Posted originally on the CTH on August 4, 2023 | Sundance | 512 Comments
Every once in a while, you stumble upon an article that is insightful and valuable. This outline is intended to draw everyone’s attention to one of those articles. ~ SEE HERE
Writing in Tablet Mag, David Samuels outlines his discussion with very well-respected historian David Garrow about Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, but mostly about Obama.
It is an intensely interesting albeit very long read, much of it drawn from a transcript of the conversation initiated by Samuels about the research Garrow did for his 2017 book on Obama called “Rising Star.”
The type of intense, deeply cited and granular research that David Garrow did for his book, is the type of research historians 50-years from now will be citing as they outline the legacy of President Obama. This is also the type of research and non-pretending analysis you will never see approved for conversation by those who currently maintain the false pretense of the subject.
“I doubt that in the long run, Obama’s foreign-policy failures are going to be seen as the most important part of his legacy. I think future historians are going to look at the Obama presidency and see it as the moment when this new oligarchy merged with the Democratic Party and used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people, the oligarchs and their servants, to create a new apparatus of social control. How far they can go with it, what the limits are … you see them trying to test it out every week or so.” ~ David Samuels
Garrow and Samuels both discuss Barack Obama in a way that is extremely accurate; as a result, antithetical to the populism that surrounds the former President. People who have followed political events will bathe in the truthfulness of the discussion. Obama, a man created by his own intent and purpose, to present himself and his transitional identity to a select audience of affluent white liberals. This audience would help Obama achieve his narcissistic life goal to have a “valet and private plane”, while simultaneously assuaging their white guilt. The plan worked swimmingly.
Samuels talks about the curiosity of President Obama maintaining his residence in the nation’s capital, an often-visited command center in Washington DC, where important members of the current administration assemble at times, and secret service vehicles are often spotted coming and going. Yet, for some odd reason, the DC media network who are directly responsible for tracking and outlining the comings and goings of those in power, are seemingly incurious about this home/headquarters.
[…] Samuels: “The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.”
[Garrow interjecting] “Rob Malley was the guy on that.”
Samuels: “Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.
Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms.” (link)
There is a perspective of genuine historically correct discussion between Samuels and Garrow that is very interesting. Factually, there are a lot of reference citations in the Obama tenure that reconcile well with how Garrow outlines the process inside the mind of Barack Obama.
You might remember, the day after the Sept 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a seemingly detached Obama hops a flight aboard AF1 that morning at 6:00am to go west campaigning and collecting donor checks in Nevada and California. The ego legacy superseding the potential for damaging political consequences.
In addition to Garrow outlining the lack of deep consequential relationships in the life of Obama, a man perpetually unmoored from any roots or familial guidance, able to morph himself to the framework of an image he also was responsible for creating – there are a lot more events in/around the era of Obama that reconcile.
I am going to draw attention to one such example, because this is the first time I have seen anyone, other than myself, connect the dots of the new surveillance state to the intents and purposes of Obama’s tenure in office. As noted during the conversation, David Samuels says…
….”So Obama starts out as an eloquent opponent of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. By the end of his presidency, his people are unmasking intercepts of his political opponents every day, and the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.”…
The response from Garrow is as succinct as it is accurate, “that’s right!”
This is my happy place. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to see an article that drops all of the pretending and starts to talk about the reality of our situation. If we stop pretending we unite as a country, because we all start to accept the same baselines.
The fraud that has been purposefully deployed as a tool for fundamental change, can only exist if people pretend that fraud and corruption does not exist. Stop pretending, and the sunlight of commonality begins to unite our nation.
This weaponized national security state will be the legacy of President Obama.
While future historians may reference the obvious failures in almost all of Obama’s foreign policy, specifically the events in the Middle East and ISIS manifest, the core of what will be attributed to President Obama will be the weaponized surveillance state using all the tools created, fine-tuned and deployed during his time in office.
All of that machinery within the, DHS, NSA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, is still running on autopilot – massively controlling the mechanics of communication and social media, thanks to the pathways, networks and systems President Obama authorized.
More to follow…
Centinel2012 