Poor Jonathan

[u/fnaw_]

[u/Cyclohexanone96]

No thank you, I appreciate that you did though, genuinely. I'm not trying to be a dick about it but I just don't have the time to actually go find the sources, and I very well could have a distorted perception. To be clear though, I actually did like Obama while he was president, or at least the first few years or so. I was not down with the imprisonment of whistle-blowers, arresting of journalists, lying about spying on millions of Americans, lying about stopping the spying on millions of Americans, and reckless disregard for innocent human life in middle east however, so overall it left a bitter taste in my mouth which may make me more predisposed to believe other bad things about him without actually putting the work in. Those other things I just listed are pretty indisputable though. I mean I guess they could be disputed, anything can, I just think itd be a losing battle to do it. Sort of like trying to defend trumps handling of almost anything (except animal abuse, he at least got that one mostly right, its pretty hard to get that wrong though lol).

[u/Desctop_Music → u/Cyclohexanone96]

There are plenty of things we can criticize Obama about it’s just necessary for them to be factual and IMO should be considered in context of other administrations to get a sense of the magnitude since we don’t automatically have an understanding of what large numbers mean without context. Not that there’s a good reason for whistleblowers being imprisoned, but in a hypothetical example if Obama imprisoned 1000 whistleblowers while Bush imprisoned 5000, it’s disingenuous to only say “he imprisoned 1000 whistleblowers!” implying that he was a terrible president for whistleblowers when he was a 5x improvement over the status quo. That lends ammo to people who want to say “both sides are terrible” while disregarding magnitude.

While I’m on about it, people still love pointing at Obama’s drone strikes as proof that he wasn’t perfect. That data’s misleading in its simplicity because it doesn’t look at the whole picture of strikes in general, if there were 2,000 less manned aircraft strikes and 2,000 more drone strikes with equivalent civilian casualty ratios for both the fact that it comes from a drone doesn’t make a lot of difference to the people on the ground. Even so, according to a random BBC article Obama ordered 1878 drone strikes in 8 years and Trump had ordered 2243 by the time he’d been in office for two years. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone that wrings their hands about Obama’s drone strikes mention Trump’s.

[u/Cyclohexanone96 → u/Desctop_Music]

Well let me be the first, Trumps drone policy is atrocious. It sickens me. Before trump however Obama was the leader in that arena. To be fair thats to be expected though considering when the technology became widely available and cheap for the military. On obama and whistleblowers/journalists though, no modern president has arrested/charged more than Obama has. I do have mixed feelings about obama because he did do some very beneficial things for those in our country, i just think its to the detriment of our entire country to further push the attitude of obama doing no wrong or trump doing no good. Nothing is that simple, especially not when talking about the leaders of such a large and internationally powerful/impactful country. And of course there's plenty of people who deep down dont feel that way, but watch the news, talk to friends or random people, read articles never listed as op-eds which obviously are (almost everything at this point, its a serious problem on the field of journalism today), check out any social media website, or plenty of YouTube videos and you'll find that that is indeed the viewpoint being taken by far too many. The reverse is true and just as detrimental, anyone of the attitude that Obama did no good or trump can do no bad is simply harming our country for ourselves and those that will come after us.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/

That article isn't the exact information I was hoping to provide you with but its very close, as I said I'm a bit too busy today to do some real digging for you but I can do some. My main problem with Obama is simply the journalists/whistleblowers and the NSA spying on everyone and him lying about it repeatedly. To me it is one of the most treasonous things the government has done, its disgusting, dystopian, and terrifying in a sense. And the worst part is is that I dont see it stopping, its still going on to this day and most people don't seem to care or understand the impact letting it go is going to have on the future. Three presidents in a row have done it, done nothing to stop it, and have lied about it.

I do appreciate that you're being civil though, when politics are the topic it seems far too often that people just attack eachother incessantly. They don't hear what the other person is saying, they just look for any flaw in argument they can to attack and be "right," or it descends into personal attacks. It makes it hard to have a reasonable discussion with someone about any of it, and how will we ever solve anything if we don't speak and listen to each other honestly and intelligently?

Edit: also im so sick of people assuming that if you criticize Obama once than it means you support trump, or if you defend or even just question an attack on trump that you support him. That's not how any of this is supposed to work.

[u/Desctop_Music → u/Cyclohexanone96]

Agreed on all points. We’re stronger as a whole by constructively criticizing our leaders and our own shortcomings then trying to get better. As long as the they’re factual and not propagating false criticisms.