

Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him - ghosh
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-loved-obama-now-we-dont-trust-him.html

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wahsd
"They", as much as many others around the world have not trusted him for a
while now. I don't think anyone has burned through so much good will. I would
even argue that it was a quicker burn than Bush's after 9/11 because it was
simply based on solidarity and empathy.

That being said. Those societies that are now disenchanted with him and
America are naive fools who need to wake up and smell the stench. America is
not your friend. We are an abusive friend, at best. The worst thing about it
the relationship is that because we are never held to account or responsible
and get away with anything and every abuse towards our "friends" like the
spoiled rotten brat we are; we never grow and learn how to actually be a true
friend or even civil. Friendship is a two sided relationship; this is a cry
for help, please smack us around and shame us deeply so we can be humbled and
build back up a sane character.

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Uchikoma
From talking to friends, most stopped "loving"* Obama years ago shortly after
there was no visible difference to Bush in foreign policy, human rights, wars,
etc.

* (the only President Germans loved is probably Kennedy, the most misunderstood Reagan)

~~~
9h1d9j809s
Can you please elaborate on Reagan? How was he misunderstood?

~~~
Uchikoma
I think a lot of people back then - like me as a teenager in the 80s - thought
Reagan to be pure evil. Today the view on Reagan is more differentiated, his
later view on nuclear war, the reunification, what he wanted to achieve vs.
the cold war hardliner and Thatcherism capitalist, Bitburg, Pershing II, SDI.

~~~
wahsd
Once you look past all the Reagan PR the image is even worse than it ever was.
The very nature of our the challenges we are facing today as a society can
largely be traced back to his throwing open the doors to unrestrained abuse
across society. The problem with excess is that it is exponentially
unsustainable.

~~~
solistice
What kind of excess are you referring to? I'm viewing this in a somewhat
simplistic way right now, but if I have an excess (in savings) of 10$ this
week instead of 1$, then I don't quite see how my excess would be 10²$/1²$ =
100 times more unsustainable. I might be taking that too literally though.

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cafard
A lot of people overseas seemed to imagine that Obama had been elected not
president of the USA but CEO/Messiah of the Age of Aquarius.

~~~
venomsnake
Well after Bush he was a refreshing for a while. And his campaign promises
made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana
to a post US led world - the skill of Theodore Roosevelt (the only great
american of the 20th century) with the goodwill of Woodrow Wilson.

And when you say i will close Guantanamo Bay in a year - you tend to believe
that kind of stuff.

~~~
obviouslygreen
_...his campaign promises made him seem like..._

The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses
the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more
accurately be "we used to love him until we realized _he lied to us._ "

That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been
listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told
in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish
praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see
this happen long into the future.

~~~
etherael
I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's
the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are
surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of
people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought
to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling
earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises.

You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.

~~~
mcdougle
"absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.

~~~
phaemon
It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as:

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more
complete quote is:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are
almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority,
still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by
authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder
of it."

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ck2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967695)

~~~
brown9-2
The previous discussion on this article you link to is only on the second
page!

~~~
ra
This is where deduping of URLs would really help.

This mobile version even has two versions of the canonical tag [1][2]. All HN
has to do is read that tag.

[1] <link rel="canonical"
href="[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-
lov...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-loved-obama-
now-we-dont-trust-him.html") />

[2] <meta name="canonicalURL"
content="[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-
lov...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/germans-loved-obama-
now-we-dont-trust-him.html">)

------
SloughFeg
I remember when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on the promise
of him bring peace rather an actual accomplishment. It makes it almost
laughable that his government has caused so much distrust amongst other
nations.

------
DamnYuppie
Why would anyone ever love a politician? I mean for the love of all things
holy they ARE POLITICIANS!!!

~~~
obviouslygreen
While I agree that that's a time-tested generalization, this isn't an
immutable fact. It's the result of letting the wrong people into office for
the wrong reasons for too long in too many places.

If we had enough people (with enough money, unfortunately) running for office
_and then behaving responsibly_ and in the best interests of their
constituents, we might be able to start reversing this trend. Unfortunately,
that's a whole lot of time, effort, and -- of course -- money, and not only
are all of those difficult to come by, the will to start is hard enough to
come by. That's an opportunity you have to create, there's virtually no
payoff, a low likelihood of success, and a high probability of upsetting a
great many very powerful people.

------
gadders
Why would Country A ever care what Country B thinks about their leader? This
would only ever be an issue if it was stopping a leader getting their foreign
policy objectives achieved.

Germans would want the US leader that has the most benefit for Germany, not
the US.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Yeah, I'm quite sure Sadam Hussain would agree with you but unfortunately he
lost his head when the US government decided it didn't like him as much as it
used to.

It is very naive to not understand that the leader of the US has a large
impact on the world at large. Having an administration who have all but said
that foreigners do not have any rights isn't good for anyone.

~~~
gadders
I hardly think they've said that foreigners don't have any rights.

The leader of the US does have an impact on the world at large, that's true.
However his priority is the USA. Just as the priority for Merkel is Germany,
UK of Cameron etc etc.

~~~
solistice
I think he meant the straw that breaks the camels back would be them saying
that, because they've said or demonstrated almost everything in the direction.

Spying even on their allies (Right to Privacy),Guantanamo Bay (I'll just bunch
this up as general human rights), various Wars on bogus reasons (Rights of a
sovereign nation), TSA Detentions of Foreigners (Right to Freedom), etc.

So they've demonstrated that they don't seem to care much about the rights of
foreign citizens, and also in some instances the rights of their own citizens,
for example the abuse of Manning, the fact that Snowden has to seek asylumn,
etc.

~~~
gadders
Everyone spies on everyone, even allies. You think Germany doesn't? That's
just life in the big leagues. Even Sweden's foreign minister acknowledged
this.

As for the other stuff you mention, I don't agree with your premises. I don't
believe the wars were bogus, and I'm comfortable with terrorists being held in
Gitmo.

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anonymousab
And what about the UK?

------
edwardunknown
This is unbearable. For one thing this same story was at the top yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967695)

And more importantly it's painful listening to a bunch of computer programmers
spout off about politics and world events. I value 4Chan's analysis of current
events more than Hacker News' and that's not even a joke. There are very few
things more irritating than a spoiled rotten 20 year old's explanation of how
the world works.

Please you guys, stick to talking about javascript. You're ruining this site.

~~~
solistice
"Gentlement, go back to your machines, this matter is of a higher sphere, and
shall not be of your consideration".

Let's find some common denominator. I agree with you that there are 20 year
olds on this site. That was about as much as I could find.

Now if you leave out the indirect reference to "spoiled rotten" people
frequenting your site, we'd even have more room for agreement, because I do
disagree with you on either of them. I know, I might smell a bit rotten if I
didn't have time for showers on a 2 week death march, but I'm not showing any
necrosis yet. I'm pretty sure the sour taste in my mouth doesn't stem from me
being spoiled either, but rather from your chunky oratory.

But on a more serious point, what is spoiled is to expect that this entire
site caters to you.

You want javascript? I'm sure there are half a dozen posts on the front page,
with another dozen on the second page ("I have to scroll? But I don't want to
scroll").

You know what I think is rotten?

Telling other people that politics, things which concern them directly and
indirectly, shouldn't be discussed by them. Ironically, there's a reference to
the GeStaPo on the article we're discussing. They kinda had a knack for that
as well.

