I've made promises to myself and to loved ones that I wouldn't write about this woman for a while. But one has to stand in awe at her latest. Peggy's getting closer and closer to finally revealing to the world that she is, in fact, omniscient. Please have a look at just some of the sweeping, evidence-free assertions contained in this single column:
Clearly [Putin] is looking at President Obama and seeing weakness, lostness, lack of popularity.
....
But I suspect on some level he's just a little envious of the greatness of America's beginnings.
....
The irony of course is that Mr. Putin used the exceptionalism argument against Mr. Obama, who himself barely believes in the idea and no doubt threw it into his speech the way he often throws things like that in at the end: He thinks Americans like it, that the nationalist ego of the clingers demands it. But he doesn't mean it.
....
Mr. Putin obviously feels considerable disdain for the president, in spite of what he threw in at the end of his essay—that he and Mr. Obama have a personal and professional relationship marked by "growing trust."
It must be wonderfully liberating, as a writer, to have this kind of editorial freedom. Peggy has broken free of the shackles, commonly known as "truth" and "evidence," that bound the rest of us. Her typewriter is just an open, anarchic range, where anything goes.
Peggy knows that Putin is jealous of the American Revolution, and that he is seeing "weakness, lostness, and lack of popularity" in Obama, from an op-ed in which he did not come close to even remotely implying any of those things.
Peggy knows that Obama does not
really mean it when he professes his belief in American Exceptionalism. How does she know this? Who cares? It can't be disproved, can it? Obama could talk about American Exceptionalism until he's blue in the face, he could get it tattooed on his chest, and Peggy could just respond by busting out the italics again - he doesn't
mean it - and that would be that. Welcome to the world of Peggy Noonan's op-ed page. The only rule is that there are no rules.
Her columns typically become even more unhinged after the last section break. By this point, Peggy is up against a deadline, sustaining herself with caffeine mixed with Reagan's blood, and just saying whatever the fuck pops into her head. In this case, we are told that Putin "obviously feels considerable disdain" for Obama, despite him writing exactly the opposite in his op-ed. It's the "obviously" that really reveals the kind of derangement we're dealing with here.
Maybe it's all just an elaborate bit of performance art.
{Originally posted at
Crimethink}