When seeking to analyze events of the past week vis-a-vis the situation in Syria, it’s difficult to find a metaphor that captures the scale and scope of America’s foreign policy humiliation. Putin played Obama like a fiddle. He pulled his strings like a puppet master. Putin’s playing chess while Obama’s playing ____ (fill in the blank). While they’re all true, they still don’t quite describe how thoroughly the world’s only superpower has been humbled and how far our credibility and prestige has plummeted.
One scene that came to mind as being an appropriate approximate was the opening to the Twilight Zone episode called “Mr. Denton on Doomsday.” The US is the washed up gunfighter being bullied, humiliated, and made to act like a clown by the blacked hated villain Putin who laughs with his pals at our downfall:
In the Twilight Zone episode, the gunfighter is given a chance at redemption thanks to a magical elixir provided by traveling salesman Henry J. Fate. In the real world, I fear that fate won’t be so kind to the United States.
