His visit was clearely focused on campagin agenda. He sounded more patriotic than ever before and defensive about his decisions as commander-in-chief. This was clearly a man fallen from grace - removing himself from staunch idealogies of peace that he used to represent to the more pragamatic popularity seeking presidential candidate.
He spoke about automation - how the american industry can use more of it, and seemed impressed by the robotic research. He talked about funding a major manufacturing initiative that will unite universities and manufacturers creating industry leaders. Personally, I don't buy it. Then again I don't have enough information to bring rationale to my fears.
But what struck me was the extremely low-profileness of the visit. As far as I know there weren't any roadblocks, no secret-service agents swarming around harrasing people, and there was really no hindrance what-so-ever on level that was noticable. Campus ran like just like any other day. (Edit: Apparently he came to the lawrenceville Robotics center, and not to the main campus.)
Back in 2010 during his second visit, I was taken aback by the same lack of conspicousness that's usually associated with elite visits. Living in Sri Lanka for most the most of my life, I was used to witness hundreds of people stranded in traffic jams that would last somewhere from minutes to a couple of hours just so an insignificant parlimentarian (usually a common theif and/or drug dealer) could get to the other side of town. Authoratarian and self-righteous policemen would create their own laws, and disrupt the daily lives of citizens - just to show off the 'importance' of the most crooked.
Back then I posted a status on fb mentioning this difference. I got several angry replies from patriotic types saying 'Oh you probably don't know but there must be tonnes of secret service snipers in the buildings' and a few other insane excuses. That's the effin point isn't it? I as a citizen don't even notice that the most political figure in the world is present 500 yards away. No one's harrasing me, asking for ID or asking me to wait until the governor takes a piss.
An year later, after seeing the events unfold again, I thought I'd rather blog than fb. Since comments are disabled, I won't have to deal with islanders suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
