The 2008 Presidential Campaign (was Obama Phenomenon 2)

[solicitr]

Vor, NEB, a very erudite take from a rather different perspective:

Obama, Shaman

[Alatar]

Wow. Impressive. An article about Obama which manages to push every single button, including mentioning Machiavelli, Hitler and Lucifer!

Do you really read this stuff Soli?

[WampusCat]

When did idealism and hope and healing and change become dirty words?

Why is it a loathful thing to want a better America -- strong, wise and compassionate?

The -ism that will destroy us is not terrorism or communism but cynicism.

[sauronsfinger]

The article is like belly button lint - it means nothing of significance and is easilly dismissed. Who reads crap like this other than the angry True Believers who have made the defeat of Obama the latest conservative cause of the moment? And if the True Believers tried to read this garbage they would soon run into the roadblocks of an article written from the perspective of "hey Ma, look at my fancy writing style". Its presumptious, pedantic, smart alecky, and just plain ridiculous.

and.....

Entertainment Weekly has an article about the TV and film tastes of both candidates. John McCain says he recently saw the latest Indiana Jones movie and liked it a great deal. If I needed an excuse to push me into the Obama column (and I most certainly do not) that would be it.

[Alatar]

I liked it a great deal too. Does that make me a bad person?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I liked it a great deal, too. Honestly, sf, I couldn't think of a less valuable tool for choosing a presidential candidate.

soli, thanks for sharing that article. At the very least, it is helpful to know the thoughts behind the thinking of those who think differently than I do. There was much in that article that I found profoundly disturbing, but it is still helpful to know that there are people who actually think that way.

When did idealism and hope and healing and change become dirty words?

Why is it a loathful thing to want a better America -- strong, wise and compassionate?

The flip side, my dear Wampus, is that Obama's extraordinary success against the odds shows that those things resonate with a great deal of Americans. I refuse to succumb to the twistedly compelling wiles of cynicism.

There is still hope.

[Padme]

Book III of Aristotle’s Politics, which described the great-souled man who “may truly be deemed a God among men” and who, by virtue of his greatness, is exempt from ordinary laws

two words...

Valerie Plame.

[yovargas]

I posted several times earlier this year similar things - the crushing awfulness of cynicism, the high value of someone who can inspire hope, etc. I guess what's changed is that I no longer find much reason to think Obama can provide us much reason for him to be that source of hope. At least not any more or less than your average politician dude. At best, I see two candidates who aren't particularly corrupt. It seems that's the best we can hope for these days.

[River]

When did idealism and hope and healing and change become dirty words?

Those that like the status quo are threatened by those that would change it.

And I really don't understand why anyone needs to be afraid of communists. They lost, remember?

[solicitr]

Because idealism untempered by realism is just naivite- and hopes for undefined 'change' can play into the sort of 'Idealism' that gave us the Reign of Terror, the Gulag and the Killing Fields. The American Revolution was a very good thing, and the French Revolution was a very bad thing.

The Founders were idealistic men- but they were also pragmatists, 'cynical' enough, if you will, to create a constitution which recognized human beings as they are.

As Washington wrote:

Shall I set up my judgment as the standard of perfection? And shall I arrogantly pronounce that whosoever differs from me, must discern the subject through a distorting medium, or be influenced by some nefarious design? The mind is so formed in different persons as to contemplate the same object in different points of view. Hence originates the difference on questions of the greatest import, both human & divine. In all Institutions of the former kind, great allowances are doubtless to be made for the fallibility & imperfection of their authors. It is clear to my conception that no government before introduced among mankind ever contained so many checks & such efficatious restraints to prevent it from degenerating into any species of oppression.

This philosophy, together with Washington's belief that the Constitution was good "because no other or greater powers appear to me to be delegated to this government than are essential to accomplish the objects for which it was instituted, to wit, the safety & happiness of the governed," were of course rejected by the utopian Left long ago, and ever since, in pursuit of a (state-mandated) Ideal Society they have been trying through academia and increasingly through government to impose the concept of thoughtcrime. After all, if one differs with the idealistically-defined Truth, then one certainly "must discern the subject through a distorting medium, or be influenced by some nefarious design." There, in a nutshell, Chomsky- but it's the same principle as the antisemites who advance the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And- before you 'mainstream' liberals object- the thesis of What's Wrong With Kansas? No one could possibly vote for the GOP, unless he's a dupe, an ignorant redneck bitterly clinging to his guns and religion. The poor suckers who "voted against their economic interests" in 1896.

Bryan is actually an interesting illustration, because he represents a very prominent offshoot of the poison tree: Bryan never actually stood for anything, he just knew what he was against. A Romantic, the clan of utopians without a utopia. Their world is populated with larger-than life villains, dragons to be slain, six-armed giants from whom to rescue Dulcinea. Bryan had no clue what free coinage of silver would actually mean- he was economically illiterate- he just knew that the hated bankers supported the gold standard. So today the armies of comical nitwits protesting 'globalisation' and the Moonbats seeking to destroy capitalism to 'save the planet'- all they know is what they hate. It's what defines them. They advocate 'change' because 'change' to them means ending the rule of corporations/central bankers/oil companies/Jews- whoever stands in for their a-hole boss at the 7-11 who wouldn't give them Saturday night off. The world sucks, and somebody's gonna pay. Stay tuned for the Democratic Convention, folks.

Just the lunatic fringe, you say? Look again at Obama's and Pelosi's thinking in their demagogic demonization of Big Oil. (Ironic: look who's playing Middle America for rubes.)

Whereas with Obamamania we're supposed unanimously to sign onto Hope (for what?) and more scarily Change (into what?) Not all change is for the better. 75,000 Germans (not actually 200K) turned up to chant Obama's name because.... why? OK, the free beer. But also...again, why? Did Obama's vaunted speech contain any content, besides its naked flattery of Eurochauvinism? Only this: "Ich bin ein NotBush."

It would be one thing if if if we knew where the Pied Piper were leading us, if like other idealists (TR, FDR, JFK, Martin Luther King, Reagan) Obamamania were a movement toward a a defined goal, hope for a stated vision, change for a consensus better. But the piper's tune is all fanfare and no melody- a blank canvas, a tabula rasa onto which everyone can project their own particular hopes and their own individual ideas of 'change': the conceptual inverse of Orwell's Room 101.

What does any of it mean? Obama has a paper-thin resume, and what little there is of it gives him a voting record to the left of Bernie Sanders and a coterie of friends and influences that only a netroot could love. For the children with doubts about His Majesty's threads, Obama has no answer for them: he has no experience, he has no record. All he can do is talk about his wonderful self, and the hope for unspecified change according to unstated ideals. If this is meaningless rhetoric, it's cynical. If it really is informed by actual utopianism, it's scary.

Does The One has no concrete ideals? Possibly, but that's less frightening than the possibility he really does have them, the ideals implanted by his various 'mentors' that he now conveneiently denies.

Reread Edmund Burke! Recognize the dangers of 'change' driven by utopianism! Sooner or later the believers in the Perfectibility of Man are going to get around to perfecting you - whether you like it or not. Already the something of the inherent nature of the beast has slipped out- the

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.

Love the sentiment? Love the vision? Look again at the tone, the phrasing, the words that "matter" as Barack is fond of saying. "Will require you to." "Demand that you." "Will never allow you to." And among those prohibitions is that against being 'uninformed'- as if to say we require re-education.

Do I think Obama is another Pol Pot? Of course not. But it's almost certain that he stands in the long and awful tradition of utopianism. A couple of days ago we talked about fists and noses and the Millsian theory of a free society, and I think formed a consensus that it formed the mainstream of American political belief. What little can be gleaned of Obama's beliefs suggests that he rejects that conception entirely, that he believes instead in the Greater Good: be afraid. Be very afraid.

[vison]

Whenever I despair about American politics, I read solictr's posts. This gives me great hope and cheers me up no end.

Keep up the good work, solictr. A noble pursuit, yours is, and you do it extremely well.

[yovargas]

Damn, that was one hell of a post, soli.

[vison]

Damn, that was one hell of a post, soli.

Wasn't it, yovargas?*inserts hair-standing-on-end emoticon*

One seldom reads such stuff, and one is extremely glad that one seldom reads such stuff.

Politeness, and Voronwë's inevitable chiding, cause me to refrain from expressing myself with more vigor.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's working!

yov, I too, felt that it was a "hell of a post" but I think one that presents extremely strongly held opinions as if they are facts, which always makes me suspicious. When I get sufficient time, I will try to respond to it at length to provide my own sense of where the points that soli makes might be a tad (or even more than a tad) off-base. In MY opinion, of course.

[Jnyusa]

[removed]

[solicitr]

Quite so, Jny. Utopian tyranny- or non-utopian romantic hate- is not confined to the Left- in fact Left/Right really ceases to be very useful. Is there any Utopian philosophy in the world today as horrific as bin-Laden's dreamed-for Caliphate? Don't think for a moment I exclude Pat Robertson and abortion-clinic bombers from my definition and condemnation of Utopianism. But it does seem to be the case that Utopianism of the Left is somehow acceptable. Vide my contretemps with Prim as to why old Communist associations are 'quaint' but old Nazi associations would be political death.

It's conventioanl to uses the Nazis as practically the class-exemplar of the extreme Right. But were they? The National Socialists really were Socialists, just like it says on the label. Socialism mingled with militaristic nationalism and the Utopia of a Judenrein Aryan hegemony. The street brawls of the Weimar era weren't about economic policy nearly as much as the clash between ultranationalism and the Internationale.

Actually, after I put up my sprawling and disorganized post, I re-remembered that (as so often) CS Lewis had cut to the heart of the matter with a few good sentences:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

[solicitr]

Vison, please do grit your teeth and comment.

[Jnyusa]

[removed]

[solicitr]

The other thing one really needs to observe about fascism, as an approach to governance, is that it has had very much the same result everywhere that it has been applied. I don't believe that the concept embodied by the National Socialist governments of Germany is one that can be successfully executed in any form.

I'm not quite sure I follow you there. The second sentence doesn't seem to follow from the first.

[Faramond]

Just the lunatic fringe, you say? Look again at Obama's and Pelosi's thinking in their demagogic demonization of Big Oil. (Ironic: look who's playing Middle America for rubes.)

McCain has also demonized Big Oil on the campaign trail a few times.

Whereas with Obamamania we're supposed unanimously to sign onto Hope (for what?) and more scarily Change (into what?) Not all change is for the better. 75,000 Germans (not actually 200K) turned up to chant Obama's name because.... why? OK, the free beer. But also...again, why? Did Obama's vaunted speech contain any content, besides its naked flattery of Eurochauvinism? Only this: "Ich bin ein NotBush."

When you really get down to it, the substance of what Obama would be as president, it would be Hope for someone who is not Bush, and Change into a fairly standard Democratic Administration. I think there are exactly two reasons why Obama was cheered by so many Germans. He is charismatic and he represents a very clear break from Bush.

To me Obama seems like a revolutionary figure without any real revolution. My observation, especially before Wright, was that his supporters reacted to him as if he was an agent of transformative change. As if he is a sort of political healer, which was a phrase used in that article. And I think that's exactly the image Obama is trying to project. He does talk like this:

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.