Sunday, February 10, 2008

Obama as Messiah, the Trance-Inducer Part I

Is Barack Obama the Messiah?
"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Barack Obama in South Carolina. January 2008....

Slate.com

Timothy Noah will periodically feature tidbits from the press:

Is Barack Obama—junior U.S. senator from Illinois, best-selling author, Harvard Law Review editor, Men's Vogue cover model, and "exploratory" presidential candidate—the second coming of our Savior and our Redeemer, Prince of Peace and King of Kings, Jesus Christ? His press coverage suggests we can't dismiss this possibility out of hand. I therefore inaugurate the Obama Messiah Watch, which will periodically highlight gratuitously adoring biographical details that appear in newspaper, television, and magazine profiles of this otherworldly presence in our midst............
....Readers are invited to submit similar details—Obama walking on water, Obama sating the hunger of 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes—from other Obama profiles. And also, of course, to repent, just in case the hour approacheth nigh.....



The Obama Trance

From World Magazine

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” With heads cocked, many onlookers seemed to glaze over with trance-like admiration for the man they believe will reinvent American politics.

Montgomery Advertiser

......Obama's charismatic approach to politics had the Sunday afternoon crowd in a virtual trance with constant give and take between him and his audience.........

Global Politician

....Everyone is telling me he’ll tickle my fancy. I’m supposed to be endeared. Apparently he does all sorts of amazing trance-like things to you: he’ll “look into your eyes,” “inspire” your political senses, and when he speaks to his audiences, he bestows upon you feelings you “haven’t felt in ages.......

...........So there’s some obvious style… and style… and then more style. It’s with this pseudo-performance that Sen. Obama speaks of change (“change” is the substance, by the way). His victories have been impressive and his base in undeniably excited. When pressed, however, his followers cannot specifically name why they have granted him their proud support, other than vague allusions to “change” (a theme Ward Cleaver, ahem, Mitt Romney has also tried to run with).Change is fine, I suppose, but its proponents in the Obama campaign do not seem to recognize its politically neutral nature. High taxes, socialized medicine, and submission abroad would all constitute “change,” would they not? Some of the boldest changes to ever transpire were regressive and reactionary. None of that is good. (Food for thought: we’re the most affluent and leisured democracy in human history. We must be doing something right. Maybe we shouldn’t change all that much?).......

Canada.com on the Trance

...This has nothing to do with Barack Obama's race, creed, or ideology. I do not doubt for a moment that Mr. Obama is a sincere Christian and patriotic American, and that he truly believes himself the New Man for the New Age.
I fear him rather on two accounts. The first is that he has no policies. He offers vague "feel good" on every domestic issue, and magic in foreign policy. Simply by his being Obama, and not Bush, the conflicts will go away. He will withdraw from Iraq. He will ignore Iran. And he will invade Pakistan (to get at Osama). People who say things like this, whether or not in a dream-like trance, are not eligible to be commander-in-chief. Or rather, should not be.
For the second problem with Mr. Obama is that he is eminently electable. Republicans do not seem to realize just how electable. For while Barack Hussein Obama does not entirely resemble the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau (who had his policy wonk side, and more native malice), he has that mystical androgynous quality that comes across hypnotically on TV.
It was the women who put Trudeau in power, and kept him there: the women's vote in English Canada, plus the Liberal fiefdom in Quebec. It is the ditzier range of women in the borderline Red States that could elect President Obama: lonely women, and to some extent, their weak, "sensitive" men.

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