The mystery of Obama’s seemingly suicidal carelessness is answered

Adela Gereth writes:

I wonder if Steve Sailer’s excessively casual blogging attire is preventing him from taking his thoughts to their logical conclusions?

In his latest article, he writes: “How did such a smooth operator as Barack Obama mishandle so ineptly the roadblock that he had to know stood between him and the White House: his intimate two-decade relationship with his far leftist minister, the erudite and articulate Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.? And what, if anything, can he do to repair the damage?”

Sailer then answers his own question: “Obama’s candidacy is based on encouraging white voters to assume naively that his mixed race ancestry means that he is somehow genetically programmed for racial and political moderation.”

Sailer’s answer is superficial and doesn’t really tell us anything. The real answer is that Obama is a sufficiently smooth operator that he knew he didn’t have to worry about how “ineptly” he handled the revelations of his relationship with Wright. He needed only to be perceived by the black community and white left-wingers as trying to handle the revelations, exactly how he did so was irrelevant. His effort would be judged sincere no matter what it was; indeed, it was a point in his favor that he was widely perceived as having been forced into making such an effort. And no matter how lame and/or duplicitous his effort seemed, even when judged on the evidence of his own words and actions, any criticism of it would be dismissed by both blacks and leftist whites as racist.

And that’s exactly how it played out. First he announced that he knew Wright but didn’t know about his beliefs, then he reversed himself mere weeks later to announce that he knew about Wright’s beliefs but didn’t really know Wright. And his supporters and cheerleaders, whether actively supporting his campaign or just wanting to jump on the non-racist bandwagon, swallowed his tale whole and then told the rest of us it was time to “move on”.

As to Steve’s assertion: “Obama’s candidacy is based on encouraging white voters to assume naively that his mixed race ancestry means that he is somehow genetically programmed for racial and political moderation,” I think it’s accurate as far as it goes. But I don’t think it goes far enough. Obama’s candidacy is also based on encouraging white voters to assume naively that supporting Obama, he of the mixed race ancestry, can somehow relieve them of the burden of “original sin” or “taint” of white racism on which America was founded.

Though it’s little noted, for white people, supporting Obama also means not only turning against their race but their country and culture, too, since he is, implicitly and explicitly, anti-white and anti-American. But that’s a small price to pay for the expiation of one’s sins and the expunging of one’s taint. Indeed, his racism and anti-Americanism are not defects to be overlooked, much less overcome, but points in his favor. Even Wright’s racism and anti-Americanism were shrugged off by blacks and excused by white left-wingers; it was primarily a matter of style, rather than substance, that earned him criticism.

Obama’s decades-old relationship with Wright was not a roadblock that stood between him and the White House, it was merely a speed bump. Whatever Obama did to smooth over his own path was the right thing to do simply because he was the one doing it. I cannot think of anything he could do between now and November that could derail his campaign. Any transgression or revelation that might surface will inevitably be dismissed as irrelevant to his campaign or insignificant in the overall scheme of things. And anyone who tries to hold Obama accountable for his own words and actions will be pilloried as a racist.

Four more years of this. Please, God, no.

LA replies:

Your insights and perceptiveness go deep. Unlike Sailer, who opens up a profound question and then just drops it, you have gotten to the disturbing, essential truth, which is: (1) Obama has gotten away with it; and (2) the fact that he’s gotten away with it answers the question that I, Sailer, and perhaps others have been asking obsessively: HOW DID HE EXPECT TO GET AWAY WITH IT? And the answer is, whether Obama knew consciously or not that this would happen, he was in reality moving with the inner logic of liberalism, the spirit of the age, which assured that even the exposure of Wright’s statements and of the nature of Trinity United Church would not derail his campaign.

As I’ve said many times, one of the great delusions of conservatives is that they keep thinking that THIS liberal outrage will discredit liberalism, and then that THIS liberal outrage will discredit liberalism, but it never does. Each liberal outrage, instead of being rejected by the society, as the conservatives hope and expects, ends up being accepted and endorsed by the society, with the result that liberalism instead of being defeated enjoys an unexpected great victory and increase in its power.

However, there is sometimes an outrage so bad that even I think that it will discredit liberalism, or, in this case, the liberal person in question. I thought that the revelation that Obama’s church was a Farrakhanite, anti-white, anti-American church, plus Obama’s huge and repeated lies about it, would decisively damage Obama in public opinion. I was wrong. And the fact that I was wrong demonstrates that my obsessive question, HOW DID OBAMA EXPECT TO GET AWAY WITH IT?, was based on a false premise. Obama did not need to worry about how to get away with it, he did not need to dissociate himself from Wright years ago, because the liberal order is such that even Obama’s 20-year association with Wright would not sink him.

Which leads to your final point: if the Wright revelations (and Obama’s serial manifest lies about them) could not derail Obama’s campaign, then there is nothing that will necessarily derail his campaign. There is nothing stopping his election. That’s not a prediction that he will be elected. But it must be understood now that there is no necessary reason why he cannot be elected.

Adela G. replies:

Thank you. If I have gotten to the disturbing essential truth, it is only because I have finally absorbed the lesson that modern liberalism is self-perpetuating and self-adjusting. However far leftward it moves, it somehow manages to relocate the center of the political spectrum to somewhere within itself. Thus it never appears extreme to its adherents or too extreme to well-meaning but clueless moderates and conservatives.

If you recall, I was until quite recently one of those conservatives who subscribed to the great delusion that at some point, the madness of liberalism would be so utterly mad that it would self-destruct or at least, be self-limitting. From earlier this spring:

From: A. Gereth
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 11:41.p.m.
Subject: Re: The benefits of an Obama presidency

Mr. Auster, you write: “If, notwithstanding the current exposure of him, Obama is nominated and elected, that will not be bad, but good. Four years of Obama in the White House would be like four years of blacks dancing in the street over the OJ Simpson verdict. The white awakening would be irreversible. And if whites awoke and began to resist permanently the liberal lies about race, the lie that the races are the same, the lie that any race difference is whites’ fault for which they must forever atone, it could mean nothing less than the salvation of America.”

Twice before, I was sure America was on the verge of a much-needed awakening. Back in the early ’80s, I was sure that the emergence of AIDS would result in a return to a more traditional emphasis on and respect for family life. Back in 2001, I was sure that the terrorist attacks on America would result in a return to a more traditional emphasis on secured borders and a stringent immigration policy.

So even though I think an Obama presidency should awaken white America to the reality of the liberal lies about race, I’m braced for disappointment. How likely do you think such awakening is?

***

Once I accepted that there would be no racial awakening, I saw that Obama could literally say or do anything and it would be either accepted or excused as a function of race (a “black thing” whites don’t understand or white racism seeking to keep blacks down). It was just a matter then of following the train of liberal logic to its inevitable conclusion.

I’m not trying to be funny when I say I find this situation nightmarish.

LA replies:

“If I have gotten to the disturbing essential truth, it is only because I have finally absorbed the lesson that modern liberalism is self-perpetuating and self-adjusting. However far leftward it moves, it somehow manages to relocate the center of the political spectrum to somewhere within itself. Thus it never appears extreme to its adherents or too extreme to well-meaning but clueless moderates and conservatives.”

It has never been stated better. All too few people understand what you’ve just said.

And, yes, it it is nightmarish. And attempting to expose it has been a big part of what VFR is about.

LA continues:

Apparently your March 23 comment, which was addressed to this thread, was not posted.

You asked:

So even though I think an Obama presidency should awaken white America to the reality of the liberal lies about race, I’m braced for disappointment. How likely do you think such awakening is?

My present answer: Less likely than I thought in March.

As I pointed out the other day, this remark in a May 8 New York Post editorial:

Now’s the chance to see if there’s any steak behind the sizzle—though Obama’s unsteady handling of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright didn’t exactly inspire confidence,

by reducing Obama’s 20 year involvement with a Farrahkanite church—which should have led American public opinion to disqualify him from the presidency—to the merely technical problem of his “unsteady handling of his relationship” with Wright, has in effect whitewashed him. If that could happen, then it is a reasonable prediction that the broad awakening of America or at least of conservatives that we hope for as a result of an Obama presidency will not occur. But we don’t know what will happen. An awakening may occur, say, in a minority of conservatives, though not in the majority, and how that partial awakening may ultimately play out we cannot know.

If I may appropriate the words of Jesus for a political issue:

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
—John 3:8

Roland D. writes:

The simple fact of the matter is that most Americans under the age of 40, when they think about such matters at all, have been brainwashed by both the school system and popular culture into believing that Wright’s views, and, by extension, Obama’s tacit acceptance of those views, are essentially correct on the one hand and desirable on the other. Remember, what most of these people think they know about the Vietnam War and the assassination of JFK comes from the likes of Oliver Stone; and compared to the indoctrination I received in the public school system in junior high & high school, Stone’s views seem moderate.

The new slogan ought to be, “Don’t trust anyone under 40.”

Sigh.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 11, 2008 12:17 AM | Send