What I've been telling you...

The Unengaged President - Mark Steyn - National Review Online:

...Raising the problem, Senator Lemieux found the president unengaged and uninformed. "He doesn't seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers," reported the senator.

He doesn't seem to know, and he doesn't seem to care that he doesn't know, and he doesn't seem to care that he doesn't care. "It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all," wrote Richard Cohen in the Washington Post last week. "For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. . . . The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

"This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?"

Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses....

There ARE no core beliefs! That's what I keep writing, over and over. And our oh-so-wise pundits keep touching lightly on questions like: "Who is this Obama chap? What are his core beliefs?" If they read Random Jottings they would know precisely what's going on. [Link to my blog-posts on the subject of nihilism.]

Most liberals, especially the "activist" types, have no core beliefs. Nothing. It's all drained away. What are Nancy Pelosi's "core beliefs?" There are none. (Except they all have the belief that government must grow. But that's a "belief" only in the way the addict believes in Heroin.)

I feel like a combination of that boy who said the emperor has no clothes, and Cassandra. Although in this case the clothes have no emperor! Like Cassandra, I keep saying, "You damn fools, you just that wooden horse be!" but nobody listens...

And I keep telling you all that China and Russia are not real to our liberal nihilists. In their view of the world, only America and Israel exist. Why? Because these are the two countries that are beliefs. Are ideas. And belief is an irritant and an affront to the person who has no beliefs. The rest of creation only exists when touched by America or Israel. We see this every day, yet people won't "see" it. For instance the "Palestinians" only exist for Western liberals when Israel does something to them. Arab countries do far worst things to them than Israel does, yet those are invisible.

China's appalling human rights record means absolutely nothing to most leftists. But if I, an American, went to China with my ice cream cart and sold ice cream cones to Chinese children... and they got belly-aches... That would be a big deal! China would suddenly exist! We see this all the time. And if you listen to me, it will make perfect sense to you. (How's that for hubris! It doesn't matter; no one will notice ol' Cassie.