Thank you for that link. Can’t believe I read that whole overwritten thing, but it was, indeed, deeply indicative of the intellectual decadence of the post-Christian ethos deconstructing its way through American institutions. Hard to decide who was more metrosexual: the author or his subject, in their delicate hair-splitting on how best to sell out everything the United States stood for until WW2 and in its immediate aftermath. Within this warm bath of smug was revealing detail of how this Administration uses propaganda, down to the ecology of viral dissemination. How coolly they destroy what took centuries to build, tapping on the keyboards of digital communications like they are merely accordianists and what they finger are just tunes. Hey, it’s a living.
Ben Rhodes writes well, and he certainly gets to the heart of it - that the foreign policy "blob" as he calls them can't get anything done. But to suggest that he got the "loyal opposition" to abandon any dissent to the Iran deal by lying is too much. The fact that a 35 year old - not just this particular 35 year old, but any 35 year old - can "rewrite the narrative" of international affairs without any vociferous opposition just shows how uncentered and unprincipled everyone else on the other side are. We learn that there are no "elder statesmen" in foreign policy. Where are the old time greats - the Marshalls, Harrimans, Achesons and Kennans. Kissenger is still around, but he sold himself out to his foreign employers way long ago. It's not that those guys are right on everything, or in fact anything. It's that there wasn't even an argument.
The counter to an Iraq centered mess of a foreign policy is not an Iran centered mess of a foreign policy, and that is what Obama pushed and sold. The opposite of engagement in a tawdry mess that goes no where is disengagement.
P.S. I forgot to write about the fact that the folks on “our side” of the aisle (well they are 5th columnists as we have learned) of course knew about Ben Rhodes, but were happy not to say anything. Just keep the pork rolling in to the uniparty. And the quickest way to get a borderless world is to pretend there are no borders, here, though it does seem that China still stands by its borders.