Cheap shots: Piece in Our Time

At the counter-terrorism nuclear summit in Washington, April 1, via The Independent.

Because of all the dreadful things in our long national horror show, Obama's countless crimes and contempt for common decency, the worst, for Victor Davis Hanson, the thing that somehow caps them all, the most insulting, is... when he flashed a peace sign at an international meeting?

Really?

Imagine a Right-Wing PAC Campaign Ad in 2008 . . .

By Victor Davis Hanson — April 4, 2016

. . . along the following lines:

Images of Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, and Reverent Jeremiah Wright flash across the top of the screen. Simultaneously, trailers at the bottom of the screen stream choice Obama quotes of 2008 (e.g., “spread the wealth around,” referring to his grandmother as a “typical white person,” telling his supporters to “get in their [friends’ and neighbors’] face,” saying of his opponents that “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them . . .” etc.). An ominous right-wing voice would then warn that an adolescent, inexperienced, and hard leftist President Obama could very well go to Cuba and do the wave with Raul Castro, tell Argentines to “choose from what works” in Communism and capitalism, implement a de facto amnesty and render federal immigration law null and void, apologize from Turkey — the birthplace of 20th-century genocide — for purported American sins, bow to the Saudi royal family, map out the March Madness picks on TV, play a record amount of golf for a president — and now flash the peace sign at a formal photo of world leaders. What would pundits have called such a hit piece: racist, nativist, xenophobic, Rovian, Kochian, McCarthyite — or prescient? (h/t Edroso)

What? They didn't make that ad? I could swear I saw it dozens of times.

As for flashing the peace sign...

George W. Romney campaigning in the Year of Grace 1968.

Richard M. Nixon memorably saying, "Romney likes peace? I like double peace!", via Heidi-Man.

Gnostic warrior Ronald Reagan, the peacefullest of them all!

Proclaiming peace in March 2003, via. Readers with longer memories will recall it as around the time when this guy said, of the idea of a peaceful resolution to the Iraq "crisis", "For me it would be the perfect solution. I do not want war. I know what wars are. I know the destruction and the death that they bring with them. I am the one who has to console the mothers and widows of the dead. For us, that would certainly be the best solution. In addition, it would save US $50 billion." Words that still stir the soul today.

Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joseph Biden, John Edwards, and Christopher Dodd all thought he was telling the truth when he said shit like that, too. Not me. But I'm sick of being angry at them for it.