The Disturbing Cult of Obama

Barack Obama is the new Che Guevara.

Until he erects concentration camps and starts killing counterrevolutionaries. But his fanbase does seem to have the gene for Captive Mind Syndrome...

I wasn't an early Obama supporter.  Let me tell you, as a young male at an overwhelmingly liberal law school last year, that was a very hard thing to be.  Not an Obama supporter.  Early on there didn't seem to be much more than that overwhelming personality.  When the substance started to fill in, perhaps slower than I would have liked, I allowed my head to follow my gut and told my friends who had up and quit Hilary's law school to work for Obama that I was on board.

 Once I was confident that I supported his policies, I allowed his message to seep in, and really it is something incredible.  The difference between personality cults and leadership is that it's not about him.  It's about what he wants the nation to be.  He's a medium for inclusion, for the healing of wounds that have wracked this country since the founding.  Gary Kamiya explained it with an eloquence light years beyond my own yesterday in Salon: http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/02/05/obama_race/

Now Chabon's point is simply that a part of Obama's message is to believe in the possibility of politics that transcend the internecine bickering of the 90s and the fear-mongering of the last six years.  Of course Obama's message for the country puts him in the drivers seat as both messenger and target of his message.  But you can't blame him for crafting a campaign that thrives on momentum.  Chabon asks for people to appeal to their own higher sensibilities.  That is certainly a message. 

It's also a whole lot better message than calling for "no-process" expedited removal for legally admitted immigrants convicted of minor crimes, defending a vote for the Iraq War, or a wave of visceral, personal attacks carried out by hatchet-men reminiscent of the Bush attack machines of 1992, 2000, and 2004.  Hillary Clinton would make a good president.  A fine president.  But we can do better.

PS - "Yes we can" dates back to the  United Farm Workers strike of 1972.  Don't debase yourself with useless digs.

I'm a happy Obama Kool-Aid sipper as long as and (at least) until he buries the Clintons.

"Believe in the possibility of politics that transcend...." "a campaign that thrives on momentum" "higher sensibilities."

I'm sorry, Dan, but this really doesn't rise above the warm and cozy emotions that seem to be the only criteria for an increasing number of Obama supporters, who define him antithetically. Dan Koffler has, I think, made the best substantive argument in favor of the candidate, citing Obama's economic policy and why it's an elegant variation on neo-liberalism. But he's in the minority.

As for Obama's foreign policy, how many backers realize that he's not all that different, apart from the Iraq War, than any of the other front-runners in both parties? In his Foreign Affairs essay, he wrote that he would not take the military option off the table with respect to Iran and North Korea. So why no hysterics about an incipient warmonger?  If John McCain had advocated a unilateral incursion into Pakistan, how would this have been received by the Change Express? 

The messianism that engulfs Obama is decidedly creepy, reminiscent of how Republicans used to talk about Ronald Reagan (this is possibly one reason why the senator had fond words for the former president) and how everyone used to talk about JFK. 

P.S. - It was a joke.

Finally, Democrats now hate Hill-Billy as much as the Republicans.

I'm voting today in Illinois for Hillary. Barak's my senator, I think he's been an adequate senator, when he's actually there to vote, when he's not campaigning... This short stint as a senator combined with all the community organizing and lawyering and whatever else he's put on his beefed up resume isn't enough to be president.  Dick Durbin's more qualified, frankly.  Barak should wait eight years, but he can't because then we may actually know something about him.  The cult of personality and dreamy liberalism gone haywire is dangerous and stupid. Sorry I'm just not seeing it, saying you opposed the war from the start isn't quite enough.  It does remind me of Regan, maybe that's what prompted Barak to proclaim his admiration of him.  I think it's weird.  

That song is the most nauseating bit of campaign propaganda I've seen in a long time. The Obama personality cult is really getting ridiculous. I'm surprised his followers haven't yet proclaimed him the Second Coming of Christ. All surface, little substance. What little substance there is to Obama is unadulterated far-Leftism, but the media would have to actually report on his record rather than his personality cult in order for most people to realize that.

I guess empty slogans like "Change You Can Believe In!" play well among people with limited attention spans and historical horizons. It provides a sort of empty vessel into which they can pour whatever feel-good ideas they want. I distinctly remember Clinton in 1992 banging-on about "Change". Then Bush in 2000 going on about "Changing the tone in Washington". Now we have "Change You Can Believe In!"  In 4-8 years I'm sure some new pol will come along touting "Change" as if he were the first person who ever thought of it. There's nothing more constant than "Change" in American campaign sloganeering.

 Excuse me while I go puke. 

Barack Obama is the new Princess Diana

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/08/31news.html

"Unadulterated far-Leftism" - I guess Billary's call for total nationalized health coverage against Obama's call for kids-only national health coverage is a little more to the right than most think, eh?

I'll believe your opinion that Obama is unadulterated far-Leftism when you actually offer up substantive fact to back your claim. And no, a quote from Sean Hannity does not qualify as a substantive fact.

Two problems with your post, Ryan:

1) My criticism of Obama's leftist record had nothing in it to imply that I was defending Hillary in comparison to him. Hillary's own record wasn't at issue in this thread, so i don't know why you mention her record as a way of supposedly countering my opinion on Obama. Criticising Obama for being a Lefitist does not imply that Hillary is less Leftist (though, arguably, she is based on her total voting record - not just the socialized medicine issue you bring up).

2. Obama's record: Well, let's see, his voting record gets 100% ratings from such left-wing stalwart organisations as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the NEA, Americans for Democratic Action, Americans United for Separation of Church and State,  La Raza (a racist organisation), Citizens for Tax Justice, NAACP, Children's Defense Fund,  PeacePAC, American Federation of Government Employess (i.e. the govenrment bureaucrats' union), National Association of Social Workers, Population Connection (fka Zero Population Growth), Population Action International, NOW.

And those are just the left-wing organizations that gave him 100% ratings! For many others he reaches the 95-99 threshhold. The fact is that Obama's voting record is consistently rated by leading left-wing organisations as being more liberal than the likes of Ted Kennedy and Clinton.  And don't be fooled by the seemingly unobjectionable names of some of those groups named above: They're quite adept at adopting nice sounding names to fool people into thinking their agenda is not as Left Wing as it really is. True students fo Orwell.

Obama is so extreme in his pro-Abortionism that he wouldn't even vote for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which would have made it a crime to allow children of "botched abortions" who are nevertheless born alive to be left to die and refused medical treatment. Numerous nurses and others testified to the grotesqueries of practices such as taking newborn infants to dank laundry rooms and leaving them to die after having been born alive after "botched" late-term abortions. Anyone who would vote in favor of allowing newborns to be murdered this way - akin to the ancient pagan practice of "exposure" - is simply a callous, perverse, moral monster. It is a disgrace that such a man holds himself out as a champion of the poor, the underprivileged, etc., when he votes in favor of nothing less than infanticide (most of whom will be children of the poor, underprivileged minorities he claim to champion). That such voting records are hardly noted in the mainstream media is a measure of how utterly perverse this country and its political discourse have become.

Oh, and for the record I don't watch Hannity and Colmes, so your snide, misinformed quip about getting my info from Hannity is way off base. Funny how liberals seem to think everyone to the right of Ted Kennedy is just an automaton who regurgitates stuff from Hannity et al. My disgust at the tone and intellectual level of American politics extends to so-called conservatives and leftists alike. Hannity is a blow-hard and an intellectual lightweight (though his partner Colmes is no less a lightweight on the leftist side).

 As a Rightist of the Austrian School (and one who reveres such classic liberals as von Mises, von Hayek, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and the work of more recent classic liberal/libertarian scholars like Hans Hermann Hoppe - his book "Democracy: the God that Failed" is a masterpiece), I cringe at the obvious decline in intellecutal quality in the Right's leading  pundits and activists (especially it's tendency to devolve into vulgar populism). From the likes of the great Austrians above and Bill Buckley to the likes of Hannity, Coulter, Glen Beck, and Michael Savage is a precipitous decline indeed. 

If you want high-brow, go read Commentary magazine, The American Interest, Weekly Standard, Roger Kimball, David Gelernter, Kay S. Hymowitz, Thomas Sowell, Leon Kass, Anne Bayefsky, Peter Berkowitz, Joseph Epstein

oh, and Harvey Mansfield.

I do subscribe to Commentary, New Criterion, and First Things, and read many of those other authors online and in  other journals. I've been very disappointed with National Review in the past couple of years - seems to have been a noticable decline on quality - so I may let that one lapse next time the subscrpition comes due.