Our Betrayer-in-Chief

My wife and I are newly returned from a bus tour of Spain.  Among our companions were a husband and wife of Coptic Christian origin.  Recent Egyptian immigrants to Australia, they were vehement critics of Barack Obama.

These fellow tourists were livid at how casually our president abandoned their co-religionists.  In their view, in order to promote the Arab Spring, he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to murder and harass the Copts.  Instead of standing up for justice, he betrayed America’s friends.

Another of our travelling buddies was an Iranian immigrant to the U.S.  He too was outraged that Obama did not support the “good” Persians.  Rather than provide encouragement for the many Iranians who love America, he toadied up the mullahs who hate us.

Meanwhile, as a Jew, I am sensitive to how frequently Barack disregards Israeli interests.  Although he claims to be a friend of Israel—with friends like this who needs enemies?  Clearly, the Iranian deal exposes the Jewish state to obliteration in a nuclear holocaust.

Others betrayed by Obama include the Ukrainians, the Cubans, the Syrians, the Eastern Europeans, and the Iraqis.  Relying on promises from our chief executive is plainly a fool’s errand.  His assurances are obviously as substantive as a sneeze in the wind.

Worse yet is the treatment that our betrayer-in-chief has meted out to his own people.  He undermined their health care, despite assertions he would improve it; damaged race relations, rather than brought people together; and undercut the constitution ostensibly to advance social justice.

Now he has further shredded our founding document by abdicating our sovereignty to the United Nations.  Instead of allowing congress to provide advice and consent for an international treaty, he mangled the English language by insisting that a treaty in not a “treaty.”  No doubt its import also depends on the meaning of the word “is.”

Obama wanted to be a transformative president in the sense of making a major difference.  In this, he has succeeded.  None of his predecessors managed to so profoundly betray our national heritage.

Why then does he retain supporters?  The answer is that these folks seem to fall into several categories:

·      African-Americas remain loyal because they identify with him.  They fear that if they become turncoats, they will be the next victims.

·      America-haters continue to admire him because they too believe our nation is so corrupt it deserves to be taken down a peg.  If our interests are hurt, we warrant what we get.

·      Naïve idealists stay the course on the assumption that if we are nice to evil people, they will miraculously mutate into allies.  It is merely a matter of giving them a chance.

·      Then there are the political hacks.  They will remain dedicated to their party leader irrespective of what he does.  For them, their careers are more important than the fate of the nation.

·      Lastly there are those disengaged souls who do not realize they have been betrayed.  When they deign to tune in, they are so captivated by the political theater that they applaud any good show.

We have evidently not been sufficiently harmed so as to be as irate as my tour companions.  While we are less wealthy or secure than we might otherwise be, we are not yet as impoverished as the Greeks or as repressed as the Russians.  We are thus too comfortable to be infuriated by presidential disloyalty.

Nonetheless, our turn may be coming.  That Iranian bomb—the one they were never supposed to get—might one day fall on us and/or our friends.  Or far away religious repression could, in our case, be converted into anti-religious repression.  What was formerly inconceivable has certainly become less so.

People who are not vigilant in protecting their freedoms lose them.  Likewise people who do not notice when they have been betrayed get swindled out of house and home.  Will that be our fate?  Will our future parallel that of expatriate Copts and Iranians?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University