Well, the U. S. federal government has always portrayed itself as this ‘Great Father’ to us all, as if we’re just his nave children in dire need of education about how the world really works. We never bought into this crap, but played along with it to save time and avoid more pedantic diatribes from the Great Father. The feds never really believed it, either, in the beginning. But over time, they came to believe their own lie and really thought of themselves as this Great Father. Each president assumes this ‘Great Father’ status as the fatherly figurehead of the usual Washington Great Fathers running the show. But can’t anyone see this is the dad who only calls when he wants to borrow money? The one who gets drunk at family gatherings and threatens everyone? The one who you see around town and if he doesn’t see you, you duck into the nearest coffeeshop to wait him out until he leaves? Most other countries have learned to do this with our Great Father. They’ve had enough of his angry outbursts at the Thanksgiving dinners where he flings the gravy boat against the wall and demands to know why he wasn’t seated at the head of the table. They’ve had enough of his demands that they loan him their lawnmowers when he consistently returns them broken. Just like that one time he swore up and down he could be trusted, and so they loaned him Iraq and he wrecked the whole place in one of his drunken binges. Sadly, we’re stuck with our Great Father, such as he is. Let’s look at the latest family dinner our Great Father is sitting at, simmering in his drunken anger, and about to explode.
Watching our Great Father Obama muddle through this situation with ISIS/ISIL is rather like watching an old Laurel and Hardy movie. Except Laurel and Hardy would have probably presented a sounder foreign policy – if we really need a foreign policy, with all its concomitant headaches. First, our Great Father tells us we don’t have a coalition to fight ISIL, then we might, now we do but they want to be kept a secret. After all, considering what the Great Father did the last time over there, who wants to even be seen with him now? But he is good at buying barroom buddies, I’ll give him that. Be that as it may, now Iran says the U. S. approached them but they said no because the Great Father has ‘dirty hands’. Bingo! The Iranian leader nailed it. The Great Father cannot be trusted because he always has an ulterior motive. And often one that, ultimately, blows up in his face. That is, unless the actual hidden motive is to go in, wreck the place, wreak havoc, then leave. Which is what the Great Father usually does at any family dinner he goes to, invited or not. Thus getting rid of any suspected contenders for Great Father status of other countries somewhere down the road, either real or imagined. The Great Father hates being upstaged. And so it took the leader of Iran to tell the truth to the American people about our Great Father.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on September 20, 2014.