By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Many years ago, I was a member of a committee that was
recommending to whom grant money should be awarded. Since I knew one of the
applicants, I asked if this meant that I should recuse myself from voting on
his application.
"No," the chairman said. "I know him too
-- and he is one of the truly great phonies of our time."
The man was indeed a very talented phony. He could
convince almost anybody of almost anything -- provided that they were not
already knowledgeable about the subject.
He had once spoken to me very authoritatively about
Marxian economics, apparently unaware that I was one of the few people who had
read all three volumes of Marx's "Capital," and had published
articles on Marxian economics in scholarly journals.
What our glib talker was saying might have seemed
impressive to someone who had never read "Capital," as most people
have not. But it was complete nonsense to me.
Incidentally, he did not get the grant he applied for.
This episode came back to me recently, as I read an
incisive column by Charles Krauthammer, citing some of the many gaffes in
public statements by the President of the United States.
One presidential gaffe in particular gives the flavor,
and suggests the reason, for many others. It involved the Falkland Islands.
Argentina has recently been demanding that Britain return
the Falkland Islands, which have been occupied by Britons for nearly two
centuries. In 1982, Argentina seized these islands by force, only to have
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher take the islands back by force.
With Argentina today beset by domestic problems,
demanding the return of the Falklands is once again a way for Argentina's
government to distract the Argentine public's attention from the country's
economic and other woes.
Because the Argentines call these islands "the
Malvinas," rather than "the Falklands," Barack Obama decided to
use the Argentine term. But he referred to them as "the Maldives."
It so happens that the Maldives are thousands of miles
away from the Malvinas. The former are in the Indian Ocean, while the latter
are in the South Atlantic.
Nor is this the only gross misstatement that President
Obama has gotten away with, thanks to the mainstream media, which sees no evil,
hears no evil and speaks no evil when it comes to Obama.
The presidential gaffe that struck me when I heard it was
Barack Obama's reference to a military corps as a military "corpse."
He is obviously a man who is used to sounding off about things he has paid
little or no attention to in the past. His mispronunciation of a common
military term was especially revealing to someone who was once in the Marine
Corps, not Marine "corpse."
Like other truly talented phonies, Barack Obama
concentrates his skills on the effect of his words on other people -- most of
whom do not have the time to become knowledgeable about the things he is
talking about. Whether what he says bears any relationship to the facts is
politically irrelevant.
A talented con man, or a slick politician, does not waste
his time trying to convince knowledgeable skeptics. His job is to keep the true
believers believing. He is not going to convince the others anyway.
Back during Barack Obama's first year in office, he kept
repeating, with great apparent earnestness, that there were
"shovel-ready" projects that would quickly provide many much-needed
jobs, if only his spending plans were approved by Congress.
He seemed very convincing -- if you didn't know how long
it can take for any construction project to get started, after going through a
bureaucratic maze of environmental impact studies, zoning commission rulings
and other procedures that can delay even the smallest and simplest project for
years.
Only about a year or so after his big spending programs
were approved by Congress, Barack Obama himself laughed at how slowly
everything was going on his supposedly "shovel-ready" projects.
One wonders how he will laugh when all his golden
promises about ObamaCare turn out to be false and a medical disaster. Or when
his foreign policy fiascoes in the Middle East are climaxed by a nuclear Iran.
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