Clarissa's Blog

Back in 1999, a politician said,

It is wrong to blame all of our problems on the West and the United States. They are not causing everything that’s wrong here. We are causing our own problems. Only we are to blame for everything that doesn’t work in our own country.

This politician was called Vladimir Putin.

As we all know, today he is passionately defending the opposite point of view. And it’s not that he changed his opinion. He’s a politician, so he’s not in the business of having opinions. He simply realized that “we are responsible for ourselves” is not a message that his people want to hear. So he changed the message. Russia didn’t turn into a cesspit of ethnic and racial hatred because of Putin. It did so because that’s what the people of Russia want their country to be like.

And it’s the same with Obama’s “weak” response on foreign affairs. It is only weak because he knows that voters want it that way. There is zero support among his voters for any engagement overseas. So he gives them what they want.

Paraphrasing Putin,

It is wrong to blame all of our problems on our political leaders. They are not causing everything that’s wrong here. We are causing our own problems. Only we are to blame for everything that doesn’t work in our own country.