I, Obama

All hail Barack Julius Hussein Obama Augustulus, the Imperator of the West.

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Alec H. writes:

Ha, ha! He’s even got the arugula from the (nonexistent) Iowa Whole Foods store.

I’m wondering where they’re going with this odd stage set—MLK at the Lincoln Memorial (Obama now having ascended the stairs)? Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate (“Tear down this wall, White America”)?

M. Mason writes:

Now it has come to this—even the convention center isn’t large enough for The One as a setting in which to deliver his acceptance speech. It must take place at Invesco Field on a stage reminiscent of the Acropolis or the Roman Forum. At this point, they might as well just hook Obama up to a wire attached to the Goodyear Blimp and have him levitate above the crowd like Simon Magus or fly around like Peter Pan, as the assembled multitude of liberal Lost Boys (and girls) in attendance falls prostrate at his feet.

But in light of the idiotic ersatz religious expectations that have attended the Obama campaign all along, what else can his handlers do? They practically have to resort to Olympian sets and pompous stagecraft like this, not only to inspire his adoring followers, but also to keep the con going by distracting swing voters from the fact that the Democrats are nominating the most unqualified American presidential candidate of the modern age.

Greco writes:

Your commenter Alec H. said something that finally made Obama’s grandiose set design make sense. They are indeed going for the Lincoln Memorial because it’s the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. So Obama’s not trying to play emperor, but it’s a different kind of grandiose. He, Barack Obama, is a double fulfillment… a fulfillment not only of King’s “dream” but of Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. (Even though Obama isn’t a descendent of slaves, but why get picky?)

Dimitri K. writes:

I don’t believe leftist media. If they present Obama as an emperor, they may have some reasons to do so. And the reasons are probably to hide who he really is—a radical leftist. Exactly the opposite of an emperor.

I want to use Joseph Stalin as an example. Many consider Stalin to have been an authoritarian dictator and Russian nationalist, supposedly an opposite to revolutionary Trotsky. However, those who studied Stalin’s policy know that Stalin implemented Trotsky’s program of forced industrialization almost exactly. Until his death Stalin was a devoted Communist. He was known to be very modest in his personal life, unlike emperors. He was also a Georgian, which for Russians means not completely white.

Why do so many people believe he was kind of tsar? In 1941 USSR suffered terrible loses from Germans, and Stalin used Russian patriotism to make people fight, because they did not want to fight for Communism. And Western leftists also like the myth of “nationalist” Stalin because they want to hide the fact that he was actually a leftist.

I suspect that same is happening with Obama now. He is presented as a great American emperor, which is exactly the opposite of what he is—the great destroyer of America and a radical leftist.

Larry T. writes:

This is a record of a formal reception at the imperial court of Byzantium, written by Liudprand, ambassador of the king of Italy in 948. It’s from an old college textbook of mine.

I hope Obama’s introductory music tonight is the theme from Shaft.

Ex Divina Pulchritudine Esse Omnium Deravatur

Before the emperor’s seat stood a tree made of bronze gilded over, whose branches were filled with birds, also made of gilded bronze, which uttered different cries, each according to its varying species. The throne itself was so marvelously fashioned that one moment it seemed a low structure and at another it rose high into the air. It was of immense size and was guarded by lions, made either of bronze or of wood covered over with gold, who beat the ground with their tails and gave a dreadful roar with open mouth and quivering tongue. Leaning upon the shoulders of two eunuchs I was brought into the emperor’s presence. At my approach the lions began to roar and the birds to cry out, each according to its kind… After I had three times made obeisance to the emperor with my face upon the ground, I lifted my head and behold! the man whom just before I had seen sitting on a moderately elevated seat had now changed his raiment and was sitting on the level of the ceiling…

Gintas writes:

I was trying to put something together yesterday about the Lincoln Memorial, but I just couldn’t do it without sounding like Thomas DiLorenzo, even though my sentiment predates his recent writings. As a Christian and a Virginian I have found it a bit provoking in its overblown grandiosity, it’s modelled on a temple to Zeus, after all, and Lincoln sits on a throne overseeing all the doings of Congress.

I think they’ll try to replace Lincoln’s head there with a grinning Obama bobblehead.

Paul K. writes:

Lately I’ve noticed that in all his speeches, Obama includes the formulation, “We are one people, we are one nation … ” (for instance, here). I keep waiting for him to complete the logic train by calling for unified leadership, as in, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 28, 2008 12:10 PM | Send