New York Times: Bad Luck and Worse Manners Tarnish Obama’s Asia Trip.

This bad luck is explained by Richard Fernandez:

If you listen to Rodrigo Duterte’s now infamous rant against president Obama (start a minute 6) you might be forgiven for thinking it was Howard Zinn or Bill Ayers speaking, allowing for the accent. He spoke of the “lapdogs of America” who forget that “America has one too many [offenses] to answer for”. He argued that the Philippines “inherited the [Muslim] problem from the United States” and since “everyone has a terrible record of extrajudicial killing … why make an issue of it.” He describes the massacre of the Indians, the oppression of migrants etc. as reasons for ordering the deaths of thousands proving, if there was any remaining doubt, that he learned the lesson of moral equivalence well.

From this Duterte concluded that he wouldn’t listen to lectures from the SOB leader of such a country. It’s almost as if he’s been listening to Obama and Obama was hoist on his own petard. The Western left has the habit of preaching from a moral height while simultaneously describing its history as one unending crime. You’ve heard the teaching moments. “I live in a house built by slaves.” “You didn’t build that!” This whole country is stolen!

Say it often enough and someone will believe you. Somebody did. The trouble is you can’t rise from the toilet to suddenly preach from a great moral height. It’s possible to do one but not both simultaneously. Of course the liberal left can context shift and switch between sackcloth and ashes and the throne of moral superiority with the alacrity of Dr. Who. But Durterte isn’t that nimble.

The clash between the two is tragi-comedy. Obama’s planned teaching moment has complicated the problem of holding the Philippines against an expansionary China. The stark reality is that Duterte’s Philippines is almost totally helpless against the Chinese military power and extremely vulnerable to Islamic terrorism. Who does Duterte think is keeping the Chinese away? The Philippine Navy? Nor will his hometown of Davao last very long against Islamic rebels without intelligence support and Sigint from the United States.

Click to expand...

Angry adolescents need their parents to pay the bills and keep them safe, too, but they don’t acknowledge that. And leftism is the politics of spoiled children, regardless of their age. Or, to put it more bluntly:

At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.

Click to expand...

And no matter how cool you try to be, when you’re President of the United States, sometimes you wind up being The Man against whom the spoiled brats rage.

Click to expand...

LowDown said:

IThere are none so completely anti-American as the American left.

Click to expand...