At a bar last night I was talking to my friend who was all scared because he had heard that Obama was going to institute mandatory national service at the behest of some advisers who have a history with similar Israeli military policies (this particular friend is Jewish, so while his comments may appear to be paranoid anti-semitic, he’s probably merely paranoid).
It turns out that wasn’t quite the rumor going around. Here’s a clip of the relevant speech that President-elect Obama made in July in Colorado (with some SFnal elements thrown in to keep this blog on topic). The text is:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
So seriously. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?
It’s clearly not a slip of the tongue, it’s an entire coherent paragraph. And he uses the word "security" in both sentences, so he can’t be talking about sending college graduates to inner-city schools.
And yet, why would he say something that clearly implies a gargantuan spending initiative, and a novel concept, without ever bothering to explain what he’s talking about? "Just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military? What could that possibly mean? Roving land-based aircraft carriers on our interstates? Or is he just proposing to give Homeland Security way more money than they already have (which is a pretty reasonable hypothesis and far scarier).
The only googlable sources are the conservative bloggers who barely pause to breathe as they ratchet up the hyperbole:
Blue Collar Muse:
"I have said, in offline discussions, that I believe a Barack Obama Presidency has the capacity literally to destroy this country. That sentiment has been pooh-poohed by Obama supporters who assure me Obama is a proud American who loves this country and would never do anything to harm it."
Gatewaypundit:
"Unfortunately for America, Barack Obama’s security plan is already practiced.
Not in America but in Marxist regimes."
Hyscience.com weighs in with a blog entry tastefully titled "Is Obama’s ‘civilian national security force’ a ruse for something far more sinister?":
"However, Obama’s vague and often shadowy past, his associations, and his prior rhetoric, foretell of something far more sinister that would include putting impressionable youth through a course of brainwashing, and pro-Marxist activities."
And from our non-partisanly paranoid friends at Infowars:
"It appears candidate Obama, if elected, fully intends to recruit young citizens into something he calls a “national security force,” apparently a large paramilitary group “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military."
Now, I believe, with all my heart, that even with a Democratic majority in both houses, a Democrat president couldn’t get a pound of government cheese to an unwed mother without bleeding political capital like a stuck pig, so the chances of a giant Cultural-Revolution-style gestapo-denunciation-squad marching through the mainstreets of America is pretty much nil.
My guess, is that was a throwaway line to signal that he’s willing to increase funding to domestic law-enforcement and surveillance. Essentially the sort of thing Clinton always did to make it seem like he was tough on crime, even though everyone knows that cops don’t stop crime, they just punish random people after the crime has been committed.
But if I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if that man actually clarifies what the hell he was talking about.
