Many have observed that President Obama and his administration act as if words are the same as deeds.  This is a habit of academics, for whom the power of words is supreme, while actual deeds in the real world, including deeds with force behind them, are a lower form of activity.

The emergence of Twitter as a mass medium has vulgarized the academic pretension, by replacing the well-crafted essay with a 140-character slogan-level exposition.  This tweet from U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, herself an academic who rose to prominence through a bestselling book, epitomizes the pathetic detachment from the real world of her boss:

“We call on Russia to cease…” reeks of a lawyerly cease and desist demand.  Vlad Putin must have had a good laugh over that.  His opponents are naïve children.  The kind of people who issue completely ineffective tweets like this:

...and then pat themselves on the back over their moral righteousness.

Unfortunately, in the real world, what matters is that Russia is bombing the stuffing out of the forces we support in Syria, and establishing a permanent naval, air, and ground force on the Eastern Mediterranean, in place to enforce Russia’s will over the prime oil-producing region of the world.  The Saudis are not likely to take much comfort in Power’s demand that Russia cease.

It is hard to imagine the contempt building toward Obama, and through him the United States, among the power players in the world.  Meanwhile, our domestic politics are focused on the deaths of nine people in Oregon while ignoring the many multiples of those deaths in Chicago this year.  And the media happily play along, distracting from the new equation of power being established as the Obama administration tweets its helpless protest and seems to think it is accomplishing something.

Hat tips: Weasel Zippers and Lauri Regan