Politicians’ personal life is generally irrelevant, unless it is informing us about what type of leaders they might be to us. In this age of ‘comms’ and in particular with photogenic characters such as Obama, they made good use of the media. I am afraid that is all the world will retain of him
A friend just sent a link on the record arm’s deals during the Obama Administration. He did to apologize after he’d commented on Obama’s terrific parenting skills, and my answer to him being: The world don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t care!
You see, when you are a president, of any country, society and history will not retain that you were a good father to your children. That’s right, although he isn’t actually aware of it, we won’t be recalling Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi as a mediocre amateur football player and a self-proclaimed evangelical priest who hears voices. We’ll remember a sanguinary who massacred his people and destroyed his country.
During Obama’s tenure Kadhafi was assassinated, Libya was bombed and Syria was destroyed. Thousands of innocent women and children were killed by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The hash tag #BlackLivesMatter was finally born in reaction to American police’s daily assassination of innocent black people: In total impunity – whether the killings increased, or whether it is their exposure that did depends on which color one’s skin is.
No one will remember the mixed-race guy who talked sweet poetry, and governed, not prose: terror! A darling to Americans and Europeans, Satan to the rest of the Universe. A guy, who seriously makes many people in this world rationalize Trump; hoping that he might just be a clown and leave the rest of the world alone.
Obama may read his kids bedtime stories and pull the chair at dinner for his wife. That is lovely: To his wife! He and his communication team would like to propagate that narrative; and all politicians do that, to cheat the public and remind them that they are as decent family men, as human as the rest of us. But that part is irrelevant to us.
Those who publish these types of pointless headlines want to divert attention from what matters; the massive suffering that he has brought to this world.
So forgive me if I continue to maintain that Obama isn’t human. That had he stayed in the Senate, or just in bed, the world would be a much better place. America would probably be bankrupt, but the reminder, namely 6.7 Billion humans would be safer.
So once again, I will continue to focus on the child who has no one to read them bedtime stories because a drone killed his parents, and the neighbors of his parents. The terrified one sleeping in the cold, in the dark, in the ruins of a once flamboyant Tripoli, Libya because, well, in Obama’s own rhetoric: ‘Africa doesn’t need strong men, it needs strong institutions…’
To recap: during Obama’s tenure:
1. The Arab world was mostly destroyed and thanks to Putin, Syria is still resisting…
2. Gadhafi was assassinated and Libya, a country where upon graduation from universal, free and compulsory education, every citizen would be given a house, a car and a job by the government – and not on lifetime, suffocating loans like in America;
A country whose late leader Gadhafi made sure every African nation benefited from the money of the oil – without:
o A. Bragging about it in international media and call the beneficiaries miserable and poor, only good for aid handouts;
o B. Asking for anything in return, or give lessons to their way of life
3. Drones bombing intensified, so did the killing of innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan
4. Black people shooting at sight: intensified: with impunity.
With all that, African leaders have but disdain for Obama, so do African activists such as myself! Because we think he is a gatekeeper of our oppression, a front, to cheat moral decency; a good talker, a wolf in a sheepskin.
That is how the world will remember him!
As for his personal life: Don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t care!