The Choice (But I’ve Been Touched) – A Long Overdue Update
By SusanUnPC on July 7, 2008 at 1:01 AM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Civil Liberties, Cultist Thugs, Cults, Daily Kos, Democratic National Convention, Disenfranchisement, Messiah, Obama's Thugs, Obamatopia, Voter Fraud, William Ayers
Late on the evening of February 21, 2008, I was transformed. Alas, it’s been quite a while since I’d visited the site, “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?,” and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed. On February 21st, I discovered:
I’ve been touched by the “bluesman from Chicago.” I’ve been inspired by the “new synthetic mythology for a new kind of knowledge culture” which, the author writes, “may be the most powerful remobilization of historical and contemporary perspectives since the Popular Front movement of the 1930′s.”
Deeds and accomplishments — like hard work — are so yesterday. It is time to believe. Because, these great minds tell us, that is all we NEED TO DO!
You see, before tonight, I did not know this:
In many ways, [Obama's] language recalls that of Walt Whitman whose Leaves of Grass sought to develop a synthetic construction of what America was like as a nation, linking together a range of individual experiences, memories, perspectives, sense impressions, to create a vision of the nation as one big organism. . .
A GIANT ORGANISM! That’s what I’ve really been yearning for! And that was written by an M.I.T. professor (and that’s his photo, and he looks very intellectual!), so it must be true.
Today, I discovered all of this:
… followers willing to wait for hours on end to hear him speak have been crowding out huge concert halls and sports arenas to get a glimpse of their new progressive avatar and drive long distances to obtain the Obama darshan or to simply be in his presence. One can just imagine what the peace and flower-power concerts in the 60′s might have been like. Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama. Clearly, people are hungry for a change and want an inspirational leader who can serve up some hearty ‘chicken soup for the soul’. …
Like the Mahatma [Gandhi], Obama is becoming a global symbol of the ‘hopes and dreams’ of millions around the world. Those who look up to the American ideals, consume American media, and dream American dreams are tuned into this historic election. While Gandhi marked the end of the colonial era, Obama with his multicultural background and upbringing represents the age of globalization. Obama is in an unprecedented historical position to not only be the first African American president, but the first ‘global president’ of America. Obama’s images on T-shirts, magazine covers, and TV screens around the world may be a harbinger of the next American century, if the American people are willing and able to lead it.
Obama’s Satyagraha: Or, Did Obama Swallow the Mahatma?. June 27, 2008. (Dinesh Sharma is a marketing science consultant with a PhD in Psychology from Harvard).
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There was much more that I discovered on the night of February 21st, preserved in the original, “The Choice (But I’ve Been Touched),” including more from MIT professor Jenkins’ “Obama and the ‘We’ Generation.”
Cynics might say the youthful hordes are actually part of the “‘Me’ Generation.”
Then I quoted writer and jazz expert Stanley Crouch:
“Out of One, Many Rise to Believe Again”
Opponents want to dismiss that optimism as “false hope” because they think – or pretend to think – that Barack Obama represents no more than a charismatic political slogan that has even less value than one of the worthless products brilliantly hawked around the clock throughout our media.
Barack Obama is actually a bluesman from Chicago whose big stage is not in a nightclub or a concert hall but the huge national podium on which politics are argued. Obama knows that the blues always present the unvarnished problem and provide a solution through the rhythms and tones of engagement. It is, as the writer Albert Murray has observed, a music of confrontation, and it is presented in what amounts to a purification ritual.
Stanley Crouch, NY Daily News February 18, 2008
Obama is a bluesman! He’s creating a “music of confrontation.” And that’s a “purification ritual.”
I get it now!
Don’t you???
Eric Hoffer’s book The True Believer, which was on the summer reading list sent out by my university before my freshman year, and which we discussed in seminars during our first week at the university, had a powerful influence on me and left me wary the rest of my life of any mass movement.
I believe that, if Hoffer were alive today, he would be alarmed by the “authoritarian leftists” described so brilliantly by Steve Diamond, the Santa Clara law professor who writes for No Quarter. Professor Diamond has identified several “authoritarian leftists” who have been longtime associates of Barack Obama and have influenced his politics.
Beyond Professor Diamond’s examples of Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky as “authoritarian leftists” are many of Obama’s followers — whose cult-like, thuggish behavior was witnessed by thousands at caucuses and rallies — and on the Internet at blogs such as Daily Kos. Amusingly, both the Obama followers and the “Kossacks” fancy themselves as protectors of free speech and civil liberties, and decry the conservatives and Republicans as “authoritarian.” Yet it is they who march in lockstep just as rigidly as any rightwinger ever has.
And it is these “authoritarian leftists” who approved of the most undemocratic behavior: swarming caucuses and overwhelming Democratic party staffers who were unable to or simply didn’t bother to verify that the Obama followers were registered voters in the precinct caucuses in which they were voting.
Beneath the rapturous adulation and self-righteousness of Barack Obama’s typical follower is an insecure human being who seeks rigid adherence to a group. The Wikipedia entry on Eric Hoffer’s views offers this interesting summary:
A core principle in the book is Hoffer’s insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian himself. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn’t so important as that he or she is part of that movement.
This description helps to explain why so many Kossacks attacked the blog founder Markos (“Kos”) Moulitsas when he announced he was withholding his $2,300 donation to Obama’s presidential campaign because of his dismay with Obama’s backpedaling on FISA, public financing, and more. Kos titled his essay, “Rewarding good behavior.”
it is an oddity that a somewhat independently-minded person has attracted an audience that is drawn to cult-like adoration of certain politicians such as Barack Obama.
But, as any supporter of Hillary Clinton who dared write at Daily Kos can tell you, one was met with the most vicious attacks for questioning support for “The One.”
It is criminal — to my mind — that professors at MIT and others educated at elite educational institutions are promoting this mindless adulation with rhapsodic prose that, frankly, leaves me in a fit of giggles because it’s so over the top and nonsensical.
Thankfully, most Americans are not so easily enraptured by any politician, at least for long.
Let us hope that, before the end of August, enough Democratic party delegates to the national convention come to their senses and realize that the Obama mania is on the wane, and that a truly qualified and experienced candidate is required in order to defeat John McCain in November.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
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