What is the worst thing Obama did, Reddit?
What is the worst thing Obama did, Reddit?
Posted in r/Presidents by u/E23R0 • 3,379 points and 4,179 comments
I got as far as them re-litigating Joe Lieberman
Wow, the thread is locked? What a shock
Amazing how for every single thing posted in that thread, even the
ones, there's someone defending it as a good thing.I love how someone mentions drone strikes and the top response is "well the republicans criticise him for that, but they do it too!" As if that somehow makes it not bad? Surprised noone has commented "whataboutism"
Ordering the execution of a 16 year old American citizen via drone strike, carried out while the target was eating at a cafe in Jordan. The missile killed him, his cousin he was eating with, and seven more people who just happened to be there
Wait nevermind it was when he said not to put ketchup on a hot dog
That was the incident that finally took the blinders off my eyes and made me realize "oh, Obama is literally just a fucking serial killer". It makes liberal's fascination with serial killer true crime dramas make more sense, it reminds them of their favorite president.
The wikipedia article about it doesn't even bother to mention that the drone strike murdered a whole cafe full of people. The lives of other are just a non-factor in westerner's minds sometimes.
So to summarise Reddit's top 5 comments:
- Patriot act.
- Underestimating Russia. Same commenter later on: "No, Russia can’t invade the US. Their military is weak. But they interfered in our elections and have helped divide our country with disinformation. They even had a puppet as our president who is still lying and dividing us and undermining our democracy. They have done more harm to our country with propaganda than they ever could with bullets."
- Didn't legalise weed.
- "Not being a party-builder"
- Didn't convince RBG to retire.
These people certainly have their priorities right. There are people lower down mentioning drone strikes and other things, but a really telling top 5 in my opinion.
First thing that comes to mind is he used a fuck ton of drones overseas. But in the years before his presidency, more and more drones were being used.
Second, Obama was pro-whistle blowers when he ran for POTUS. But when Edward Snowden told the world that the NSA is spying on Americans, suddenly Obama took his pro-whistle blowing stance off of his website.
As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death? As a followup, do you believe that drone warfare would have existed in any case?
As for Snowden, what makes him any different from Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen or many more? Just because you claim the high ground doesn't mean you own it.
No, I would rather we don't murder people.
The choices are not either drones or American boots on the ground. That's a false dichotomy. And we ended up leaving anyway. I can only imagine how it must feel to lose a family member as a civilian casualty of a drone strike and then the occupying country just leaves.
I don't see how these other example are relevant. Edward Snowden was not a double agent working for a foreign entity. He saw that a government agency was breaking the law and then told the American people. He also worked with a reputable news agency to not release unnecessary classified information. By all means, this should have been lauded by the Obama administration.
Just because you claim the high ground doesn’t mean you own it.
When you say shit like this its hard for people to take you seriously.
As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?
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Why are you automatically supporting these "missions" in the first place? They shouldn't be carried out at all.
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Yes I would rather have live soldiers doing it. Dead bodies means less people will support doing these "missions" that shouldn't be done in first fucking place.
The US is literally the Empire from Star Wars and this thread is basically you doing "empire did nothing wrong" but unironically.
You are the bad guy.
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Oh no, the poor wittle soldiews might die when they're sent to kill people 🥺
Buddy you have a lot of unexamined assumptions you need to address, first let's start with the context of these "missions" your beloved soldiers and drones carry out
Is murdering innocent people for oil execs and military capital something you consider necessary and noble?
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As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?
Don't know what to tell you but people being invaded don't tend to hold american soldiers' lives as sacred.
As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?
Very few people give a shit about dead foreign civilians, a lot of people get angry when the bodies of their own country's soldiers start piling up. Replace the soldiers with remote control machines and you remove a huge (arguably the main) incentive for people to oppose war.
this mf thinks american boots are worth more than middle eastern children
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As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?
yes, personally i'd love to see more dead US soldiers actually
my hot take is the one good thing obama did was prove that black men can be shit presidents, too
all presidents are bastards by virtue of the bourgeois class dictatorship; this is axiomatic of the US form of government. Obama merely proved through practice what was already known in theory.
his presidency really did put the nails in the coffin of liberal progressivism for me. before it was possible to believe that the inequality and bigotry ingrained in the American social order could be rectified with bourgeois democracy and representative identity politics. a black "community organizer" telling us out of one side of his mouth that he'd roll back the excesses of the christian nationalist that came before him and then just maintaining them while giving us nothing was too obscene to ignore.
you give him too much credit because he didnt just maintain christian nationalism in so many ways he advanced it along with white supremacy in general too
