{"id":8742,"date":"2013-05-31T15:30:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T15:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/31\/obama-the-sophist\/"},"modified":"2013-05-31T15:30:17","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T15:30:17","slug":"obama-the-sophist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/31\/obama-the-sophist\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama the Sophist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, Obama is the most impressive sophist of his age. In classical rhetoric, when the speaker was about to equivocate, he added an emphatic adjective or parenthetical that he was never more candid and sincere. Sometimes he inserted \u201con the one hand \/ on the other hand\u201d to show his awareness of every point of view other than his own. Rhetoricians often projected their own base motives onto others, using straw men like \u201csome will say\u201d or \u201cthere are those who\u2026\u201d, as if illiberal enemies were so ubiquitous that there was no mundane need to name them all.  Obama has mastered all that and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

He excels especially in the expression of dramatic anguish<\/a>. His attorney general is \u201cupset\u201d that he had to resort to tapping the phone records of reporters. Barack Obama is torn because his drones sometime kill those beyond the four thousand intended. Obama is so bothered that his subordinates have gone after journalists that he wants Congress to stop him from himself, by passing a law to prevent his own team from doing what he finds politically advantageous. It is outrageous, Obama thunders, that the IRS is monitoring his political enemies \u2014 and so outrageous that the person who oversaw the illegal program had to be promoted to enforce the fiscal protocols of Obamacare. Benghazi really was a terrorist act, because the president right after the killings jailed a filmmaker for it, blamed the attack on spontaneous demonstrations \u2014 and yet in passing said he opposed generic terrorist acts. Presto \u2014 he could post facto<\/em> claim that he meant all the time that Benghazi was just one of those preplanned acts of terror.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sophists tip their hand in jest \u2014 and none better than Barack Obama. Beware when he jokes<\/a> that he will send the IRS after you, or that Predators will guard his daughters. And be even more vigilant of the preemptory denial. Barack Obama can brag ad nauseam<\/a> about killing Osama bin Laden, because he first swore<\/a> that he would never \u201cspike the ball\u201d by referencing the hit.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson: [. . .] In short, Obama is the most impressive sophist of his age. In classical rhetoric, when the speaker was about to equivocate, he added an emphatic adjective or parenthetical that he was never more candid and sincere. Sometimes he inserted \u201con the one hand \/ on the other hand\u201d to … Continue reading “Obama the Sophist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}