A very Guardian piece from Jonathan Jones - How can Obama smile at a time like this? I think he knows something. He's referring to those photos of Obama cavorting with Richard Branson in the Caribbean:
[Photo: Reuters]
Does Barack Obama know something we don’t? While much of the world has eyes wide in horror at his successor, the man who was until recently president of the United States looks like he hasn’t a care in the world. If he is worried about Donald Trump dismantling his legacy, reversing his values and setting history alight, he has certainly forgotten those cares for sea, sun and mirrored shades as he radiates a happiness bordering on ecstasy in this holiday photograph.
While staying with Richard Branson recently in the British Virgin Islands, Obama learned to kitesurf, and the thrill of rediscovering his beloved watersports after eight years when he was kept out of the waves for security reasons glows in his face and relaxed body language. Yet for anyone who has woken up in the early hours worried and scared by Trump, this gleeful display of sheer satisfaction with life may seem a bit rich. Good vibrations are all very well but what about the future of the world?
It seems unlikely that Obama has completely forgotten all sense of responsibility and opted for a life of lotus-eating hedonism while the planet goes to hell. So why does he look so happy?
He has a lot to be happy about. Not only did he complete eight years in office that already look like a golden age of decency and common sense, but he also seemingly has a genuinely loving and contented marriage and family life, and a rich, cultivated personality – he can write, and had said he plans to do that. Plus, there’s the kitesurfing.
Yet everything we know about Obama suggests he is far too good a person – after all, even former birther conspiracy theorist Trump called him “a very good man” and now cherishes his friendship – to simply surf while America seems to be turning into a bad parody of The Man in the High Castle. So what gives? Why does Obama look so astonishingly happy while many of us are gazing into the far right abyss?
I suspect this happiness has to do with the quality that Obama has always championed. This is a picture not of selfish joy, but hope.
Well that is reassuring, especially since he really does know something most of us don’t – he knows Trump. They have met and, perhaps, Obama believes he has got the measure of his successor. Maybe he thinks there is less to worry about than many of us fear….
In our horror, we are missing the point that perhaps Obama has grasped. The Trump “movement” – as Trump likes to call it – died on inauguration day. That row about the numbers of people in Washington’s National Mall? It mattered. For without a mass movement that makes itself physically – and dangerously – felt on the streets, there can be no future for Mussolini-style bluster.
Trump has a stay-at-home electorate of reality tv fans. It is the left who are on the streets. It is his enemies who have the youth, anger and numbers.
Obama is smiling because he knows this is going to be the most ineffectual dictatorship ever – and soon we won’t be worrying about Trump. We will be deriding his incompetence.
Then we can all go surfing.
Dream on.
Anyway, Obama is always smiling. That's how we know he's such a wonderful human being. That's why he was such a wonderful president. A smile for every occasion. It's true that the smile does seem a little broader now – a little more genuine. That's hardly surprising though. Free at last from the burdens of office, and with a successor who's all set to make him look like a model of competence and wisdom by comparison: of course he's happy.
But "a picture not of selfish joy, but hope"? Oh please…
Mick Hartley 
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