Posted on 10/25/2008 11:23:17 PM PDT by Retired Greyhound
There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
"Wow", one said, "I can't believe they put Obama's picture on Rolling Stone".
"Your kidding", I said. "They guy is on the cover of every freaking magazine there is."
"Yeah", said the Blockbuster clerk. "It's, like, weird. I see his picture so much that I practically see him in my sleep".
"Creepy, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yeah", said the girl. "When did they start putting political guys on music magazines?"
This happened in Long Beach, CA. I'm sure that the swing states that Obama is saturating with his message are getting a little burnt out on him, too.
Obama thinks there is a major race undercurrent in this election and he is counting on class warfare too.
I think he has overplayed his hand.
People are so onto this owning the media stuff, Its going to backfire.
Its really wearing thin.
Indeed it is! Can't you feel it? I do. I think the analogy of the Juggernaut is apropos.
Outstanding point. By simply chainging "working class" to "middle class" Obama has made blatent Marxism acceptable to large numbers of Americans. Combined with his use of the legal system to attempt to squash opponents, and his use of radical bullies like ACORN, he reminds me of an American Hugo Chavez. If the Dems are successful in their agenda of outlawing firearms, packing the courts with left wing acrivist judges, abolishing talk radio, and now replacing Americans' private retirement funds with a government run "defined benefit" plan, it will be a very long, dark night in our history.
We have seen so many ads here in NM - we watched 2 episodes of House tonight and saw the Zero ad where he compares him to Bush 6 times! We were sickened by it.
I’m surrounded by The Lamb of Chicago followers at work. It annoying and creepy. They utterly will not listen or accept any criticism of the Holy One of Cook County. Its gonna be a “fun” 4 years.
One thing about celebrities they come and they go just as quick. To base one’s whole view of someone’s genius, someone’s clever — nay brilliant — use of the word “Hope & Change” is not quite like listening to the Beatles or John Lennon’s “Imagine”... Barrack can’t copywrite the words Hope or Change as his personal gift of unmitiagting brilliance to the American people. The Stratosphere does not illuminate itself simply because Barrak used those words. So... The upshot is that his star will not be able to sustain itself and will plummet to earth like Darth Vader’s Death Star. Yes, there is nothing in the ether that can sustain an empty suit — let alone a Death Star — and it WILL fall to earth. Barrak will have had the ride of his life but will have missed the gravy train that takes him to the front door of the White House. Every dog has his day and Barrak will be remembered not quite like Liz Taylor or Michael Jackson but he will be remembered as the groovy socialist dude with the 1000000 watt smile and black as any half black white person can be. There will be corn chips named after him — Barrack chips that you can buy at any supermarket and Kenyian cold cuts for the socialist set. Boy George and Ophra will review his books and Bill Ayers will become the first Communist to inherit billions of dollars from his Capitalist dad, with the note: “spend it well, son....”
The soldiers who went into Iraq said Saddam Hussein’s picture was everywhere.
I’m surrounded by The Lamb of Chicago followers at work. It annoying and creepy. They utterly will not listen or accept any criticism of the Holy One of Cook County. Its gonna be a “fun” 4 years.
____________________________________________________________
Here’s what I posted on our state board 2 weeks ago (10/12). It sounds just like who you deal with at work. Luckily for me it was a 1-time occurrence:
On my travels this week I was approached by an elderly couple in Gallup. They were driving to Las Vegas to go to their “winter home” as it’s already too cold in Illinois for them.
They wanted to know why I had McCain/Palin plastered on the back of my Escape. They proceeded to tell me they were voting for the big 0 because he would “change things”. I said what do you need changed? Obviously you’ve done well if you have a 2nd home. I was told he’d get us out of this war, make it so we don’t need gasoline any more, make all our energy “green”, help all the poor people and on and on. I said our country cannot afford this man & if you want your kids & grandkids to be able to afford a 2nd home and vacations that last all winter you’d better not vote for him.
They told me they’d pray that God would open my eyes to the “truth” of the man he sent to “save us”. I guess in these people’s eyes he was akin to Jesus.
“I’m surrounded by The Lamb of Chicago followers at work.”
Hey, keep the faith! You might enjoy this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdsI0FLPDY
I wish I had Mark Levin's optimism. In ordinary times, I might say we can survive socialists in full control of the executive and legislative branches. In fact, in ordinary times it might even serve the purpose of being instructional to young people that didn't experience the Carter years. But ...
Sorry, I don't feel as good as Mark that America will survive.
People have compared Barack Hussein Obama to Adolf Hitler in his appeal, but that isn’t fair. Hitler never needed a teleprompter. He did his speeches largly from memory like Nikolai Lenin.
“Tomorrow is gonna be different from anything in the past.
Tomorrow is gonna be a start of a new and better world for
all of us. In the past, we’ve had a pretty bad time.
We’ve had wars, famine, and pestilence. We’ve had depressions,
and nobody seems to know what causes them. People have starved
when there was food, They have died of diseases when there
was cures for them. We’ve seen the water and the air,
and everything else get polluted, and we’ve seen so much
hatred. Well, beginning tomorrow, all of that’s gonna be changed.
There won’t be any more wars. We’re gonna live side by side
like brothers. We’re gonna forget about killing, and breaking,
and bombs. And all over the world, there’s gonna be a kind of
garden growing, and nobody’ll be afraid anymore.
For the first time, since human beings have lived on this earth,
we’re gonna live the way human beings should. Tomorrow is gonna be
the beginning of all that. That’s all for now. Goodbye and goodnight.”
Ich ein Barama!
THE OBAMA PATHOLOGY
The idea of the Authoritarian Personality originated in The Frankfurt School as a means of undermining the position of the father within the family circle and thereby undermine the family itself and ultimately the nation as a bulwark against communism. It was heavily larded with pseudo-Freudian analysis and was expanded to subvert all institutionalized authority. Every season we see an article, usually by some college professor with too much time in his hands or sometimes by psychiatrists acting either singly or in gaggles, opining that the current president, if he be Republican, is somehow psychologically deficient. No Republican president or Republican candidate in my lifetime has escaped this ritual psychoanalysis.
A recent excrescence of this genre is the book by Naomi Wolf in which she ludicrously argues that America, led by George Bush, is on the verge of descending into fascism. I have posted my objection to this sort of pseudoscience and I have tried to debunk this cheap propaganda so I am reluctant to engage hypocritically in the same game now. Well, I am going to do it anyway. I aim to indict about half of our whole society. The half, and likely more than half, that will vote for Barak Obama. My psychological conclusions do not pretend to the trappings of the "science" of the psyche and adorned with the word games of Freudian analysis, rather they are rooted in common sense.
The conclusion of anyone with common sense who has seen the films of innocent children singing their Obama songs or who has watched the quasi-military chanting and saluting of the Obama Youth in military garb must conclude that there is something very, very wrong with these people. I remember when I first saw the YouTube Children singing their Obama song I became conscious after a while that my mouth was gaping open, so appalled was I. My reaction to seeing the paramilitary gang marching into the karate hall was a mixture of embarrassment that these kids would make such fools of themselves and anger that adults would so brazenly manipulate children. Then I felt a creeping sense of unease that there was something potentially very sinister going on. Dear merciful God, this is Orwellian!
Beyond a very healthy repugnance to the spectacle of brainwashed children put on display, beyond the inescapable Maoist symbolism of it all, a commonsense person asks, what kind of man would permit this to go on in his name? What kind of parent would not seek to protect his child from such a man? What kind of pathology would lead parents who presumably love their children to consign those children to the demons of mind control? How could Americans fall for such a transparent cult of personality?
Unfortunately, we need not be uncertain about what kind of man would permit this grotesquerie to be advanced in his name. History provides us with plenty of examples: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong-Il come to mind and now we add Barak Obama to the list. Why has he not spoken out and repudiated this? Would not a decent man do so if only for the children?
If Obama will not speak out now as a candidate when a little modesty, even false modesty, would advance his chances, what will he do when he gains office with no resistance anywhere on the horizon; no opposition in either the House or the Senate, no voice in traditional media to be raised against him, no institutional resistance on a national level of any kind organized to discourage him? Because he condones this obscenity one must ask, Is Obama really a narcissist as has been claimed? If so, how far will he go when he has the levers of power in his hands when there is no effective resistance to his ego?
How dangerous is Barak Obama?
Is he too dangerous to be put in a place where he could literally get us all killed? Or Is he the indispensable man in some sense? I do not think so. There is nothing in his career that suggests that he is the man for this season. In a time of war he has no military experience. In a time of looming financial disaster, he has no economic credentials. If he is potentially dangerous and if he is not indispensable, why would so many people want to put him in a position where he could do us harm, even get us all killed?
My commonsense explanation is that there must be a pathology, a mass psychosis, that brings people to the point where not only are they eager to make him the most powerful man in the world but they are invoking his name and calling upon him to be their savior. This they do rather than falling on their knees out of fear of The Real God. This is the Obama pathology.
To a middle-class conservative who instinctively rejects conspiracy theories and normally wants to think the best of people because that's what he learned in Sunday school, this deification of an empty suit is as bewildering as it is frightening. What in the world are these people thinking? Do they not weigh the risks of consigning their fate to an unqualified man, worse, a person tainted his whole life with stunningly dangerous confederates including felons and Communists and terrorists? What is the upside? What is it about this man whose career is utterly uninterrupted by any accomplishment which would motivate these people to risk their children and my children to whatever he might do to them? How do they know? How can they be sure? Don't they have any doubts?
My problem is that I am seeking after that which I cannot find. I want to find an explanation in logic for a phenomenon of emotion. It is easy for middle-class conservatives to overlook the power of emotion even though history provides plenty of examples even within our own culture in America. Can logic explain why so many drank Jim Jone's Kool aid? Why Charles Manson commanded such blood loyalty? How many cheered OJ Simpson's acquittal? Why did princes Diana's passing traumatize a nation? These are not questions which are answered with everyday commonsense. One almost has to go to the Bible to see the answer in Old Testament allegory which lets us know that evil is and there will always be worshipers of the golden calf.
I fear that in November we conservatives might find ourselves involuntarily embarked upon a journey that is foreign to our epistemology. We may be going into dark places and we might well be pushed into a netherworld where our common sense values are of no use because it is a place where down is up and black is white, a place where gravity does not pull but pushes, a place where we will need a pocket translator in order to converse in English with our government, our children's teachers, and our keepers even though they superficially use the same words we do. We sense we are about to be overwhelmed by forces guided by the ghost of Saul Alinsky.
I fear the downside of the Obama Pathology after his election may extend to dimensions we cannot begin to fasten to our everyday understanding or to our common sense. We have no way of knowing what will come because we don't know anything really about Barak Obama. We do not know if he is purely evil, we do not know if he is a committed communist, we do not know if he is a racist, we do not know if he wishes to see the submergence of the United States into a greater world order, we do not know if he is a megalomaniac, we do not even know, God help us, if he hates America. We do not know, in short, if we are backs - to- the- wall confronted with the Liberals' quadrennial nightmare: A real Authoritarian Personality.
We do know that Barak Obama has already encouraged a cult of personality whose implications are truly frightening and fundamentally un-American.
I've tried engaging Obamanites of my aquaintance. No matter how gentley I approach them, with self-deprecating humor, disclaimers and concessions galore, they are unwilling and unable to deal with the slightest criticism of any of their demi-god's policies. They all immediately get emotionally hot when they realize I am asking them to think, no matter how low key my approach.
Sometime I wonder if any of my Obama following friends have ever taken even ten minutes to consider the other side to his arguments.
As Mr Levin points out, it is a kind of mass hysteria, and it's troubling.
I don’t think it is an accident that the Omen and Manchurian Candidate have been playing A LOT.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.