Who is the real Obama? (I’ve asked that question before)

I just got around to reading Obama’s demonized-by-neocons interview on the Al-Arabiya Arab TV network of a few weeks ago, and, except for a change of tone and several cheap shots at the previous administration (Obama meanly and ludicrously pretends that Bush wasn’t striving with all his might to reach a “peace” agreement”!), I don’t see that big a difference between Obama re the Muslim world and Bush re the Muslim world, apart from, of course, Obama’s dismantling of vital homeland security measures, which was not a subject of the interview.

I continue to find Obama virtually impossible to read. He is a series of appearances with no essence. All we can do is keep noting and collecting the appearances, until the essence starts to become visible (unless his essence is that he has no essence, a possibility I’ve repeatedly raised). However, his support for the porkulus bill does tell us something substantial about him: that he’s utterly careless and irresponsible about the well-being of the United States, that he’s an unreconstructed and corrupt leftist who appropriates unprecedented amounts of money under false pretenses in order to enrich his friends and political supporters.

By the way, I’ve been reading Steve Sailer’s book on Obama, and it is very good, if rather circular and repetitive. Parts of it are written with an engaging elegance and wit I’ve never before seen from Sailer. His starting point is the Obama revealed at great length in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams from my Father, a “tragic mulatto” searching for his identity as a black man and wanting to fulfil himself as a leader and protector of his race. This Obama, Sailer reminds us, oh, 40 times, has never been told about in the liberal media. Then Obama adopted a different persona, as post-race man “bored” with race. Sailer himself does not claim to know that the Obama of Dreams is the real Obama, since he says that Obama may have genuinely changed since then. So Sailer is also looking at Obama’s multiple appearances, trying to discover his essence.

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Sage McLaughlin writes:

“I continue to find Obama virtually impossible to read. He is a series of appearances with no essence. All we can do is keep noting and collecting the appearances, until the essence starts to become visible (unless his essence is that he has no essence…”

I have a theory that this is one reason the left adores Obama with such fervor. That is, he somehow embodies the liberal denial of essences. Because his persona defies all attenpts to discover the essential being which lies beneath, he makes manifest their hope that the search for essence is a fool’s errand. Thus their celebration of his supposed “post-racial” identity as a good thing in itself.

LA writes:

One definite feeling I have is that an alien being, a typical alienated nonwhite leftist, is the president of the United States.

LA writes:

Sailer’s book on Obama, “America’s Half-Blood Prince,” would be worth writing an article on, but for now, this thought: Why is the book so much better written and more engaging than anything he’s previously done? I think it’s because his subject took him beyond his usual interests in bio-diversity and pop culture. Of course, bio-diversity is central to the story of a mulatto searching for an identity. But Sailer’s biological, reductive, statistical approach cannot answer the question that he poses to himself: who is this human being, Obama? Sailer the author stands, a seeker of truth, before a complex, mysterious human (and literary) phenomenon that fascinates him; and his fascination becomes ours. The subject thus lifts Sailer above his usual shallow persona, makes him larger, gives him a more human voice. Also, the subtlety of Obama’s mind and the grace of his literary style seem to rub off on Sailer, who describes himself as Obama’s interpreter and even his co-author, since, as he keeps reminding us, “Dreams from my Father” is a book that very few people will read, and Sailer’s job is to make it accessible to us..

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

I’ve met people like Obama. These are people who look genuinely comfortable with the world, who have seemingly happy families, who are charming and considerate.

Yet, at crucial moments, they show me their true nature. For example, in a discussion about Somali terrorists, such a person would quietly say: “Well, we should get all those Somalis to leave their difficult homeland and come to Canada.” I would be rather shocked, and am not quite sure I’ve heard this.

Such radical comments, coming in the midst of an otherwise normal conversation, contradict the cheerful, even compassionate, disposition these people often have.

I decided a while ago to take these “quiet outbursts” seriously; more seriously than the superficial “image” such people often give.

This reminds me of a psychological term called “microexpression”, where a person displays an emotion for about 1/25 of a second revealing an underlying expression contrary to the one that he is actually showing. This idea has been developed into a test—the Micro Expression Training Tool—as one method to catch criminals out.

This may seem like a far cry from sudden, unexpected, declarations of true intent, but I think this is what Obama has been doing all along. Somewhere inside of him, it is clear to me that he holds beliefs that are radical and even extreme, but he camouflages it all very well with his outward personality. I can count many “micro-declarations” he has given us already. Isn’t that really what con men are all about? Isn’t that how Bernard Madoff must have behaved?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 16, 2009 12:16 PM | Send