It’s like Obama feels the need to compensate for everything he does great inside the country by messing it up royally on the world arena. WTF with not going to the Paris rally??

Remember how when he was first elected we all thought, “Well, no matter what, he will be a great asset internationally”?

Is there any American leader who was ever capable of not goading the entire planet into hating the US?

In Spain, the country where people are so into protesting that there were massive public manifestations in support of some stupid ebola-infected dog, the support for the victims of the Paris terror acts has been minimal.

Some Jews, Muslims and also a few French residents came out in Madrid in solidarity with the victims. There was maybe a hundred people protesting in a few other major cities. But that was about it.

There is so much chatter about religion, the clash of civilizations, cultural differences, etc that the painfully obvious escapes notice: the salient identity of the Charlie Hebdo terrorists is not that of Muslims, immigrants, or anything of the kind. What they are first and foremost is consumers.

When taken to the extreme, consumerism turns into a promise that the consumer will never have to experience the slightest discomfort. Anything that causes a tiny interruption in the placid and unthinking process of chewing the cud is evil and should be removed. The moment anything unpleasant looms on the horizon, consumers reach for a happy pill that will make everything uniformly pleasing again.

Consumers believe that instead of wasting time and energy on developing a human individuality, they should be able to purchase something called “identity” that will give them clear,  simple instructions on what to do, think, or feel in any situation. “Identity” is one of their favorite purchases because it makes life so simple: whenever in doubt, press the big red button, and the gadget will instantly produce an appropriate response. You can then take this response, present it to others, and feel almost human.

When their favorite identity gadget fails to impress everybody as much as it impresses the consumers, they experience a vague discomfort. And this is something they are not equipped to tolerate. So consumers become sulky and lash out in an attempt to remove the obstacle to their worry – free enjoyment of the cud dispensed by the identity gadget in a steady stream.

This is why the actions of the Charlie Hebdo terrorists are finding so much support not among the immigrants or the Muslims but among the sated Westerners whose only God is their “identity” and whose only culture is the belief that there should never be any discomfort in life.