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Hello, Obama; Good riddance, McCain
(Note: My complimentary comments about Obama in this entry set off a very vigorous discussion in which various readers suggested that I was becoming an Obama supporter. Reader N. in a November 9 comment below has some reflections on the reasons for people’s perhaps excessive reactions against any positive statement about Obama.)
Obama’s press conference is being shown on PBS. Leaving aside all other considerations for the moment, I have to say that it’s a pleasure to see a president-elect who is neither a palpable sleaze (eight years of B.J. Clinton), nor an inarticulate semi-boob with barely enough intelligence to be president (eight years of G.W. Bush). He has a proper demeanor, and can speak.
My prediction that the ecstasy over the racial aspect of the event would soon wear off has already gotten some confirmation. Mark Shields on the News Hour, echoing what I said the morning after the election, remarks that the “symbolism of the first African-American president” is already gone. At this press conference, Shields continued, Obama was just the president-elect. That was my sense too. The racial aspect was no big deal.
By the way, what would have been the reaction—what would have been your reaction—if the first black president had been a conservative Republican?
If this blog entry with its praise of Obama seems to contradict the previous entry, please remember that Obama’s election is a multidimensional event the real shape and meaning of which we cannot yet know, as I also suggested here. If you are annoyed by or suspicious of my openness to different sides of the same issue, please read what John Keats said about negative capability. Also, unlike liberals, who are all relativists, traditionalists can acknowledge the existence of different points of view on a phenomenon without concluding that there is no truth to that phenomenon.
- end of initial entry -
John Hagan writes:
I have no problem with your musings on Obama. I really have no sense of him, or who he is. He’s like the mist to me I see him, and hear him speak, but I have yet to grasp anything essential. I’m not so much troubled by him, yet, as I am by what he dredges up in his wake as he sails along.
LA replies:
Yes: a mixed race Zelig with cool, controlled moves. What he really is, what he really intends, we don’t know. It’s a most extraordinary circumstance. But it is a heck of a lot more interesting and enlivening than having McCain as president.
By the way, I said one of the truths about the election was that whoever loses, we win.
So let us raise a song of thanksgiving that there will be no President McCain, draining and demoralizing us and messing us up for the next four years. No President McCain, praising to the skies his liberal opponents and set on automatic whenever the subject of race comes up to decry through clenched teeth the “prideful bigotry” of Americans in past generations.
I’ve said McCain was worse than Bush, and this is one of the key ways in which that is true. He sucks up to liberals in an even more offensive and disgusting and treasonous way than Bush does, because when McCain does it, he’s really socking it to the conservatives.
What a joke that this man was the GOP nominee. And I will never forget that Richard “No-chest” Lowry, editor of NR, which had endorsed Romney, instantly gave up on Romney and began touting McCain the moment Romney came in second in Iowa. It was one of the most disgraceful things I’ve seen in politics. Yet I’m the only writer I know of who called him out on it.
John Hagan replies:
McCain really was the end of American conservatism. I can honestly say that I’m more confident in an American future that I recognize with Obama as president than with McCain. McCain enrages me in a very uncomfortable way that no other public figure in my memory ever has. There is something perverse about McCain. Something sick, and weak that I sense in his demeanor. I have always felt this way about him In 2000 I was apoplectic when I thought he was going to get the nomination.
LA writes:
By the way, I was pleased by Obama’s passing comment, in answering a question about what kind of dog he would buy for his daughters, “Our preference is to get a shelter dog, but most shelter dogs are mutts like me.” It showed a rarely displayed sense of humor and a modest view of himself, it showed he’s not hung up about his racial make-up. I haven’t read Dreams From My Father, but from excepts I’ve read at Steve Sailer’s blog I doubt that the race-preoccupied Obama who wrote that book would have amiably described himself as a mutt.
So, from messiah to mutt. I’ve said that Obama was seeking to work out his own identity in running for president. Is it possible that being elected has resolved the issue for him, and now he accepts himself as he is, and, perhaps (though this may be a reach), by casually referring to himself as a mutt he signals that he has gone beyond the black identity he adopted through such storm and stress in his teens and twenties?
Terry Morris writes:
You write:
Also, unlike liberals, who are all relativists, traditionalists can acknowledge the existence of different points of view on a phenomenon without concluding that there is no truth to that phenomenon.
Indeed we can. And thank you for reminding us of this that is our strength.
Robert B. writes:
“… by casually referring to himself as a mutt he signals that he has gone beyond the black identity he adopted through such storm and stress in his teens and twenties?”
Surely you jest. Have you never heard the saying “You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American”—which I believe was said by H.L. Menchen.
Perhaps I’m being cynical, but given the market’s reaction to his election—and its response to his poll numbers ahead of the election, he is calming the markets. His selection of Rahm Emanual is just one of those moves. There will be more between now and inauguration day. The real Obama will begin to emerge in the Spring. But he will most likely hold back on the most radical agenda items until his second term—which he has been talking about for months now. To look at his egotistical stare down his nose at the adoring crowds speaks volumes about how he really feels—not that I blame him. But to imagine his quip about a mutt meant anything other than a con given that look, is buying into the messiah mantra.
Still, anything is better than the neo-con McCain. It is my fondest hope that this is the end of them.
LA replies:
It can’t be anything other than a con? You mean, a con deliberately designed and thought out in advance to make rubes like me believe that Obama is a regular guy who doesn’t take himself seriously and is not hung up on race?
Robert B. replies:
First of all, I do not think you are a rube.
Secondly, look at his associations, they did not end long ago, they are current. If this were a white man, he never would have made it past the initial primaries. He is, in this day and age where no one may criticize a black, the perfect stealth candidate. His handlers are very good—everything has been coached since day one—and I mean well before his speech at the 2004 DNC.
Call me paranoid, but it is no accident that he is surrounded and supported by “fellow travelers.” [LA replies: In the past he certainly was. He is not now. Now he is surrounded by standard Democratic party figures. Haven’t you noticed that he picked as his chief of staff, not Frank Marshall Davis, not Jeremiah Wright, not William Ayers, but Clintonite Rahm Emanuel?] My only fear in ever electing a black President is the problem with critical discussion of the man and his agenda. Obama and his campaign repeatedly pulled out the race card. [LA replies: That is true, and that weakens my above point that he is not manipulating racial sensitivities.] He is, in essence, for this day and age, the Manchurian Candidate. This is, after all, a man who chose his own name, and that name means “Blessed one.” That is a bit much, don’t you think? [LA replies: That is an enormously unfair comment and shows the kind of anti-Obama bigotry by which the most ordinary and normal things about Obama are cast in a sinister light. He didn’t name himself, his parents named him. In his boyhood, his nickname was Barry, in his late teens he began to call himself by his proper name Barack, and it was also part of his process of claiming a black identity, as we’ve discussed many times. Have you not noticed that when young men grow older they often switch from their nick name to their proper name? To suggest that there is something sinister about Obama’s using his own name is indicative of a bigotry against Obama which will get in the way of rational and useful opposition to him. Also, if Obama criticics make bigoted statements, then everything they say about Obama, including their valid statements, will tend to be dismissed.] Most politicians are narcissists, but this one, given his upbringing, the people around him, his sense of abandonment, all of it, mean trouble. He actually believes he was born to lead “his” people to the promised land—that is the journey he constantly refers to. That is the place he is going to take us to. There is no need to read anything into what he says. He has been clear from day one—you just have to listen and understand that he means what he says.
Lastly, he is not an American. He is half African—his father was an African. [LA replies: With respect for you, this is an absurd statement. If this is the way the right reacts to Obama, by descending into Obama Derangement Syndrome and saying such things as that “he is not an American,” then we are in big trouble.] This is the man and his ideals that Obama was trained and indoctrinated into believing was a superior man. His father was a Marxist, that is why his mother married him—because her father was a Marxist. He does not feel as an American because deep down he isn’t. He was not reared with even the same beliefs as the average “sixth generation” black. Such a man will have no moral difficulty in overthrowing the historic people of this land and their culture.
November 8
John M. writes:
Sailer stresses that Obama feels sorry for himself despite having a charmed life.
The mutt comment goes along with that. He just became President-elect and he calls himself a mutt. Weird.
Also, would a post racial candidate imply that only (some) pure breed dogs can be hypo-allogenic and mutts cannot—and then call himself a mutt? It suggests he considers race a biological reality. Doesn’t it?
LA replies:
I think this statement is unfair. Is it necessary, in order to oppose Obama, to see even the most ordinary and unobjectionable things about him as neurotic, weird, or sinister? It’s like what the haters of Hillary did. As I said last January, if Hillary got up in the morning and brushed her teeth, Michelle Malkin would have written an enraged column saying that this proves what a lying manipulative phony she is.
John’s last comment is also unfair. When has Obama ever said that race has no biological reality? For heaven’s sake, he wrote a 400 page book about the importance of race is in his life, and about his own difficult search for identity given his race-mixed nature. Yet now John suggests that he’s a hypocrite or at least self-contradictory for amiably mentioning his race-mixed nature!
Nor was there anything self-pitying about the comment. It was the easy-going self-put-down of a man who is comfortable with himself. It was a sign of psychological health.
So, please, let us oppose Obama for the things he ought to be opposed for. Let us not be anti-Obama bigots who automatically construct everything about him as negative and sinister.
Ray G. writes from Dearborn:
Have you eaten the fruit of “The One” and now bask in His Glow? Just teasing. But you seem to go out of your way to say Ah-bama (who has trouble speaking without a teleprompter; injecting “ah” after every fourth word) is a nice, reasonable guy who we shouldn’t judge by his several, troubling associations in his past. Hell, The Messiah even made a little joke about being a mutt. There goes Barry once again, obsessed with his “unique” personal/racial background. Give me a break.
How are we to judge anyone except by their current and past behavior? His whole life was made up of Marxist professors, socialists, radical Muslims, black liberation theology nut-jobs, etc. That’s the world he marinated in. So the fact that he is picking a few Clinton aides now washes away his foundational beginnings? Besides, many of these Clinton aides are themselves, statist apparatchiks, elitists who are Fabian Socialists no doubt.
Furthermore, you don’t find offensive his “Office of the President-Elect” podium? His “O” logo? How about his campaign contributions from foreigners, including Muslims overseas? The man is in love with himself. How about his allies in ACORN and their taxpayer financed, voter fraud schemes? What about his USA-hating wife Michelle? You used to make criticism of her—now are you gonna look in awe to Nubian Queen Michelle? What about the 24/7 adulation in the press and by his supporters who are not unlike cultists, looking up with glassy-eyed reverence at The Great Redeemer? It reminds me of Red China and everyone dressing alike, clapping in unison to the wonderful policies The Government has decided to bestow on us mere rubes.
Oprah Winfrey and George Soros created and financed this left-wing “community organizer” with virtually no experience in anything else. Please look into Oprah’s relationship with him, her financing of him and promotion of him on her widely watched television show. Pure marketing.
“Historical” figure? I don’t give a damn about his “exciting” personal racial history. He simply is the most left-wing oriented president we’ve ever had. His worldview and his view of US history and the US Constitution differ from most everyone who has had high office before.
I dearly hope he can be ridiculed, weakened and brought down ASAP by constant criticism from traditionalist/conservative Americans on the right.
LA replies:
You write:
“But you seem to go out of your way to say [Obama] is a nice, reasonable guy who we shouldn’t judge by his several, troubling associations in his past.” [Italics added.]
How does my saying that he spoke well and had a good demeanor and that I was pleased by his joke about his being a mutt change anything bad that I’ve said about him? Can’t we keep TWO distinct thoughts in our minds at the same time, namely that the bad things about him that are true, are true, AND that the good things or at least the non-bad things about him that are true, are also true?
Are our minds so controlled by personal feelings or political animosities that if we acknowledge any non-bad thing about a person on the other side, we will instantly lose the ability to see bad things about him? To oppose a political figure, is it necessary to hate everything about him?
I call things the way I see them. When, to my astonishment and even embarrassment, I found myself last January having positive reactions to Hillary Clinton, a person I had had nothing but negative feelings about since she had appeared on the national scene in 1992, I realized it would sound weird to talk about it. But those were my feelings and reactions, and I reported them honestly. I also made clear that this did not take away one iota from the bad things Hillary had done in the past. But I was responding to the person I was seeing before me.
Similarly, I had a positive response to Obama’s demeanor in his press conference, and I reported that honestly. And as I explained in the initial entry, this doesn’t take away one iota from the threat Obama poses or may pose (again, we don’t know at this point what he is going to do as president). But the notion that because I see someone as highly objectionable, as Obama’s past associations and lies about them have been, means that every time I look at him I must see an enemy and nothing else, is anathema to me.
VFR is not a member of a party. If you want All Attack The Left, All The Time, there are hundreds of conservative sites that provide that.
Personalism and ideological tribalism have taken over our politics. It’s why we have no meaningful intellectual debate—not just between right and left, but even within the right. When it comes to our friends or allies, we approve everything about them and never criticize them. And when it comes to our political opponents, we hate everything about them and never acknowledge a good thing about them. Which means that there is no intelligence in our politics, only loyalty and enmity, love and hatred.
And, by the way, this personalism is the reason why certain people in the anti-jihad camp turned me into a pariah. Because for them personal relationships and loyalties are all, and everything is subsumed under the dynamic of love versus hatred, they took my legitimate intellectual criticisms of them as personal smears, which in their minds justified their using real personal smears against me. Because I had criticized them, I became an enemy, a non-person about whom it was legitimate to say anything. There is an inability today, on the right as well as on the left, to see truth apart from personalities and relationships. Along with many other problems, this loss of fairness, this loss of the capacity and the desire for intellectual objectivity, makes me fear for the survival of our society.
LA writes:
Also, it should be understood that my more positive, or just ordinary, observations about Obama do not contradict the previous entry where I said that the left seeks through Obama’s rise to power the decisive subjection of white America, and that we can and must resist that. There are these different possible realities jostling together at the moment, and we don’t know yet which is true or how they will balance each other off. On one hand, the media and liberals generally are telling us that Obama’s election means that we’re now a new country and that we must give way to the new nonwhite order; and lots of conservative whites are feeling the same thing. On the other hand, Obama in his first press confefeence as president-elect seems to be just a president-elect, with nothing to do with race. He’s a president-elect with a tan, as Berlusconi said. If the latter is true, then the message that the triumphant left (and the despairing right) have been spreading is false. Obama’s election does not announce the instant and final end of the order of our society. America and the West still exist, though deeply damaged from the cultural and moral transformations of the last several decades, and we still have the ability to assert ourselves and try to win back our endangered civilization.
In other words the basic situation of the last many years—that we’re in grave and worsening danger, but not dead—has not been fundamentally altered by Obama’s election. Which means that my momentary view of Obama as an ordinary president rather than as the incarnation of ascendant nonwhiteness does not contradict my message that we must resist the revolution that his victory seems to betoken. It’s a staple of our politics that liberals always try to convince conservatives that they’re already defeated and must give up, and the Obama mania could be seen as the biggest instance of that ploy so far. The truth is that we’re not defeated. We’re only defeated if we believe we are.
Adela G. writes:
You write:
By the way, I was pleased by Obama’s passing comment, in answering a question about what kind of dog he would buy for his daughters, “Our preference is to get a shelter dog, but most shelter dogs are mutts like me.” It showed a rarely displayed sense of humor and a modest view of himself, it showed he’s not hung up about his racial make-up. I haven’t read Dreams From My Father, but from excepts I’ve read at Steve Sailer’s blog I doubt that the race-preoccupied Obama who wrote that book would have amiably described himself as a mutt.
I agree that Obama’s comment showed a rarely displayed sense of humor but a modest view of himself?? Hardly. More like the false modesty of someone who for days has been fielding the congratulations of world leaders, media around the globe and an America overwhelmingly if inexplicably ecstatic over his election as President of the United States.
In case you hadn’t noticed, he can afford to indulge in a small joke at his own expense; indeed, if he is to start countering the frequent charge that he is somewhat arrogant, he needs to poke a little fun at himself. And look how carefully he chose the word “mutt”, with its lovable, family-friendly connotations of the dog you just can’t bring yourself to leave at the pound, rather than “mongrel” with its suggestion of a regrettably mixed heritage. (And don’t think that word choice wasn’t deliberate, the man is a very clever wordsmith.) [LA replies: So now the fact that Obama poked fun at himself and called himself a mutt rather than a mongrel becomes sinister. Adela is displaying exactly the mentality I discussed above, that overwrought mentality which must simply hate Obama and the left 24/7; which cannot notice any good or just ordinary human qualities in him; which feels that to notice any good or ordinary qualities in him is tantamount to surrendering to him. And therefore anyone who does notice such qualities in him is a sell-out to the left]
If all this isn’t sufficiently convincing evidence that his false modesty is just that—false, consider this: had Obama lost, do you think he would have said that this showed the American people weren’t ready to elect a mutt like him?
Your enthusiasm for what can reasonably be construed as a carefully calculated throwaway line seems to have caused you completely to forget that Obama also poked a little fun at a former First Lady in a way that was widely reported as a “gaffe” and for which he apologized. His jocular little reference to doing a “Nancy Reagan thing” with a “seance” was both disrespectful and inaccurate, but not unexpected to those of us who realize he does not hold the “typical white person” in high regard. [LA replies: That’s really an overdone response, It was a harmless crack, though inappropriate coming from a new president, and he called her to apologize. To compare that comment to his remark that white people believe in God out of bitterness diminishes the seriousness of the latter.]
In short, your assessment of his press conference is very much in line with that written by one Alan Framm of the left-leaning AP, so much so that I take leave to wonder if that is not your nom de plume.
What next? I ask myself. Mr. Auster “enthusing” over Michelle Obama as a fashion icon, complete with risible comparisons to Jackie Kennedy? Sasha and Malia scampering through the White House liked to the lovable high jinks of Caroline and John-John? I’m thankful that Obama’s “mutt” heritage will prevent you or anyone else from his ever-widening fan base from admiringly exclaiming over how the wind ruffled through his hair on Inauguration Day.
Oh, well, at least I can agree with you on the last three words in the title of this blog entry.
Kidist writes:
Larry, I just re read your post and here’s a quote:
How does my saying that he spoke well and had a good demeanour and that I was pleased by his joke about his being a mutt change anything bad that I’ve said about him? Can’t we keep TWO distinct thoughts in our minds at the same time, namely that the bad things about him that are true, are true, AND that the good things or at least the non-bad things about him that are true, are also true?
I understand your efforts to keep a humane viewpoint of the candidates They are people after all. But, if I may say so, you are comparing apples to oranges when comparing Obama to yourself. [LA replies: I was not comparing Obama to myself. I mentioned the anti-jihadists’ attack on me to make general point about personalism.]
But here, no one is smearing Obama. We are just seeing a pattern. He has a great knack for likability. One experience I have of truly manipulative people is that they “degrade” themselves, bring themselves to a lower level, in order to get sympathy and attention.
Obama has always relied on his “likeability factor” to get things done—he listens well, he has a “unifying personality”, etc… And suddenly people have to deal with his intentions. His likable personality IS his modus operandi.
So, I’m just saying that the “nice” things he says will always be suspect to me. Or at least I won’t be pulled in by them. I will keep my distance. He has shown a pattern of riding on that personality trait of his for too long. [LA replies: I said nothing about niceness. I did not praise him for being a nice person. I praised him for having a demeanor proper to a president-elect and for speaking articulately. I said the “mutt” remark pleased me because it “showed a rarely displayed sense of humor and a modest view of himself, it showed he’s not hung up about his racial make-up.” And I discussed this in a speculative way.]
Still, you are right, if I may say so again, to look for the humanity in people. It is better to be kind rather than to be callous, even to your adversaries. But such adversaries are dangerous.
But, what a strange election in the U.S. The messiah might just save the country after all, in terms of the illuminating “negative capability” that you wrote about.
LA replies:
As has been said many times, we don’t know who Obama really is and what he wants to do and what he will actually do. Every day will bring forward new signs and new aspects of this bizarre and unprecedented situation. We will need a lot of negative capability to take it all in.
LA writes:
A further point about the “mutt” remark. Obama’s calling himself a mere “mutt,” in the midst of the orgiastic celebration of the new America being brought into existence by the first black president, is a way of playing down the racial thing. He’s saying, “I’m not black, I’m not a symbol of blackness. I’m a mutt.”
Now please don’t tear me to pieces over the question whether Obama really believed what he said. The point is, he said it. It was a low-key way of telling people, “Let’s downplay this craze over the significance of my race.”
Furthermore, he might contradict that message with other messages highlighting his blackness. I’m simply pointing out that he said this and that the comment would likely have some impact on the people who are celebrating His Blackness, to hear him call himself a mutt.
Ray G. writes:
Admittedly, it is difficult for millions of Americans (especially for those of us who are prior military or come from families with long military histories) to accept a smooth talking, shake-down artist version of the prior Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. That’s all this guy is.
We see Obama and his wife and as anti-American, which I do not believe is an overstatement. He has been hard-pressed to say anything good about this country without qualifying it with a quasi-academic’s “six of one, half dozen of the other,” both sides of every issue, balance.
I want nothing to do with His Highness, want nothing to do with our government or its advertising department, the news media. I will figure out ways to pay less and less taxes into this government. And again, I hope that our country gets even worse, deep, deep recession for if we improve, He will be credited for “fixing” the economy with his Messiah’s calm “temperament” and righteous racial composition. Anyone who thinks the president controls the economy should ask themselves, if that’s true, then the economy would never be contracting during an election year, now would it?
LA replies:
That’s a legitimate position, to say you can’t stand this person, and don’t want to get into the details of watching him. I used to be interested in GW Bush, trying to figure him out, and we had lots of discussions about him at VFR. Two or three years ago I reached the point where I felt we had figured him out sufficiently, and at the same time my dislike of him had become so great that I stopped paying attention to him. I never watched any speech of his, for example, though I might read up on it. He previously had been a frequent topic here, then I stopped writing about him.
So if you feel you understand Obama completely and oppose him utterly and therefore have no need to follow discussions about him, that’s fine. But some of us feel the need to understand what this just-elected mystery man is about and where he’s heading.
Dan G. writes:
It was nice to see you fending off the absurd and exaggerated anti-Obama comments of some of your readers. I too was pleased by his “mutt” comment and am taking a “wait and see” approach to his presidency (though I suspect it may resemble that of Jimmy Carter).
Adela writes:
LA replies: “So now the fact that Obama poked fun at himself and called himself a mutt rather than a mongrel becomes sinister.”
No, not sinister—a word I did not use in my initial post—but disingenuous. What I find sinister is the sight of so many people being so easily charmed by what I am sure was a remark calculated to do just that—charm.
Nor do I subscribe to “that overwrought mentality which must simply hate Obama and the left 24/7; which cannot notice any good or just ordinary human qualities in him” and it’s inaccurate to the point of unfairness for you to suggest that I do. I do not recall ever having written that I hate either Obama or the left, much less that I do so 24/7. [LA replies: Ok, “hate” was too strong. But I stand by “sinister.” The whole tone of your condemnation of him, saying that everything he does is planned out in a dishonest way, went beyond mere “disingenuousness.”]
I will say, though, that any “good or just ordinary human qualities” that you notice in Obama, you will notice because he wanted you to. Obama excels at carefully crafting and maintaining his image. We would do well to remember that, even in the face of his formidable charm. [LA replies: If a man has a sober, respectful, and steady demeanor, then he has those qualities. Even if he is choosing to project them, he couldn’t project them unless he had them. Your attitude seems to be not to grant him ANYTHING, to respond negatively to ANY statement about him that is not negative. That may not be “hatred,” but it is an attitude of automatic hostility.]
You write: “To compare that comment [re Nancy Reagan and a seance] to his remark that white people believe in God out of bitterness diminishes the seriousness of the latter.”
I agree that to compare his seance remark to his God/bitterness remark would diminish the seriousness of the latter. But I did not make any such comparison. His remark about his grandmother being a “typical white person” to which I alluded was in reference to her fear of the black stranger who harassed her. I did not refer to his other gaffe about white people “clinging” to religion or their belief in God.
Now that you mention it, though, I do find it interesting, if not instructive, that every time Obama makes such a gaffe, it’s in reference to white people. I won’t hold my breath waiting for him to refer disparagingly to a “typical black person” or mocking any black person’s belief in God or for that matter, say, voodoo.
Kidist writes:
Dan G. makes a rather unfair response on some of the skeptical reactions about Obama’s comments. I don’t see them as anti-Obama at all. Then, no discussion of Obama’s behavior, unless it is not “absurd and exaggerated”, is possible by his books. Yet I don’t see anything absurd and exaggerated about these remarks. So, by our differing of opinion about absurd and exaggerated, negative discussions of Obama are to be curtailed.
LA replies:
The disagreement has to do, not with criticisms of Obama, but with criticisms of me for saying a couple of positive things about Obama. The issue was not whether one can say negative things about Obama without being jumped on, but whether one can say positive things about him without being jumped on. So I was criticized pretty vigorously by several readers, and now Dan has come to my side with a very brief comment. The totality of what he says about the controversy is as follows: “It was nice to see you fending off the absurd and exaggerated anti-Obama comments of some of your readers.” And now you’re claiming that by saying this Dan is trying to silence all criticisms of Obama!
Kidist replies:
OK, fair enough. I think the dialogue was interesting. Of course I wouldn’t want to silence positive statements either—I for one wasn’t jumping on. I just find myself turning skeptical whenever it comes to Obama. It is good to have the statements from you.
Gintas writes:
One of the key features—widely unknown—of Hitler’s success was his sense of humor. Apparently, it was quite good, and he was able to incline his listeners to accept the radical content of his speeches, as they were sprinkled with wit.
In the future, if any intelligent people are left to analyze how Obama succeeded in ushering in the Final Total State, they may point to some of his remarkable humanizing features, such as his appearance of normality. Or the appearance of him having a normal married and family life.
Don’t fall for it!
November 9
Mack writes:
“Obama Derangement Syndrome.” Did you come up with this clinical description? I like it.
Some times your writing makes me angry, sometimes however, it makes me proud. This is the latter.
I think you are making a good point—and no matter what I may disagree with you on, and given the possibility that we’ll disagree about Obama in the future, I think you are making a very fine example of how best to approach a reasoned debate about the President-elect.
Otherwise we run the unpleasant risk of painting ourselves into the proverbial corner!
John D. writes:
Ray G. writes:
And again, I hope that our country gets even worse, deep, deep recession for if we improve, He will be credited for “fixing” the economy with his Messiah’s calm “temperament” and righteous racial composition. Anyone who thinks the president controls the economy should ask themselves, if that’s true, then the economy would never be contracting during an election year, now would it?
Isn’t this statement akin to the way that the leftists rooted for an America defeat in the Iraq war as a manner in which to criticize President Bush? Any man that desires the collapse of, or at minimum, the further deterioration of the American people’s well-being and their economic posture, should be excluded from the conversation. This is exactly the kind of faulty reasoning that conservatives must oppose. I am distressed that you let this comment stand completely unchallenged, especially given the nature of your comments in this thread.
LA replies:
My gosh. It’s not enough that I personally manage VFR’s comment discussions, but I’m required to object to each and every comment that makes an arguably objectionable point? Talk about a formula that would lead me to abandoning comments altogether. It’s true that I frequently reply to comments with which I disagree. But if the assumption is that I agree with and approve of every comment that I post without posting my own reply objecting to it, that would be an impossible burden to place on me.
On the substance of the point, it is a frequently heard idea among various conservative circles, not just wacko far-right America-haters, that America’s great wealth cushions it from the effects of its suicidal errors, and that an economic downturn would bring America back to reality and sanity. I see some truth in that idea and do not automatically react against it when I see it. Now Ray G.’s point went further than that by calling for “deep, deep recession,” and maybe I should have replied. But again, if the assumption is that if I don’t object to a comment I endorse it, then hosting a comment discussion would become a practical impossibility.
N. writes:
One of the factors for a while in any discussion of President-Elect Obama will revolve around the cultish nature of his campaign. Surely we need not go over that in any detail? The faintings, the journalistic boot-licking, the column calling him a “lightworker,” etc. all combine to create a sense of unease and even downright revulsion in those who resist his charm. And I mean “charm” in the old, Middle Ages, sense of a spell cast over a victim, please note.
Those of use who have watched otherwise sensible people succumb to what looks to us like a cult are naturally going to be very sensitive, in a “twitchy” sort of way, to any praise of him. Because today it’s “he’s interesting,” tomorrow it’s “he’s fascinating” and next …
I think this is one reason for the response to your comments about Obama and his “mutt” comment. Because those comments could be the first step down the “Obama is Messiah!” road, and it makes people uneasy, or even queasy.
This brings me to another topic that is not generally understood, and that is this use of the term “drank the Kool-Aid.” [See Adela’s comment in this thread.] I remember the Jim Jones cult that was the People’s Temple, although I never visited it. Jones was unquestionably a cult leader, and he was never hesitant to have force used on his behalf. There were people in San Francisco who tried to investigate People’s Temple who wound up getting severely beaten by pipe-wielding thugs, for example.
One thing that must, must be remembered about the mass suicide in the jungle of South America is this: the majority of people who died there were not forced to drink the cyanide-laced Flavor-Aide drink. They did it of their own volition. There were far too many people there for Jones and his henchmen to force to drink, and in fact thanks to the overall brainwashing and constant atmosphere of fear of “the outside,” the vast majority of Jonestown residents were compliant to varying degrees. Multiple practice runs for mass suicide (“suicide drills”) had already been done before the final event.
It’s true that some would not drink, and had to be assaulted by the “security” group & had poison forced down their throats. But the vast, vast majority went knowingly and voluntarily to their death, including Jones henchmen. I do not bring this up as a comment upon Obama, but a comment upon where cults, and the brainwashing they use to control followers, can lead to.
And that, again, is why some people are nervous and prone to hasty comments, any time someone who is a critic of Obama begins to make favorable comments. Because the 20th century could be labeled the “Century of the Cult of Personality,” a mass grave of humans sacrificed to monsters such as Jim Jones, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Erich Honnecker, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Lenin, etc., and many of us fear “It could happen here.” And since we still do not know what President Obama is going to do, but we do know what many of the people around him have done, or worked to make happen, it makes us nervous when “one of us” seems to be turning into “one of them.”
I hope this long winded comment sheds some light on why some people have responded so hastily to your comments about Obama.
Kidist writes:
I know this post has the danger of being talked to death, but I think we’re trying to decipher the mystery that is Obama.
N. says that one of the reasons people responded the way they did to your positive remarks about Obama is that some of us are afraid that reasonable, positive comments can eventually lead down the Messiah road.
I think my reaction was much more commonsensical. I don’t think you of all people will go down the Messiah road at all. Then that would make us the other side of the coin of the Messiah followers.
Obama has been found to be a liar and a follower of shady characters (about which he lies, or makes careful denials). I don’t mind charisma and charm. But Obama’s lies and cover-ups override so many of his good qualities, that although I do see them, I find him in general “queasy”, to use a world that N. used. He has been very successful until now at least twice (Wright’s church and Ayers, and even Resko).
If you remember the 60 minute video with his wife Michelle, that was the time when I put my guard up. It was a strange, and to me a shocking, moment, when he let his wife make her false and exaggerated statements on a national television interview. Before that, I was really struck by his charm, wit, sense of humor and even his kindness to Michelle. After that 20 second episode, it all changed.
LA replies:
I’m simply not inclined to be in a state of automatic, 100 percent All-Hostility-And-All-Suspicion-Against-Obama-All-The-Time. If I cannot make the simple observation that he presented a reasonable, proper, intelligent, presidential demeanor in a press conference, and that this was a pleasant change from the previous two presidents, because that would somehow mean weakening our side against all the bad things he may do or will with absolute certainty do, then I’d rather not write about politics at all. I refuse to put my mind and perceptions in a harness.
Pace Kidist, to compliment Obama on his proper demeanor is not tantamount to falling under the sway of his charisma.
In this discussion, I am somehow seeing how the Spanish Catholics turned into hard-bitten fanatics in their 500 year war to win back their country from the Mohammedans. I don’t want to be like a Spanish Catholic. I think we can defend and win back our civilization without becoming rigid fanatics. No offense intended against the medieval Spanish Catholics. They are in the top rank of the heroes of our civilization. But their long war against Islam deformed them psychologically and spiritually. I don’t want that to happen to us.
Another commenter, Rob H., wrote to me a long e-mail raking me over the coals and rehearsing every argument that’s already been used against my position in this thread. I told him it’s already been gone over so much, and I’ve replied and explained my position repeatedly, what purpose is served by doing it again?
LA continues:
Here’s a good rule for conservatives to follow during the Obama years, which Peggy Noonan presented in an otherwise silly article in the Sunday New York Post. She said: oppose Obama on the big things, not on the trivial things.
That’s really good, and I think it gets at the essence of what I said in my previous comment and throughout this thread. Don’t get bent out of shape by the secret, sinister implications of Obama’s referring to himself in passing as a mutt. Don’t be on the look-out for any conservative who compliments Obama’s demeanor or intelligence. No. Watch out for the big things that Obama may do to damage this country.
Van Wijk writes:
You wrote:
“Here’s a good rule for conservatives to follow during the Obama years, which Peggy Noonan presented in an otherwise silly article in the Sunday New York Post. She said: oppose Obama on the big things, not on the trivial things.”
So now Obama referring to himself as a mutt is a triviality.
Perhaps we could modify Noonan’s rule a bit: let’s view every trivial positive thing said about Obama as an irrelevancy which can be safely ignored, the better to be alert for the big negative things he has in store for us.
LA replies:
Touché. You’ve got me.
Except …
You’re suggesting an equivalency between conversing in a speculative way about an interesting thing, as I was conversing about the “mutt” remark, and focusing on that thing as the work of an unrelenting treacherous enemy against whom we must never, ever let down our guard for one second, and about whom we must never say a positive thing.
In other words, you’re losing the distinction between the kind of things worth bringing out the big guns for, and the kind of things that may be an interesting subject of discussion.
Noonan said bring out the big guns only for big things. She didn’t say, have conversations only about big things.
So there’s no contradiction in my position.
Your argument implies that the comment, “Obama had a proper demeanor at his press conference,” is either so trivial as not to be said or to be ignored if it is said, or so threatening that it must become the object of the big guns. The underlying premise of your argument requires total mental war against Obama on all fronts, on all levels, from every angle, all the time, so that it becomes forbidden to make a positive or neutral statement about him on any subject. I’m saying that that’s nuts, and frankly, I don’t want to be around such a mentality. For the last six or seven years I’ve criticized the mainstream conservatives, the Bush supporters, the Lucianne.com types, the David Horowitz types, who were so one-dimensional and reactive in their opposition to the left that they ceased to be thinking people and would just take any position so long as they saw it as against the left. And where did that approach lead? To an empty conservatism that only consisted of attacking the left, and which has now lost the country to the left. I’ve consistently opposed that phalanx type mentality in the past, and I oppose it now.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2008 07:28 PM | Send
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