According to legend, 11th-century monarch King Canute ordered his chair to be placed on the beach while the tide was rising. “You are subject to me,” Canute told the sea. “I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.”
Of late, ex-President Barack Obama seems to be testing his Canute-like powers. This past week he was spotted maskless conferring with masked construction workers on the site of his new beachfront mansion. Located on the southeast edge of the island of Oahu in Hawaii, the property alone sold for $8.7 million.
This new mansion will help Obama fill out a real estate portfolio that already includes a 7,000-square foot, $12 million waterfront home on Martha’s Vineyard, a short bicycle ride from Chappaquiddick.
Better still, these twin purchases give him all the excuse he needs to stay as far away from the American heartland as possible and still be able to get all the ESPN channels.
If he were not testing the waters enough with these two purchases, he and the foundation that bears his name have broken ground in Chicago’s Jackson Park on the shores of Lake Michigan on the half-billion or so dollar Barack Obama Presidential Library.
These purchases would not make waves for the average plutocrat, but for one who has railed against income inequality and warned of the perils of climate change, the strong smell of hypocrisy taints the enjoyment level of every site.
Then too, Barack and Michelle and their pals will come and go on gas-guzzling private jets as they wing their way to and from these distant pleasure domes. As to rest of us, Michelle Antoinette was reportedly heard to say, “Let them fly coach.”
To help gauge the hypocrisy level of Obama’s seaside edifice complex, it is useful to quote in full Obama’s warmist jeremiads from his 2020 memoir, “A Promised Land.”
“By the time I was running for president,” Barack writes, “the clear consensus among scientists was that in the absence of bold, coordinated international action to reduce emissions, global temperatures were destined to climb another two degrees Celsius within a few decades.”
Obama continues in his effort to scare those unfortunate schoolchildren forced to read the book: “Past that point, the planet could experience an acceleration of melting ice caps, rising oceans, and extreme weather from which there was no return.”
Obama is no mere go-along-get-along preacher. On the subject of climate change, he is pure fire and brimstone. Indeed, he makes Greta Thunberg sound Pollyannaish.
“The best estimates,” Obama writes, “involved a hellish combination of severe coastal flooding, drought, wildfires, and hurricanes that stood to displace millions of people and overwhelm the capacities of most governments.”
Like his imagined climate, he was just warming up: “I pictured caravans of lost souls wandering a cracked earth in search of arable land, regular Katrina-sized catastrophes across every continent, island nations swallowed up by the sea. I wondered what would happen to Hawaii, or the great glaciers of Alaska, or the city of New Orleans.”
Last I looked, Oahu and Martha’s Vineyard were both islands. Apparently, Barack hasn’t lost much sleep over either. But perhaps I misread him. Perhaps he sees himself as a lighthouse keeper, ready and able to wake the woke before the rising seas swallow them whole.
Were King Canute to read the headline of this article, I suspect he would be appalled. He was a true believer. He wasn’t testing God. He was confirming God’s order.
As Canute was expecting, the seas defied his command. He used his public drenching as a teachable moment. “Let all the world know,” he told his courtiers, “that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.”
By contrast, Obama is not a believer, true or otherwise. He just put down a $20 million bet that the climate change orthodoxy he himself has been preaching is as bankable as his promise that if you like your health care plan you can keep it.
Note: Jack Cashill’s latest book, “Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply,” is now widely available. See www.cashill.com for more information.
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