General Zod wrote:
It's an enormous deal because Obama did it. So Republitards need to hyperventilate and inflate it out of proportion as much as they can whether or not there's any merit to the criticism.
The fact of the matter is that Obama has no need to assert dominance (that is all but useless on today's international arena, as you won't find anyone questioning USA's eagerness to kill) while he frankly has everything to win by showing himself capable of being un-American - that is, reaching out as an equal.
"But that doesn't excuse that his technique for bowing was poor, or mitigate the shame of choosing the wrong gift!" you might say. And of course, you'd technically be making a valid observation. We can look at all these things in isolation, or we can look at them as a whole, and see what the total package is. Or we can do what the conservatards would have us do, and pretend the worst incidents must
represent said package.
From the POV of an outsider, this constant deluge of right-wing rhetoric and its effect is amazing and disquieting to watch. By sheer repetition it's begun to sway even ostensibly moderate people, convinced them to assign inflated and sometimes outright misrepresented incidents an importance that simply can't be justified. And the smarter they are, the more they concoct clever rationalisations around it, because that's less wearying than keeping up a constant 24-h guard against the message.
This isn't because people are stupid; I'm not vulturing on the American people or saying this happens to deserving morons. It's because propaganda works excellently when people already have cause to fear for the future, and the propaganda machine is already entrenched.
