I'm still waiting for Obama to do something remotely close to Hitler, cause when he steps down peacefully in 3 years, what is everyone going to do?

It's really annoying that people who are proven wrong time and time again cling to their stupid Obama is the next Hitler or the Antichrist. If he just leaves without a fuss he's not close to Hitler you idiots, Hitler was a dictator at LEAST.

And of course Obama is going to step down peacefully. I mean, you can say whatever you want about the state of American politics, and it's obvious to anyone with at least half a brain that Obama hasn't lived up to the hype he and his people managed to create during his campaign (which makes sense since he's, y'know, A POLITICIAN), but this idea that he's somehow going to organize "urban gangs" (and I think we all know which social group Orson Scott Card's really referring to here) and take over America is just... well, it's just...

It's just completely fucking INSANE.

And it shows us poor Orson Scott Card's connection to reality really is.

Which probably added to his creativity with Sci-fi

hates the very idea of compromise?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!


I have to admit I actually liked the Advent Rising game that was written by Card (despite its many flaws) And every once in a while I get the urge to read Ender's Game and his other works, but then I heard nuttery like this and it just kills any interest in his books for me even though his books and his political leanings are two different things.

This makes me so sad. Before 2000 or so, he was just an amazing sci-fi writer. Then he just totally snapped.

I'll give him this, though: he was getting a lot of flack for toning down his rhetoric before the movie, to avoid hurting ticket sales. Apparently he didn't like getting thought of that way. Back with a vengeance!

Tragic. Ender's Game is one of the best novels of the last 50 years. And now I don't even want to see the movie. Not "going to boycott to make a point," the man genuinely kills my interest in work he's attached to.

This is too insane to be real. Massive troll. Obviously.

No, he really is a nutjob.

Never underestimate just how stupid and insane people can be.

There is always a deeper rock bottom.

We need a sad channel for this. If his opinions gain any amount of traction or support I'll shift to angry, but as long it's just an extremely talented author going insane all by his lonesome I'll just stick with sad.

Why is it that anyone who criticizes Obama is a racist? Can't you just be against his policies w/o being a racist.
He doesn't mention his race once. This turkish import keeps mentioning race, though.
Whenever Hillary becomes president, anyone criticizing her will be a sexist. Natch.

Well I'm disappointed in TYT.

The original article on the Slate was hack written 'Caveat in Paragraph 19' tabloid junk. The caveat being that they fail to mention they are quoting fiction until the very end of the article.

TYT have taken the bait and regurgitated the story without even mentioning the caveat. The conviction that Cenk has in his furore (which is exactly what tabloid articles aim to cause) makes me doubt TYT's credibility on other stories they report that I haven't happened to have read first.

The article the Slate quoted is "Civilization Watch - Unlikely Events" which you can read directly here.

Cards' political views are about as far removed from my own as you can get; but this essay was about reinterpreting history and the absurdity of predicting the future.

You could argue that Card is protecting his real views behind a shield of fiction, or some weak argument to that effect, but It's obvious TYT didn't even read it

This needed to be the first post!

Referenced article can be found here:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html

Card very clearly qualifies that the quoted statements are entirely a 'what if Obama decided to act like Stalin or Hitler' mental exercise and not his personal beliefs. The stuff he throws in prior as his actual opinion is far more moderate and not nearly so nutty. This has gotta be one of the lowest points I've seen from Cenk...

@L0cky @bcglorf

It's disappointing that TYT didn't mention the context, but it's also facetious to claim that the article was purely a thought experiment.

Yes, he does say the following in the beginning of the article: "No, no, it's just a silly thought experiment! I'm not serious about this! Nobody can predict the future! It's just a game. The game of Unlikely Events."

...But the rest of the article is spent stating opinions and things that are just outright wrong as if they are completely factual and true.

There're no "let's just consider for a moment that..." in the article, nor are there any what-ifs. He simply goes from claiming that Iran will nuke Israel if the US doesn't step in, to claiming that Obama is, effectively, a dictator.

And all of this craziness takes part during the set-up for his "thought experiment." This is the context that Orson Scott Card himself provides us with.

It was very low for TYT to skip over the fact that this is, in part, a thought experiment. However, it is also false to claim that it was just a thought experiment, and nothing more.

↑ ↑ TYT's "progressive daily news and political commentary" since they reared their Sirius head has derptly crafted serious issues into their brand of junk-food news and tabloid-sensational fluff since Cenk started belching his snipish drool 5 years ago, and the kids here eat it up like Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Cocktail Juice w/codeine and promethazine...

Purple Drank Internet Drizzle

But every single quote that TYT ran there was from the AFTER part of the article where Card has clearly stated this is the fictional account of what the future under Obama would be like in the event that he was a Stalin or Hitler. Prior to that Card just discussed his own opinion, with strong right leanings, but hardly any worse than is daily said against Bush by Cenk.

Bold face lying about what Card said is not made OK because he happens to be a republican that believes the Iraq war was justifiable and that the media outside of Fox has given Obama a free ride.

I'm not defending TYT's actions here, and I don't exactly take TYT seriously. Like Chingalera said, they're tabloidistic and unprofessional.

But again, to claim that the latter part of the article was a "purely fictional account" simplifies it excessively.

What Card did in the article was essentially the same as racists tend to do when they say, "I'm not a racist, but..."

Card was essentially saying, "I'm not saying that Obama is equivalent to Stalin, but Obama is equivalent to Stalin."

Now, Card says that the events described in his thought experiment were "unlikely," but they still erred on the side of insanity, and when he puts that in an article he's going to have to expect opposition. You can't just say whatever you want and then expect it to go unopposed simply because you loosely framed it as a "silly thought experiment" beforehand.

Here is Card's preface before any of the Quotes TYT laid out:
"So as a science fiction writer and a student of history, allow me to spin a plausible scenario about how, like Augustus Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, and Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama could become lifetime dictator without any serious internal opposition."

It is absolutely clear that he does NOT state this is a prediction of the future he expects. Meanwhile Cenk painstakingly sets up that the quotes are Card's rallying cry against what he expects to happen in the next few years. That's lying.

Card's statements prior to that were nothing any more severe than what all manner of people decried Bush and Cheney for and worse. Plenty of people talked at length about 'what if' Bush doesn't step down, or Cheney doesn't step down. I think it horrifically unfair to now leap down Card's throat for the same.

Yes, and the people who didn't think Bush would step down peacefully were insane as well. I can't imagine that having been a very mainstream idea to have when Bush was the president, so I can't see why it is suddenly "horribly unfair" for people to react when Card lets his insanity shine through.

And even in the quote you posted, Card described his prediction as being "plausible." To ignore that fact is also to lie, albeit by omission.