"Just as 2016 will be a dangerous year abroad as enemies seek to cash in their chips and consolidate their aggressions, so too divisive groups will surmise that there is one more year left to do try one more time what was impossible in the past and will be perhaps in the near future as well."Victor Davis Hanson
"Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him. Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization?
"A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn't the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?
. . .
"Tearing the country apart is the unfortunate legacy of Obama—and it will continue in Pavlovian fashion until January 2017. Each unconstitutional executive order circumventing the Congress seems to warrant a stern presidential lecture that Obama once taught constitutional law. At some point, he accepted that a majority of America did not embrace his views and probably would not ratify his agenda." . . .
