For those who have never ventured to the Pajamas Media site, it’s become vastly better since a certain Mr. Johnson left the management. Some of the regular contributors, such as VDH, and Roger Kimball, and Michael Ladeen are brilliant. Even the lesser known contributors are frequently brilliant. One such contributor is Kim R. Holmes, of the Heritage Foundation. This relatively short essay describes just exactly what it is about Barack Obama that makes him different from all of the leftists who preceded him, and why the public’s guard was down:
When he promises a world with “no nuclear weapons,” he invites you to suspend belief regarding whether it is even possible. The real agenda may be as mundane as simply reducing the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but that limited goal is presented as a step toward fulfilling some future dream which will never be tested by reality. When he promises an America in which “no one will die because they don’t have health care” or no one is poor, he is invoking an image of a world that simply cannot exist. But this matters little because in the world of imagination, anything is possible, and truth and reality spoil the mood.
This is a time-worn practice of liberal politicians. Obama is not the first nor will he be the last to promise the end of poverty, a world without nuclear weapons, or some other hopelessly unachievable goal.
But Obama raises the politics of liberal imagination to a whole new level. Much of his rhetoric about “hope and change” expresses hyperbolic expectations of an imaginary world. To get people to suspend rational thinking to buy into it, he must engage their emotions. And to engage their emotions he must pretend to appeal to our better natures as idealists.
So far, this is just old-fashioned liberal-left politics. But Obama adds a secret ingredient that none of his predicessors was able to add:
As the very first African-American president, he transcends mere liberalism and ascends into the realm of potential redemption for all of America’s past sins.
This is powerful stuff. It mixes the futuristic agenda of leftist idealism with the emotional power of national redemption, which is apolitical (or at least nonpartisan). We can, the narrative goes, redeem American history from the sins of slavery and other evil things by making sure this man succeeds as a president. Obama integrates the old progressive agenda with his personal story of redemption, supposedly rising above partisanship and thereby cleansing leftist politics of its sectarian and divisive agendas.
He’s been called the American Messiah, and the Black Messiah. There’s a reason why this imagery comes to mind among his supporters. He’s leveraging the Christian idea, so deeply embedded in Western culture, of Jesus the redeemer. Just as Jesus is the only redemption for the Original Sin of Eve, Obama positioned himself as the redeemer from Original Sin of slavery that some whites have psychologically burdened themselves with.
The deal was simple: elect Obama, and redemption ensues. No need to discuss agenda or ideology. In fact, that would be blasphemous. That would be like asking Jesus if he was qualified to be the son of God. The very idea of democracy is irrelevant and contemptible when a savior and redeemer is being graciously sent by the higher powers of Columbia and Harvard.
And even though this is very specifically a Christian idea, it’s so deeply embedded in Western culture, that non-Christians and even devout atheists aren’t beyond the emotional and psychological pull; in fact they seem to be even more intoxicated by it than people who are well grounded in their own religions.
So the story of Obama was supposed to be a perfect analog of the New Testament, with America finally being redeemed from our original sin of slavery by this black messiah. Except the narrative doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit for a number of reasons. First, Obama is the decedent of a white mother and a free African. He has no slaves in his family tree. Secondly, he hasn’t suffered, as Jesus did. There is a man who fits that description much more closely. His name is Martin Luther King, Jr. If there was ever an analog to Jesus for American slavery, it’s King.
No matter. We’re in a zone where facts are contemptible. This is pure pathos, and the passion of the Obama is intoxicating to Americans, indeed all Western people, who aren’t actively resisting the narrative. This is a narrative that causes people to suspend all disbelief, because disbelief itself is considered rude and ungracious.
But there’s more. Along with redemption from the Original Sin of slavery, since we’re already well into fantasy space, we can imagine that this magical messiah can also restructure society to be any way we wish.
When the president talks about the America he wants to create, he envisions some futuristic ideal community in which all good things exist, but only if the people — in John Lennon-esque fashion—first imagine it will be so and then act to make it happen regardless of whether it is possible.
And now we’re off on another myth embedded into Western culture – that human nature is a social construct, and can be perfected. I don’t have time to deal with the entirety of that issue here, but Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions deals with why that’s a powerful but preposterous fantasy.
Bottom line: We’ve been sold a ruling class wrapped up in social fantasy wrapped up in the fundamental narrative of Christianity. Beware false messiahs.
Extra: Also from PJM, Forgetting Communism’s Evils by Mary Grabar.
The zeitgeist that rocked the vote ushered in a president who told a plumber that we should “spread the wealth”; in Stalinist fashion an Obama supporter / government official then used her powers to persecute him. A Rasmussen poll in April showed that only 37% of those under 30 favored capitalism over socialism; 33% favored socialism and the rest were undecided.
Such invincible ignorance masquerading as erudition isn’t helping. However, I think that under 30 demographic is about to get a snoutful of ammonia if they pass this health insurance mandate with penalties for uninsurance. If they only understood that they were the ones damaged the most by all of this.
