We are in times existential times where old paradigms political or otherwise no longer exist. We have a lying, infantile president with hopes of grandeur running the country who is using all the isms to divide to maintain power. It is time for our former presidents to verbalize these realities. President Obama may have started that yesterday.
According to Crain’s Chicago Business’ Greg Hinz’ article titled “Invoking the specter of Nazi Germany, Obama warns against complacency,” while Obama did not name Trump, he was clear.
American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump. …
One thing he’s learned is that “things don’t happen internationally if we don’t put our shoulder to the wheel,” Obama said, speaking of the U.S. “No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn’t do it, it’s not going to happen.”
Obama gave one specific example, but it was a solid one: Ebola. To fight the virus the U.S. did everything from build an airport tarmac in Africa to send in medical teams and ferry medicos from other countries. “We probably saved a million lives by doing that,” he said.
At least indirectly, those comments could be seen as criticism of Trump, whose foreign policy focuses on an “America first” paradigm that critics say distracts from this country’s unique role.
According to Hinz, the former President said complacency was a danger and that democracy must be tended lest it falls apart quickly. Obama also pointed out that a free press is essential and it was for that reason America survived the McCarthy red scare and the Nixon horrors.
President Obama is always measured when speaking his every word. It is for that reasons when short phrases are emanated out of his mouth they are given so much weight.
(h/t Daily Kos’s itsnotbutter)