.



We CAN work with businessman politicians like Pres. Obama to reel back NSA snooping. The businessmen do respond to pressure. In fact, they've got a keen eye for it. When we get them to conclude that the cost of NSA snooping in terms of damage to their political game, and yes, damage to American privacy and civil liberties (yes, they do consider this - they're not conscienceless, they have this as one variable in their business calculations) is higher than the benefits, they'll make changes.

It's time to put pressure on the businessmen.
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