Snowden saga: America swings to Arrogance from Hypocrisy with Obama at helm

Now that Snowden has shattered the pillar of hypocrisy by making it nearly impossible to befool people further, Obama is all set to intimidate us with absolute arrogance. While abrupt physical decadence of the US may not be in the cards at the moment, morally they are as bankrupt as a criminal who feels it is justifiable to kill the witnesses in the court to absolve himself of the crime.

One quote attributed to Oscar Wilde says this: "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

After observing the behavior of Obama administration in touchy international issues like cyber-espionage in the context of Snowden's recent revelations; I would like to have my own parallel quote:

"America is the only country that swings like a pendulum between arrogance and hypocrisy with no state of normalcy in between."

Bush was the epitome of arrogance that characterizes unrestrained power. He went on thumping on other people's door shouting 'You are either with us or against us', ravaged remote lands with war and unleashed terror in the name of countering it creating insurmountable misery to millions of people in the world.

 Bush addresses the media at the Pentagon on Sept. 17, 2001 (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)
Arrogance characteristically outdid hypocrisy in the US's dealings with the world during
Bush's presidency. 

Then came the great orator of our time with smiles and pious rhetoric; that he stood for change and that the change would be for better, for the Americans as well as the others.

Yet now, well into his second term, Obama looks more like Bush with every passing moment except for the color of skin and topography of his face. Actions were similar from the beginning but now even the rhetoric is increasingly like that of Bush.

Barack Obama looks on during a joint session of Congress, February 24, 2009 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Hypocrisy and pious rhetoric were so far his trademark qualities. Now they seem to be giving way to Bush-like arrogance and blunt rhetoric: Did you notice the stench of Bush's Saddam-WMD filth in Obama's Assad-Chemical weapons spin? 

So why is the great orator forced to change tactic and reveal his true face? Why can he no longer pretend to be what he was not from the beginning?

My theory is that, the phase of hypocrisy has no more scope in Washington at the moment because every falsehood has the highest chance of being recognized as such. The early signs make it clear that we are already in the phase of arrogance and it will be no wonder if Obama's future rhetoric becomes a replay of arrogant George Bush.

The front page illustrating whistleblower Edward Snowden revealing his identity following the
 series of Guardian investigative reports (Photo: Wikimedia Commons). This unlikely messenger has been the subject of the empire's wrath for forcing the emperor Obama to adopt relatively less desirable mode of arrogance while he was doing well with his trademark hypocrisy.

By pursuing Snowden with all their might, the message the Americans are giving is this: we spy on citizens, we spy on foes, we spy on friends and allies, we do all the clandestine things all over the world; that is OK. What we do cannot be morally or ethically wrong because that is being done by us. So we are always morally superior than anyone else in the world.


So, it appears, only wrong thing that has happened so far is that their clandestine deeds are exposed formally (though the many of the stakeholders have known for ages that US has been in the kind of theft). Essentially, they want to shoot the messenger so that they can enjoy the self-proclaimed moral superiority in the world.

Snowden's flabbergasting revelations have made Obama's hypocritical position virtually untenable and as every other powerful ruler does, he has come roaring onto the track of arrogance- abandoning his calculated hypocrisy that had characterized him ever since his campaigns for presidential polls- sweeping aside any criticism and blithely announcing that he is going to arm the Syrian rebels under the duly fabricated evidence that Assad and only Assad used chemical weapons in the nasty conflict.

I don'y know what exactly Wilde meant by decadence and whether he was justified in prognosticating America that way. But with its dangerous dependence on unscrupulous and utterly unsavory means to prop itself as the sole superpower in the world, US cannot afford normal moral and behavioral stance: arrogance and hypocrisy in various combinations are thus the only means to either intimidate or befool the people around the world into believing that the US is also a legitimate international player which plays by the rules of the game.

Now that Snowden has shattered the pillar of hypocrisy by making it nearly impossible to befool people further, Obama is all set to intimidate us with absolute arrogance. While abrupt physical decadence of the US may not be in the cards at the moment, morally they are as bankrupt as a criminal who feels it is justifiable to kill the witnesses in the court to absolve himself of the crime. And seeing a son of a Kenyan father in the lead role in the sordid drama is ghastly, to say the least.