As one who has studied international relations and foreign policy, I find the current policy as outlined in the inauguration speech simplistic and naïve.
The only people it benefits are the trolls themselves: people who repeat pieties like "The only response to bad speech is more speech", because they know a simplistic escalation to more speech — more yelling, more arguments, more chaotic, constantly mutating memes being flung back and forth — creates exactly the kind of environment in which they thrive.
"President Mubarak's speeches are simplistic and devoid of ideas," Mr Nour protested from prison in his party's newspaper last week.
Then came the speeches and simplistic and heavy-handed narrative that felt hastily written and poorly executed as if the compelling visuals would absolve the need or desire for a semblance of a gripping story.
While reality around us is more and more complex, the information is more and more succinct, political speeches are more and more simplistic.
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state put up to respond on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, claimed she had never seen so many "simplistic slogans, contradictions and misstatements" in one speech.
"In the past, our understanding of this issue was quite superficial and simplistic," he cautioned in a two-hour speech to honor his party's 80th birthday in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.
The speech is a crucial rejoinder to simplistic notions of "black-on-black crime," but the sequence feels awkwardly divorced from the wider narrative.
Again, we endure simplistic scenes – but this time with added pauses, slower speeches and unnecessary padding.
Perhaps by showing that he is prepared to listen to and engage with all points of view, Obama's speech will mark a departure from the simplistic manner in which debates about abortion have been framed.
