Posted on 08/07/2012 5:19:53 AM PDT by Rummyfan
The chief tenet of postmodernism is that truth and facts are arbitrary constructs, set up by the privileged to manipulate others less fortunate. In the case of our first postmodernist president, Barack Obama, there cannot be facts, past or present, only a set of shifting assertions that gain credence to the degree that they prove transitorily useful for progressive causes. A sympathetic biographer, David Maraniss, noted that almost all the touchstone events in Barack Obama’s mythographic memoir were fabricated. Of course, Obama would object to such a value-laden term and instead call them composites, impressions stitched together and presented as truth to serve the higher moral narrative: a young biracial idealist searching for his identity in a mostly racist and oppressive America. To the degree that Dreams from My Father enhanced that narrative, then all of what was in it was “true” — even the literary agent’s bio attesting that the exotic author was born in faraway Kenya.
For the fabulist Obama, the past is a vague mess with shifting narratives that can serve noble contemporary causes. Take World War II — the old war that supposedly proves that victory is now an obsolete term, since, as Obama explained, Japanese Emperor Hirohito capitulated to General MacArthur, apparently on the deck of the Missouri, in a rare act never to happen again. Obama’s own grandfather was in the forefront of stopping Nazism, and the more dramatic the circumstances the better — so who cares whether the Russians, and not an American unit, liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Obama is and always has been a liar. That’s why he got to the top in Democrat politics.
The exact moment when Obama fully realizes he has lost the election will be a priceless and immortal picture to capture and to proudly portray for many generations.
True but, if you kick him in the ass, how will he be able to bounce up and down the steps?
That is about it.
“O” has no real education or experience to speak of (or we'd be hammered over the head with it night and day) so it's all just a vague scenario to him. A scenario he can manipulate or ignore as he chooses... after all, there's no fact-checking, pedantic, nit-picking MSM for him to answer to as there certainly WOULD BE if he was a Conservative.
If a Conservative put a period upside down, it would be a career ending event.
The author should substitute the word Democrat for the vague terms postmodernist and postmodernism. Otherwise, this is a great article.
That’s weird! We just labeled this the “Peter Pan Presidency” ! Obama never matured and drew wisdom from any of his experiences, a strict ideologue.
“The exact moment when Obama fully realizes he has lost the election will be a priceless and immortal picture ...”
So will the liberal anchors that we’ll see on election eve.
But let’s not take an Obama defeat for granted!
Bingo - I can’t wait till we get millions of meltdowns like that clown in Wisconsin the night Walker won.
And let his hands flop back and forth.
This is a brilliant article — thanks for posting it.
Obama thinks he is so superior to the rest of us, because leftist professors patted him on the head for repeating relativist pap that he learned from Frank and Momma. Yet I suspect he knows this is crap and just uses it tactically to justify his Leftist predilections. Without narcissism he would implode.
"With President Obama there is neither a reality nor a standard, just words that so often have no connection to the real world, past or present."
We have, for example, the risible spectacle of an Ezra Klein solemnly cooking the numbers until he is able to declaim that the 0bama adminstration is the thriftiest administration in recent history, and not be hooted from the room in derision. We see the recent talking point that 0bama's government is historically small, a miracle of frugality that escaped the likes of Ronald Reagan but not our current Oval Office demigod. These are lies, trumpeted with gusto by people who, as VDH points out, really do not believe that a truth exists.
That our foreign policy is a loose sail flapping in the wind is no particular surprise either, that most necessary role of the Presidency being filled by a stupefyingly unqualified rookie Senator in both 0bama and heaven help us, Hillary Rodhan "We're Going To Take Things From You" Clinton in the comedic cameo role of Secretary of State. Watching that crew come out of a limousine at an international conference is like watching the clown car at Barnum & Bailey's.
We have, as well, the spectacle of the First Grifter and his posse making the grand tour of blue-chip resorts, luxury suites, privatized beaches, and well-groomed golf courses while the rest of the country would be happy for a job opportunity denied by his anti-business tax nazis and unions that really don't need the competition. One might think that this would prove grist for a skeptical press, but the only one left is already bought, paid for, seated firmly in the home team's bleachers and shrieking its head off.
Hence the accession of the Big Lie into formal possession of popular American culture. The Man Behind The Curtain wants his screen image genuflected to (it is by the press) while his miserable reality cowers behind a curtain that may not be pulled aside. We can click our shoes and chant "there's no place like home" but this isn't really Oz and that isn't the way out. Nor is it Never-never Land. It's Through The Looking Glass:
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
Hence our, ahem, "Leader". Hence the 0ne his supporters think "rules" us. Hence the autocrat, they tyrant, the incompetent, the fool, the emperor whose throne-kissers attempt to cover by redefining "naked", the gilded con man who makes Kim Jong Un look modest and the late Moamar Gadafi look like a statesman. About one thing both his friends and America's enemies - not at all self-exclusive categories - agree: America is a place that could elect a guy like that. I want to weep.
He needs a bigger platform than NR.
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