We aren't the world

Call it Schadenfreude if you want. My peak experience of the past week was the headline that the Olympics committee had ignored the lobbying of Mr. and Mrs. Failed Messiah in their top-priority mission to capture the games for Chicago. (A mission that cost U.S. taxpayers -- you, if you're not poor or very rich -- around one million bucks.)

It was also a little shocking in what it revealed about the mind field of the F.M. In the previous posting, I ventured that the bid for a Chicago Olympics was already a done deal behind the scenes, with nothing left but the grinning and posing for the cameras. Surely, the F.M. and his next of kin wouldn't have made such a hugely visible move, committing the prestige of the president's office -- no, scratch that, with him it's all personal, so it was his prestige -- if there was any serious possibility that he would get a smack in the chops.

A smart strategist always has a homunculus sitting on his shoulder, whispering in his ear: "Okay, Brainbox, what if it doesn't work?" A more technical term is risk management. A rational calculation of the benefits if a plan is successful versus the cost if it fails.

If the F.M. had considered the consequences of the Olympic committee rejecting his pitch, he would have limited his efforts to quiet diplomatic maneuvering. Had he been successful, he could then have "accidentally" let the word leak out that his magic touch and that of the First Failed Messiah Lady had bowled a strike.

So what can we deduce from this colossal public relations flop? Mainly that (1) the F.M. is incapable of objective analysis, and (2) he is still convinced that the adoration of the world's leftists gives him mana, a mysterious power that he emanates and will part whatever waves he wishes to drive his chariot through.

Both deductions, but especially the second, are why this man is frightening in a way that Bill Clinton never was. Clinton was equally egotistical, and his door was always open to hucksters for every brand of social engineering, but he had a saving pragmatic streak. He could read the public mind. Given a few more terms and a flagging sex drive, he might have evolved into a reasonably sensible and clever agent for the country's interests.

The Failed Messiah is the opposite. He believes he is right because he has a divine right. He has been sent to deliver America from its sins and dissolve it into an egalitarian, multi-cultural flat Earth. There can be no compromise, because that would be a reflection on him.

Which is why he goes where angels fear to tread, why he can set himself up for a defeat like the Olympics fiasco. It wasn't about the Olympics. It wasn't even about Chicago boosterism. It was to show the United Nations State that America, that old, aggressive, self-protective America, was toast -- redeemed by the multi-cultural new order, signified by Chicago and, not least, by Himself.

The Times (U.K.) reports:

President Barack Obama said he would use the Olympics to restore the image of the United States as an accessible and multi-ethnic nation after an impassioned pitch to win the 2016 Games for Chicago.
The President told the International Olympic Committee (IOC), gathered today in Copenhagen to decide between his hometown, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo, that America was ready to re-engage with the world after years when its sense of diversity had not been reflected abroad.

If he thinks about it at all, the F.M. thinks that an America populated mainly by indigenous Americas was evidence that it was not ready to "engage" with the world. All we did was help win a World War and then face down Soviet aggression for 70 years. But that doesn't count, not when our "sense of diversity had not been reflected abroad."

Responding to a question by Syed Shahid Ali, the IOC member for Pakistan, about the “pretty harrowing experience” of many foreign visitors to the US, he said: “One of the legacies I want to see coming out of 2016 is a reminder that America, at its best, is open to the world. We are putting the full force of the White house and the State Department into making sure that not only is this a successful Games but that visitors from all around the world feel welcome and will come away with a sense of the incredible diversity of the American people.”

At this point in history we can only dream of a U.S. president who would respond, "What pretty harrowing experiences do you mean, Syed? Our flying the World Trade Center into a couple of airliners, whose passengers included members of our richly diverse population? Arresting some bomb hobbyists?"

The President does have power over security and immigration issues however. He promised to deal with them and stressed the ethnic diversity of Chicago, which is home to people drawn from 130 nationalities.
“We’ve got everyone. This could be a meeting in Chicago, because we look like the world. Over the last several years sometimes that fundamental truth about the United States has been lost,” he said.

May I propose another fundamental truth about the United States? We aren't the world. We are the United States. And that's a truth the Failed Messiah has not lost, because he never had it.