None of the Above

I’m not a voter – if I were and there had been a square for ‘none of the above’, I might well have placed my electronic finger on it. I am, I have to say, slightly more relieved than not that after endless marathons on television, fundraisers, advertisements, propaganda and economies of truth, America has let the same guy through the front door of 1600 again, postponing the arrival of the inevitably lavish decoration bill that Mrs Romney would almost certainly have insisted upon. For two billion dollars of advertising revenue, quite a lot can be achieved, or, in this case, absolutely nothing. Same old, same old. But, perhaps, not quite. Washington is a fickle mistress, prone to deceit and revolving door loyalties and much as I would like to believe it, I’m unconvinced that things are going to turn out all right in the end.

The president will almost certainly use his final four years to concentrate more on foreign policy. Mr Netanyahu, despite a phone call of congratulation to Mr Obama, may not even be accorded the civility of further interview – instead, he may find himself being sidelined to the bread and soup line - the expensive menu being offered to Abbas, or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. I rather wonder if the President’s last thoughts before turning out his bedside light might be to swear a private oath to himself that he is going to achieve what Carter, Clinton and the Bushes failed to do – find a solution in the Middle East. After all, it’s only politics. Negotiation and even-handedness ought to be able to solve everything since all the players have been dealt hands from the same pack of cards… Not so. Israel has unique status in the world – the Judaeo-Christian heritage which underpins the entire rule of law and freedom of speech enjoyed by the West began with inscriptions on stones brought down from the mountain.

The greatest satisfaction over the re-election of Obama is not being felt in the Democratic Party, deliriously happy as they must surely be. It is not being felt among the media, whose howling and gibbering no longer qualifies them the status of objective observers since they have shown themselves to be a corrupt, partisan mob, peddling the demonising propaganda that was a hallmark of the campaign. It is not being felt among the smug decadents of the western Left who now scent the blood of all who defy their secular inquisition, remorselessly bullying Mitt Romney who didn’t quite have the stones to stand up to them. No, the greatest satisfaction is surely being felt in Iran.

With four more years of delicate and skilful procrastination afforded them by the American voter, Iran must have breathed a collective sigh of relief since it can be sure that it will be able to complete whatever construction is underway in the bunkers of Tehran and Qom, possibly with the covert help of Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett whose roots lie deep in the Chicago Democratic machine. I'm not going to leave this without stating the case for what might happen if the appeasers prevail. The British writer Douglas Murray is at his compelling best at the Cambridge Union, here.

In addition, who could have possibly predicted that the Arab Spring would have spawned so much Islamism in Egypt and Libya – all quite benign, of course. Had the West been paying attention they might have foreseen what looked almost inevitable since well-organised regimes are much better placed to fill the void generated by a power vacuum.  If power is to be placed in the hands of the people, the people - especially the poor and most easily manipulated - will vote for whomever they perceive is looking after them best, in this case, the Muslim Brotherhood and similar who  along with healthcare and roads will systematically impose their own Shari’a motivated dictatorships on those who have elected them, to which the people submit willingly because the imam told them to and this is how they have been taught that democracy works.

The US, faute de mieux,  is apparently backing al Qaeda affiliates in Syria; refused to come to the aid of Americans being attacked by al Qaeda in Benghazi as a result of which four American officials were murdered; and has repeatedly hung Israel out to dry against Hamas’ genocidal Palestinian attackers and a cacophony of Judeophobic slander. 

Europeans love Barack Obama because in  a surge of schadenfreude, they watch the neutering of US exceptionalism. What they don’t realise is that they too, spavined and  lobotomised by consumer ‘rights’, state dependency, victim culture, sentimentality, postmodern-religion, post-nationalism, post-Holocaust and Empire guilt, are themselves on a slippery slope towards a neutralisation whose irrational and bigoted hooves are already being heard thundering over the ideological landscape.