One of the headaches that a teacher encounters in the
classroom is the kind of student who almost always asks: Is it always like
that? The teacher could just have finished saying it can happen this way or
that way, or it can happen myriad of ways, but the student will still ask: Is
it always like that?
When you get to understand this student, you find that he is
intellectually lazy to the point that he wants to narrow each and everything he
encounters to one simple criterion he can remember for ever, and not have to
study anymore. The worst part is that you get to meet people like that in real
life who might have already chosen a criterion by which to judge the validity
and worthiness of everything they encounter.
One such person is Bret Stephens who writes a weekly column
for the Wall Street Journal. He has only one criterion by which to judge the
validity and worthiness of every thing that happens in the world. It is the
answer to this question: How good are these people to Israel ? And you
can see his habit at work in the column he wrote under the title: “What Obama
Knows” and the subtitle: “Every president gets things wrong. What sets Obama
apart is his ideological rigidity and fathomless ignorance.” It was published
on September 23, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Not only does he judge President Obama by that criterion, he
gets the opportunity to judge much of the world by it too. He exposes himself
by making the mistake of thinking aloud: “I've been thinking about this as it
becomes clear that ... Mr. Obama often doesn't know what he is talking about.”
He goes on to say that Obama's analysis of global events is wrong because the
foundation of knowledge on which the analysis is built, is problematic. This means
that the criteria by which Obama judges worldly events are bad in his view.
To elaborate, he mentions an interview during which Mr.
Obama expressed optimism about the world, in response to a question whose
premise was that the world is in total disorder. The first thing that the
President did was to warn that: “You can't generalize across the globe.” What
he was required to do after that to show that the premise of the question was
false, was to give one example that ran contrary to the premise of the question.
This is what Mr. Obama did and more. He said: “there are places where good news
keeps coming. Asia continues to grow … and you're starting to see democracies
in places like Indonesia
solidifying … The trend lines in Latin America
are good … Overall, there's still cause for optimism.”
Bret Stephens took umbrage with that and responded with a
number of examples that do not amount to a hill of beans. He says that the
economy in Japan
is contracting. The truth is that all economies go in cycles and Japan is no
exception. What would make this bad news would be the collapse of the economy,
and this is not happening. Stephens also says that the real estate market in China is a
bubble waiting to burst. Well, some people have been predicting that for at least
5 years, and they bet a great deal that it will happen. The result is that they
lost not only their shirts but their underwear too. It may still happen, but
the burst will be a managed one and not explosive.
On the political side, Stephens says that “Indonesia 's
democracy may be solidifying, but so is Islamism and the persecution of
religious minorities.” Well, the mere fact that he admits democracy is
solidifying proves that the premise of the question about the world being in
total disorder is false. But there is more to it than that because the quote
proves that Stephens is biased against Islam and not just its extreme form.
Worse, he is embracing a trend that will boomerang and hit his kind very hard.
This is because every Jew that knows how to put pen to paper nowadays uses the
word persecution. There will come a time in America
when every act of discrimination by one individual against another will be
called persecution, not to mention Israel where criminal apartheid is
the official policy of the state.
He goes on to say that things are not in perfect form in Thailand , Burma ,
India or Pakistan before moving on to Latin America where
he says that “Argentina
just defaulted for the second time in 13 years. Brazil is in recession. Venezuela is a
brutal dictatorship. Ecuador
is on it way to becoming one.” Well, there are more than 4 countries in Asia,
and more than 4 countries in Latin America .
But the fact that he mentions these 4 and these other 4, says that everyone
else is okay. And this alone proves that the premise of the question to which
President Obama was responding was false.
Moreover, the fact that India may not now look like it will
become the superpower of tomorrow does not mean the world is in disorder. The
fact that Thailand and Burma are going
through a transition period does not mean that the world is in disorder. The
fact that Pakistan
looks to some people as being permanently on the verge of collapse but never
collapsing does not mean that the world is in disorder. The fact that Argentina is
having a dispute with its creditors and withholding paying back the loans it
took does not mean it has defaulted for the second time. But even if it did, it
would not mean that the world is in disorder.
After that, Stephens blows his entire theory by admitting:
“I begin with these examples not because there aren't bright spots in Asia .” Talking about the Big Bang Theory, here is one,
courtesy of Bret Stephens and the Wall Street Journal. Now guess what our
esteemed author does next. He accuses Mr. Obama of the following: “Warn against
generalization – and then generalize. Cite an example – but one that isn't
representative. Talk about a trend line – but get the direction of the trend
wrong.”
The fact is that Mr. Obama did none of that. He was simply
responding to a question that came with a false premise, as comprehensively as
he could. What this says about him is that at the basis of his view of the
world is what is good for America
and what is good for the world. What also comes out of the column, however, is
the restricted view that Bret Stephens has of the world. What is apparent is
that he does not care about America
or the world; he only cares about what is good for Israel and for the Jews. This is
apparent in what he does next.
Brushing aside all the praises that the Jews and the
Israelis had been heaping on Turkey when it was friendly toward Israel, and
forgetting the declarations to the effect that “we are so much alike and so
different from our neighbors,” Stephens now blasts Turkey for supporting Hamas,
for being anti-Semitic and for imprisoning journalists.
With that, he gets to the Middle East
proper where he sprinkles his presentation with the standard Jewish and Israeli
talking points. To further buttress his point of view, he quotes such temple of
clowning ignorance as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And he ends by
asking the question: “What does the president know?” to which he answers: “Not
a lot.”