Obama says Trump deepened US divide in rush to ‘identify enemy’ after Charlie Kirk shooting
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/obama-charlie-kirk-political-violenceOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca391
Comments57https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/obama-charlie-kirk-political-violenceOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
Well Obama likes dijon mustard so he should keep his elite ideas to himself.
Can you believe he wore a tan suit? A tan fucking suit!
But he is a war criminal and here's an essay and twenty-five RT links about how Putin is way better.
Second half of the comment aside, dude did continue and expand drone strikes, which probably does make him eligible for "war criminal" status lol
I can't name a single US president who has not been eligible for "war criminal" status. Not that that makes what Obama did okay, just clarifying that his actions weren't uniquely egregious. If I were him, my defense would be that we were gonna engage in those strikes either way, but this way American lives were not on the line. In that case, expanding drone strikes could be painted as good in a lot of people's minds.
Maybe the best person to have ever been president was Carter, and he still continued to enable a genocide of East Timor by Indonesia.
William Henry Harrison was only president March 4, 1841 – April 4, 1841 (31 days). While he was a slave owner, he MIGHT not be a war criminal.
Lincoln only war crimed Indians a little bit he's got my vote as best of the bunch
I'm curious what your feelings are on the second half of that comment.
Putin is a shithead dictator would be the most kind thing I can say lol
I'm glad to see you can speak your mind on a remote community without fear of Dessalines coming by to slap you for wrongthink.
Lol in all honesty: never met anyone doing that on this instance. Not to say it never has happened, I just may have never been a big enough fish.
Truly the most heinous act any president has committed
You guys are playing down the offense of: FEET ON THE DESK.
And even worse: the LATTE SALUTE. It's because he wanted make the troops cry, and Fundamentally Change America because of his AntiColonialism and his Deep-Seated Hatred For White People or White Culture.
A tan suit is, believe it or not, the uniform of antifa!
This is the martyr they've been waiting for.
Stephen Miller especially: “It is a vast domestic terror movement,” said Miller, speaking of left-wing political organizations. “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he added. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
The Nazis did the exact same thing, so the only surprising thing is that it took so long. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they had Kirk killed for this purpose.
I'm not saying it's a likely theory. I just wouldn't be surprised at all if it was true.
That would have been my bet.
Obama's reluctance to criticize a fellow member of the President's Club has really highlighted Obama's known flaws as a centrist Neo-Liberal leader, as well as the dangers of centrism in general.
Oh man the things I would do to have that man as president again.
The fundamental problem with Obama was that he took office in a transformative moment for the country, with an enormous public mandate to rewrite how our economy and our legal system functioned. The US Treasury owned 1/3rd of the private banking system outright.
There was an enormous demand for sweeping reforms in the health care, real estate, and education sectors. Union momentum was building for the first time in decades. DC Statehood was on the table. The SCOTUS was in play. A new era of civil rights legislation was possible. We had trillions going to a couple of stupid, pointless wars that we could claw back. The tech sector was ripe for economic growth in a period of surging unemployment in a way that would guarantee everyone more money for fewer working hours. Sky high gas prices made a Green New Deal a real possibility.
He fucking pooched it. Practically all of it. We got a few tepid financial regulations, a marginal expansion of Medicaid, billions in loan forgiveness on trillions in debt, and a pat on the head.
Now that window has fully slammed shut. A new window is open, but it's open to a future of fascist police violence, decimation of the administrative state, a permanent indentured servant class, apartheid, genocide, and a third world war. Trump isn't flinching. He's going for all of it and his party is throwing their full weight behind him.
Now that its the reactionary turn of the wheel and all the worst people are getting to make decisions, do I wish a non-fascist was in charge of the country? Yeah, okay, sure. But I also envy my conservative neighbors in that they appear to have a party that's putting all the shit they wrote down on paper into action. Project 2025 isn't just smoke blown up the assholes of the rub base. The modern GOP is here to deliver.
Maybe if Obama'd been less of a Truman and more of an FDR we wouldn't fucking be in this mess to begin with.
Obama lead us out the Great Recession with a pretty good economy by the time he handed the country over to Trump who spent four years trashing everything he had done.
He presided as we left the Great Recession, under a policy of Keynesianism both he and Bush Jr had embraced.
He didn't lead shit. He did what his handlers told him to do and looked pretty on TV.
The real economic vision of the Obama administration was not meaningfully distinct from Bush in '01 or Trump in '20. Bail out the plutocrats. Let debt collectors feast on everyone else.
We dipped back into recession in '14 and flirted with recession in '16. Trump took a bad situation and made it worse. But Obama never actually fixed anything.
There wasn't a recession in 2014 there was one quarter of contraction in the first quarter of 2014 but a recession is defined as a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.
Even with FDR, he essentially gave the group that attempted a coupé/assassination a slap on the wrist rather than what they should have gotten. What does that have to do with this conversation? Any time some group or party does something heinous in this country they are given a pass to "maintain unity" or whatever going back to the civil war which just enables more of their bull shit.
I can understand if a person is against the death penalty for any reason. I'm mostly against it myself. However, at the barest minimum those who were part of the Confederacy should have been barred from holding public office of any kind or participating in anything that would influence public policy beyond maybe their right to vote
I don't believe Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers or David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were "given a pass", particularly after national news declared them public enemies.
Quite a few organizations and organizers get squashed hard. It's within the state's capacity. Trump seems to be demonstrating the degree to which these norms can be violated.
Well, they're long dead. I'm more despondent at Biden giving the J6 instigators a free pass.
That's literally what I am talking about. It's a pattern that goes back to before either of us were here, but that we feel and see as a result.
There's a lot of valid criticisms here but you need to remember that he had to fight tooth and nail for everything he managed to do. The D majority in congress was a rounding error with DINOs on their side of the aisle. If he didn't concede constantly he wouldn't have accomplished anything. Even if he really did want to make the sweeping changes we all hoped he would, he didn't have the congressional mandate even if he had the popular one.
That's the line his voters are fed.
But when you've got a VP owned and operated by the insurance industry and Larry Summers authoring your Treasury policy, I'm more concerned with who he was fighting for.
That was a fact. WTF does his VP have to do with the fact that there was a 100% Republican block against his policies and he couldn't get anything passed unless he kowtowed and made concessions that destroyed everything he was trying to do? Biden didn't break any ties against him. Remember how Merrick Garland got confirmed to the supreme court? Oh right, they literally broke the rules to keep that from happening. This revisionist BS has to go. As far as Larry Summers is concerned, say what you will but the economy was much better when he left than when he was inaugurated. Or did you forget 2008 too.
This is classic "Democrats have to be perfect and do exactly what they promised and solve everything even things they didn't run on or let's go with Satan" rhetoric we keep hearing from the left and I'm tired of it.
Obama had a bigger advantage in 2009 than Trump has today.
Joe Biden being a creepy racist crook with deep ties to the insurance industry is why health reform failed.
He did what he could, and I'm tired of arguing with people like you.
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-obama-had-total-control/985146007/
I'd take W again over this shitstain
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
How about covid-19?
HW even.
I'd laugh at him for puking on another foreign dignitary
I'll ruin you like a Japanese banquet.
Yeah but he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, right?
Yeah it was intended
Gee thanks Obama.
I do not think “identify” is the right word. He already had an enemy picked out. No matter what the facts are, it is always the out-group that is responsible.
Just wait until tomorrow. And the day after that. Taco works every day to further deepen the divide. He gets a great big assist from the Confederate Party, since that's what they have been doing for decade upon decade. Newt really refined things in the 90s for them, along with Rush and Faux "News".
Ronnie Raygun laid the groundwork to make this all more effective, but this was the pipe dream of the John Birch society and later, the people angry about Watergate - not angry at Nixon and the Confederate Party for what they did, mind you - angry at THE MEDIA for exposing it and angry at "squish" Confederates that were going to vote to impeach and indict Nixon.
I don't know why everyone jumped in on the "let's figure out what camp this guy belongs to" game anyway. The root causes are the same anyway: online radicalization, pervasive gun availability, and extremists in the government.
And a monopoly of mainstream media
I’m just waiting for trump or some trumpet to silence Obama somehow. He’s the only former dem president speaking about the issue.
Bubba clinton knows he is on the Epstein rape list.
Stating the obvious is not a viable political counter strategy. Do more.
Real Presidents would have called in the shooter to have a beer with them, amirite?
"The enemy" was not the same as "the shooter".
The shooter did this on his own without any 'funding' or 'organization', at most just online rhetoric generically pushing him to the edge combined with Charlie Kirk's schtick of saying extreme stuff for sake of engagement making him a target for those that do go over the edge.
"The enemy" is anyone that is a real threat to the enduring power of the administration. They largely have nothing to do with the shooting, but the shooting is useful to build the narrative. Just like the narrative omits the democratic victims.
Remains to be seen.
I would not be surprised in the slightest if he's associated with Nick Fuentes and his Groyper Army.
Fuentes and Kirk have been fueding for years. This could have (ironically enough) been a gang related shooting.
Fascist movements love to backstab almost as much as they love an internal purge. Kirk getting got by an ideological rival (lone wolf or otherwise) isn't the first such case and it won't be the last.