Obama injects himself into his tribute to Neil Armstrong; and the conversion of NASA into a project for Muslim self-esteem

Mike Flynn at Breitbart writes:

The thing that most bothers me about Barack Obama is his unearned narcissism. His smugness and arrogance are beyond the ability of science to measure. I don’t mind someone being a bit cocky or even arrogant, IF they have the accomplishments and achievements to back up the attitude.

Obama’s greatest achievement, though, is creating his own personal narrative. He is his own personal touchstone. Even when honoring a great American hero, Obama can’t help but thrust himself into the event….

Obama took to his tumblr page to offer a tribute to Neil Armstrong. The words—two sentences—are fine in a generic politician way. But, Obama being Obama, he injected himself into the tribute. He included a photo, not of Armstrong or the iconic step onto the lunar surface, but of himself, gazing up at the moon.

As Flynn points out, Armstrong, the first man on the moon, was modest and retiring about his accomplishments, while Obama, who had and has and will have nothing to do with moon flight, makes himself the central figure in a supposed tribute to Armstrong.

It is a classic illustration of the difference between the typical Anglo-Saxon personality—cool, restrained, economical in its expressions, making the job at hand the important thing, not the self—and the typical black personality—characterized by overweening self esteem, combined with zero accomplishment.

- end of initial entry -

Alan Roebuck writes:

I may be mistaken, but to me, the photo does not show Obama looking at the moon. The angle of his head does not seem right. Looking at the complete photo at breitbart.com (near the bottom of the article), he appears to be looking straight ahead, at the cars or perhaps the figure standing next to one of them. So there’s not even the slightest reason for him to post this photo.

LA replies:

If Mr. Roebuck is correct, then Obama’s connection with the moon is even less than what it appeared. It is not a photo in which he is looking at the moon, but a photo in which he seems to be looking at the moon. His involvement with the moon is nothing times nothing.

Aaron S. writes:

I had to laugh when I saw the Obama-and-the-moon picture. Look at it closely: it’s a silhouette, and with Obama’s close-cropped hair, it is not clear whether he is looking at the camera or the sky. How apt! Until I read the accompanying text, I simply assumed he was leaning forward, pushing himself at the viewer.

This is a wonderful study in contrasts. Armstrong was living in a neighborhood adjoining mine. I was walking a few years ago in our town square when someone pointed out to me that he was dining on the outdoor porch of a nearby restaurant. I would never have seen him, nor would I even have known that he was living nearby. Now, could we imagine Obama ever, and for the rest of his days, tolerating or even enjoying such quiet anonymity?

Mark Jaws writes:

No surprise about Barack Obama’s having injected himself into the moon episode. He is, after all, the quintessential and most infamous black empty suit.

Alissa writes:

Barack Obama possibly has millions of fake Twitter followers. As high as 70 percent even.

LA replies:

In The Republic, Plato wrote of the Cave, where men mistake false appearance for reality and believe in illusions.

Eric Voegelin wrote of the Cave below the Cave, where men are so far from truth that they lack even the ability to have rational discussion about what is true and what is false.

The notion of “fake Twitter followers” makes me think that we’ve now entered a realm so far from reality that it could be called the Cave below the Cave below the Cave.

Jim Kalb writes:

Great image! Not only are we chained in a cave staring at shadows of imitations flickering across the wall, but the people chained next to us telling us what it all means turn out to be fakes as well!

LA replies:

Right. What could be worse that purveyors of mass unreality? Fake purveyors of mass unreality.

Terry Morris writes:

With a little more forethought Obama could have had one of his people crop in a silhouette of a moderately-sized telescope, aimed in the moon’s general direction, immediately to his left.

LA replies:

That’s funny.

Joseph C. writes:

If you look closely at the picture, you notice that Obama’s arm (on our left) is bent backward. This tells us that it his right arm bent with his hand in his pocket, indicating he is facing the camera.

VC writes:

The photo was taken April 24. Curiously, the full image shows him beneath a crescent moon and a star (Venus).

LA replies:

We can’t know if that is a deliberate invocation of Islamic imagery. After all, a star or planet near the crescent moon is a very common sight.

However, in Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2016: Obama’s America, which I saw over the weekend, NASA’s quintessentially Affirmative Action head, Charles Bolden, says something that goes even further than the previous statements we’ve heard from him about NASA’s purpose being to increase diversity and reach out to Muslims. He tells D’Souza that when Obama appointed him, he told him that his main task (his main task) would be to make Muslims feel that their contributions to science had equaled the West’s.

By the way, this was one of the things in the movie that began to move me from my previous disagreement with D’Souza thesis, to partial agreement. My previous view had been that Obama in his anti-Americanism is just like any other leftist and nonwhite, and therefore D’Souza’s “anti-colonialist” theory of Obama was off-base and added nothing useful. But I think D’Souza shows that beyond Obama’s standard leftist anti-Americanism and anti-whiteness, there is an additional element relating to anti-colonialism that explains more particular things about Obama.

Terry Morris writes:

In your reply to VC you said that the sight of a star near the crescent moon is common. Which is true enough, but I wonder how many times a sitting president of the United States has been photographed against that backdrop? When you consider Obama’s background, the photograph tends to make you wonder.

LA replies:

Good point. :-)

Indeed, does anyone remember a photograph of a sitting president of the U.S. against the night sky? I don’t. It would be too “poetic” to be presidential.

Terry Morris continues:

Wait a minute! You’re saying that Charles Bolden told D’Souza that Obama instructed him that his main task at NASA would be to make Muslims feel that their contributions to science had been equal to the West’s?

LA replies:

That’s how I remember what Bolden said in the movie. It was very specific. My memory could be wrong and we need to check maybe a transcript of the movie.

Terry Morris replies:

I couldn’t find a transcript of the movie, but did find a Fox News report on a July, 5, 2010 interview Bolden did with Al Jazeera in which he said Obama gave him the specific task of finding ways to improve relations with Muslims, to “make them feel good about their significant contributions to science, to math and engineering.”

LA replies:

Now you’ve jogged my memory. None of this is new. I posted about that Bolden interview with Al Jazeera in 2010, in which he said that “perhaps foremost” of the three tasks Obama charged him with as head of America’s space program was to “engage much more with dominantly [sic] Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” The other two tasks were to “re-inspire children to want to get into science and math” and “expand our international relationships.”

In that post I wrote:

Apart from the question of Bolden’s evidently sub-mediocre intellect, the devotion of our nation’s space agency to raising Muslim self-esteem and to “re-inspiring children” (translation: re-inspiring black and Hispanic children) to be interested in science is the kind of thing that we must expect to happen when blacks are put in charge of a white country. I don’t intend to shock or offend anyone when I say this, but the reality is that blacks have virtually zero relationship to high level scientific and other intellectual achievement, as it is beyond their abilities and interests. The only way blacks can relate to significant intellectual and scientific endeavor is to complain about the injustice of the fact that whites have done virtually all of it, and that blacks, along with other non-achieving peoples, like Muslims, have done virtually none of it, and to look for ways to make themselves and other non-achieving peoples seem equal to whites.

To sum up the point I made in 2010, if blacks, with their inadequate civilizational accomplishments and abilities, are put in charge of a society, as is now the case in the U.S., it must result in all high level endeavors being converted into a project of racial equality and being dragged down for the sake of the advancement and self-esteem of blacks and other nonwhites.

However, in that post I didn’t directly address the simple madness of Bolden’s statement about NASA’s “foremost” mission. It is the ultimate in liberal insanity.

So let’s start from the beginning. Bolden is in charge of America’s space program. And now the purpose of America’s space program is … what? To make Muslims feel good about themselves. What does America’s space program have to do with—of all things in the world—Muslim self-esteem? Why not say that the purpose of America’s space program is to encourage dairy farmers to milk their cows more often? Why not say that the purpose of America’s space program is to make children brush their teeth? It sounds utterly senseless, doesn’t it? But it’s not senseless. It’s logical and simple. In liberal society, diversity, the raising up and equal inclusion of the Other, is the highest good, the ultimate purpose of ALL human activities. The natural good of any activity has been displaced by diversity. Fishing is not about catching fish, it’s about including the Other and enhancing his self-esteem. Education is not about the transmission of knowledge; it’s about including the Other and enhancing his self-esteem. Running a business is not about producing a good or service and making a profit; it’s about including the Other and enhancing his self-esteem. Exploring space is not about exploring space; it’s about including the Other and enhancing his self-esteem.

And what is it that drives all this? Ultimately, it is the intellectual and civilizational inferiority of blacks and certain other nonwhite groups, and whites’ misplaced guilt over it. Every institution, every standard, every accomplishment must be degraded and perverted in order to make blacks, Muslims, Hispanics, Laotians, etc. seem as capable and intelligent as whites.

Do any prominent mainstream conservatives understand this ideology and denounce it? No. Their criticisms of multiculturalism, to the meager extent that they still bother criticizing it, are clichéd formulae. They don’t grasp it for what it is, and they don’t denounce it for what it is. In fact they don’t care about the issue. They gave up opposing it long ago. (As evidence of conservatives’ failure to mount any serious criticism of this ideology, see, below, Charles Krauthammer’s response to Bolden.)

NASA gets its funding from the Congress, right? So did anyone in the Congress denounce Bolden’s amazing statement that NASA’s foremost mission is to enhance the self-esteem of Muslims? Did any member of Congress call for an investigation into how Obama has perverted the agency into something completely irrelevant to its purpose? Not that I’m aware of.

Indeed, there was no more Republican-conservative opposition to Bolden’s statement, than there was to Gen. Casey’s statement that if Nidal Hasan had been apprehended and kicked out of the army, that would have been a greater tragedy (because it would have harmed the Army’s diversity) than the Fort Hood massacre itself. America is now run by the ideology of inclusion and non-discrimination, and this ideology cannot be criticized or even identified. The fact that this ideology cannot be criticized or even identified is the very proof that it is the power-holder in our society, as per the Voltaire statement we recently quoted:

To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.

August 28

Terry Morris writes:

Great analysis! To conclude from something so obviously senseless and nuts on its face as that NASA exists to enhance the self-esteem of America’s mortal enemies, that it actually makes sense and is perfectly logical, requires an uncanny depth of understanding of the liberal worldview, as well as the equally rare ability to express it coherently. So bravo!

On a side point, I notice that you say that the purpose of a business is to produce a good or service and make money. I would say that the point of running a business, when you boil it all down, is simply to make money.

Incidentally, the leftist Tulsa World newspaper ran a July 4, 2011 editorial lambasting the Tea Party and asking its readers, and I quote, “But since when did it become unAmerican for people to work hard to build a business to provide good paying jobs and benefits to those who need them?” I wrote them a letter in reply in which I basically said that this idiotic goal for building a business had become “American” at the moment our society adopted Marxist values as its own.

LA replies:

Thank you.

Dean Ericson writes:

Excellent rehashing. You’re right; no other writer (or prominent critic) pointed out the meaning of Bolden’s statement. Many condemned it but none had the insight or the nerve to point out the equality-driven agenda of promoting under-achieving peoples (blacks, Muslims, etc.).

For example, here is Charles Krauthammer responding to Bolden’s statement:

This is a new height in fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there. This idea of “to feel good about their past scientific achievements”—it’s the worst combination of group-therapy psychobabble, imperial condescension, and adolescent diplomacy.

LA replies:

Thanks for the Krauthammer quote. His criticism of Bolden comes down to: Bolden’s statement is silly.

So according to Krauthammer there is no liberal ideology here that we need to oppose, because this is just silliness.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 27, 2012 10:31 AM | Send