The Dumpster Fire of Obama's Moral Authority

[Demit]

110. Oh yes! "Sanctimonious" sealed the deal for me too.

Being told that it's "important" not to hold ourselves up as being more moral than torturers!

You know, his syntax was so mangled in that sentence. "it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had."

You don't feel sanctimonious about a job, per se. The jobs being law enforcement and "national security teams." The job descriptions don't say 'And one of your duties will be to inflict pain on people to make them scream'. The sentence doesn't make sense on the face of it.

He was eliding over something—that something being what the holders of those jobs ended up doing that WASN'T in the job description. What his folks/torturers did WASN'T moral. But our president is telling us not only to ignore the immorality of the torture (btw, what was the "tough" part of the job? It certainly wasn't resisting the urge to abuse the power they had over prisoners helpless to retaliate) but also, don't pride yourselves on thinking you're better than those people BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT.

People have noted approvingly that he includes himself in that "us." Maybe he IS trying to tell himself he has to overcome his own personal revulsion, for whatever practical personal reasons he might have. But that is HIS moral failing, HIS moral weakness. He has no right to include me in his personal moral choices. I take no moral instruction from a man like that.