https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/08/04/a-non-pretending-discussion-about-barack-obama/
A Non-Pretending Discussion About Barack Obama
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“I doubt that in the long run, Obama’s foreign-policy failures are going to be seen as the most important part of his legacy. I think future historians are going to look at the Obama presidency and see it as the moment when this new oligarchy merged with the Democratic Party and used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people, the oligarchs and their servants, to create a new apparatus of social control. How far they can go with it, what the limits are … you see them trying to test it out every week or so.” ~ David Samuels
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Samuels talks about the curiosity of President Obama maintaining his residence in the nation’s capital, an often-visited command center in Washington DC, where important members of the current administration assemble at times, and secret service vehicles are often spotted coming and going. Yet, for some odd reason, the DC media network who are directly responsible for tracking and outlining the comings and goings of those in power, are seemingly incurious about this home/headquarters.
[…] Samuels: “The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.”
[Garrow interjecting] “Rob Malley was the guy on that.”
Samuels: “Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.
Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms.”
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I am going to draw attention to one such example, because this is the first time I have seen anyone, other than myself, connect the dots of the new surveillance state to the intents and purposes of Obama’s tenure in office. As noted during the conversation, David Samuels says…
….”So Obama starts out as an eloquent opponent of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. By the end of his presidency, his people are unmasking intercepts of his political opponents every day, and the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.”…
The response from Garrow is as succinct as it is accurate, “that’s right!”
This weaponized national security state will be the legacy of President Obama.
While future historians may reference the obvious failures in almost all of Obama’s foreign policy, specifically the events in the Middle East and ISIS manifest, the core of what will be attributed to President Obama will be the weaponized surveillance state using all the tools created, fine-tuned and deployed during his time in office.
All of that machinery within the, DHS, NSA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, is still running on autopilot – massively controlling the mechanics of communication and social media, thanks to the pathways, networks and systems President Obama authorized.
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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama