Adventures in Gall (Part One): The Power of Samantha
It takes an increasingly strong stomach to follow current affairs any more, such is hypocrisy displayed by the people best positioned to influence them (Paul Ryan and his ‘Not who we are’ and ‘America is an idea!’ hectoring being a perfect example).
If a strong stomach is needed to follow current affairs, an over-active bile duct is a definite advantage in participation; as the clips from Paul Ryan demonstrate, gall and effrontery are the dominant — and at times sole — attributes needed to sing from the establishment hymnal. Recent days have provided a sterling example of this in the form of Samantha Power, former Obama Administration National Security Council and United Nations alum and erstwhile anti-genocide crusader, penning a forward to the latest edition of Elie Weisel’s social justice classic, Night.
Ms. Power’s screed reads like a parody of overwrought social justice boilerplate, inveighing against ‘rampant injustice’ and giving full expression to such vapid platitudes as ‘witnessing’ and ‘collective shame’:
Injustice was still rampant. Genocide denial against the Armenians, the horrors of his lifetime — Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria in his later years. He lived to see more and more people bear witness to unspeakable atrocities, but he also saw that indifference remained too widespread. Amid all the pain and disappointment of Elie’s remarkable life, how is it that the darkness did not envelop him, or shield him from the sun?
And of course Power has work in a reference to To Kill a Mockingbird because — well, because ‘literature’:
As our nation goes through difficult days, “Night” is a book that is firmly ingrained in that small canon of literature that kids and young adults read when they are growing up in America. Alongside Atticus Finch and Scout, one of the narrators that will have an early shot at shaping our children’s moral universe is 16-year-old Elie. So, while the void is enormous — above all, for Marion, Elisha, and the rest of the family — and the void is enormous for our world, I too am filled with profound joy knowing that my 7-year-old boy and my 4-year-old girl — like Elie’s grandkids, and their children after them — will wade into big questions for the first time with Elie Wiesel as their guide.
The citing of To Kill a Mockingbird is appropriate, although hardly in the manner Power intends; a mediocre book celebrated solely for its utility in pushing a politicized narrative, it serves as a perfect lodestone for a mediocrity like Power. In the recent career of Samantha Power we see a particularly shabby, grasping and destructive dynamic at work:
- Seek out a position of influence and authority less because you want to serve and have demonstrated expertise (read: real world expertise, and not simply convincing some crony to publish one of your manuscripts) and more because you covet the status and power that accompany the position.
- Once ensconced, neglect the actual duties of the position (i.e. Power’s nominal duty to advance the cause of world peace and the national security of the US in her time at the NSC or UN) and instead use it purely for advantage-seeking reasons: ingratiating yourself to superiors, rewarding cronies, maneuvering against rivals (See: Power’s role in spying on the Trump campaign and transition team in 2016).
- After the results of your neglect have become apparent (i.e. Power’s role in agitating for intervention in Libya with its resulting spread of Salafist terrorism across North Africa and the flooding of Southern Europe with MENA migrants), use whatever fruits you’ve cultivated from your self-serving networking to obfuscate, spin and blame-monger (in the lingo of our modern technocrats ‘set the narrative’).
And like most of these people — ahem, Susan Rice — Power has enhanced her status through marriage, in her case to Cass Sunstein, a media darling ‘legal scholar’ and longtime Obama crony. It’s some sign of how decadent our establishment has become that legal positivism can be the basis for any form of celebrity but, lest anyone feel too envious towards Cass, let us point out that a man would have to try very, very hard to find an Irish woman as mannish and ugly as Samantha Power.
You Can’t Make A Humanitarian Interventionist Omelette Without Breaking A Few Eggs
We’ll take leave of Samantha recounting one final episode; In the ultimate example of virtue-signalling gone wrong, Power was touring Africa on a press junket promoting her policies of ‘humanitarian interventionism’ when her motorcade ran over a local child, crushing and killing him:
As the convoy barreled through a village in northern Cameroon on Monday, a 7-year-old boy darted to the road, excited to see the chain of white S.U.V.s carrying Samantha Power, the first cabinet-level American official to visit the country since 1991.
Distracted by a thundering noise, the boy glanced up at the helicopter providing security from above. Suddenly, he was struck dead — killed by the same convoy that had brought officials to showcase American efforts to help protect West Africa’s women and children.
With an veteran actor’s instinct for camera placement, Power wasn’t about to let a good photo opportunity pass; her reaction upon hearing of the seven year old’s death: “Oh, my God. I want to go see his family.”
All other things being equal, Samantha Power is living the Social Justice Warrior dream; parlaying her political ruminations into a paid writing gig: marrying into a high status couple and hitching her star to a powerful crony network: touring the world and being seen among suitably diverse demographic groups while availing oneself of the sorts of photo ops that look so good on a book jacket, a Vanity Fair article or an author’s bio.
And if the highway to heaven is paved with the occasional crushed kid or gassed village, keep your head held high — after all, you meant well!
Originally published at www.paulfrantizek.com on September 19, 2017.