I found the first half or so of Obama's final SOTU pretty anodyne, and I did not like the scalp-waving -- 'just ask Osama,' etc. But there were two points on which I thought he got intensely real -- both involving the dangers of what we as a country might do to ourselves.
The first was putting the threat from ISIS and other terrorist networks (current and future) in its place:
The second was an extended warning about the road to oligarchy -- paved with polarization, campaign finance gone wild, voter suppression and demagoguery. There were two parts to it: the emotion of dysfunction, and the machinery of it. First, the emotion:
The first was putting the threat from ISIS and other terrorist networks (current and future) in its place:
But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are – killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.In effect: this is the Barbary Pirates, not World War III.
The second was an extended warning about the road to oligarchy -- paved with polarization, campaign finance gone wild, voter suppression and demagoguery. There were two parts to it: the emotion of dysfunction, and the machinery of it. First, the emotion:
