LIBERAL VERSION
Birenbaum on Obama
Obama's Burden
Why do Republicans hate Barack Obama with such intensity that they consistently say that they want their country back?
What has Mr. Obama done to their framework for understanding American politics?
Surely it is that, as a man of color, Barack Obama is the first of his kind to serve in the office of President. John Kennedy was the first (and still the only) Catholic to hold that office but the Republican Party members kept their dislike of Kennedy to themselves. Other right wing groups, such as the John Birch Society, were never reluctant to abuse Kennedy but they did so because they believed he was insufficiently anti-Communist rather than because he was a Catholic. With Obama, the contempt is widely overt and there is a widespread theme that the President is a crypto Socialist and Muslim. And aside from sharp differences in political culture between the anti-Obama and the pro-Obama forces, there is a socially constructed and power-driven basis for this overt attitude, largely drawing on the fact that there is a black man in the White House, giving orders, talking back to them, and with a sense of self that says that he believes he is as good as they are. The President, born in Hawaii and raised for some years in Indonesia, acknowledges, for his part, that he has always been given minority status. When his daughters acquired a pet from the Washington, D.C. pound, he said this dog was a mongrel, like the President.
What has Mr. Obama done to their framework for understanding American politics?
Surely it is that, as a man of color, Barack Obama is the first of his kind to serve in the office of President. John Kennedy was the first (and still the only) Catholic to hold that office but the Republican Party members kept their dislike of Kennedy to themselves. Other right wing groups, such as the John Birch Society, were never reluctant to abuse Kennedy but they did so because they believed he was insufficiently anti-Communist rather than because he was a Catholic. With Obama, the contempt is widely overt and there is a widespread theme that the President is a crypto Socialist and Muslim. And aside from sharp differences in political culture between the anti-Obama and the pro-Obama forces, there is a socially constructed and power-driven basis for this overt attitude, largely drawing on the fact that there is a black man in the White House, giving orders, talking back to them, and with a sense of self that says that he believes he is as good as they are. The President, born in Hawaii and raised for some years in Indonesia, acknowledges, for his part, that he has always been given minority status. When his daughters acquired a pet from the Washington, D.C. pound, he said this dog was a mongrel, like the President.
Obama may be the original “marginal man” that 1930s sociologists characterized as needing supports. He never had the comfort of a black community where, in solidarity, it was us vs. them. This long-time isolation from a protecting group has made him sensitive on how to get along with closed groups, whether in high school or in Congress.
Can a black President, albeit of mixed race, get those others who believe that people of color are inferior to them to treat the occupant of that high office as competent, maybe even a worthy opponent? Gaining high office, particularly at the expense of old timers with the right family background, can be seen as usurpation of the throne or a shift in the order of privilege.
FROM 2-6-2012
As even casual Readers of this Blog know, from my years working in the military-industrial complex to destroy the Evil Empire, I have many friends who cling to their guns and religion.
They consistently ask me, "Do you think Obama is a Muslim?".
They asked it constantly; now they ask it consistently.
No, this Blog does not think Obama is a Muslim, for one simple reason. Muslims believe in beyond tangible.
Muslims may be complex people, Muslims may be simple people; they may be artistic, warlike, intolerant people, Sufi saints..but they all believe in something beyond tangible. Obama does not believe in anything....except(more on that later).
"MARGINAL MAN-noun Sociology .
a person who participates only slightly in the life of two cultural groups without feeling identified with either group. "
President Obama is the most successful Marginal Man in history, Napoleon, the Corsican who ruled France, was a Marginal Man; Stalin, the Georgian who ruled Russia, was a Marginal Man; Hitler, the Austrian who ruled Germany ,was a Marginal Man.
Clarification, before some of my Readers have conniption fits that I compared Obama to three dictators, let us be clear, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot,Genghis Khan, Francisco Franco,Benito Mussolini WERE NOT MARGINAL MEN. Being a Marginal Man does not mean you will be a Dictator, it only means you are a Marginal Man.
Obama is, in every sense of the word, an accidental American, because he did not choose to be an American. He became an American when his Kenyan father rejected him. His Father's rejection made the choice for him. If President Obama had achieved a solid relationship with his father, and an indelible identification with Kenya, he would very happily be President of Kenya versus President of The United States. That is where Obama's aura of "foreignness" comes from; he would rather be Kenyan, if only his Father had delivered.
His Father was a drunk. Reagan's father was also a drunk but "Dutch" Reagan's drunk dad was an American Drunk dad; Obama's Kenyan father was a Kenyan drunk Dad, rejecting his half American son. It is no wonder President Obama is a Marginal Man.
Obama is a Marginal Man when it comes to the American Black Experience; how could he not be? He is probably the only Black American President the United States will ever have who does not have a drop of slave blood in him. His night terrors are not blood memories from lynchings(unless his ancestral blood from his mother's side were members of the lynch mob). President Obama will be the only Black American President with no connection to Emmett Till.
Obama was a Marginal Man to his white family because of his skin color. They may have loved him very deeply, but his skin color was as effective in marginalizing him to his family as CLAUDIUS' limp and lisp was to the family of Augustus in Robert Grave's sublime masterpiece, I, CLAUDIUS.
So how does a Marginal Man succeed in this Day and Age?
Not by Believing, but by becoming a Method Actor. President Obama is the Greatest Method Actor of our generation, perhaps in history.
President Obama does not Believe, he absorbs. He is a Master of the transactional circumstance.
Now ,after success, he believes in only one thing(more on that later).
Meanwhile, at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama was a big time Christian: "BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think to myself, if I'm willing to give something up, as somebody who's been extraordinarily blessed, give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that's going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required."
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: "I think to myself..."
Louis Armstrong:"I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world."
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world."
If you listen to Mr. Obama's National Prayer Speech in its entirety, one is surprised about how many times he mentioned, "I am a Christian."
In fact, in that one moment in time, President Obama was the biggest Christian in America since Billy Sunday and ELMER GANTRY,combined.
How did President Obama go from mocking people who cling to their religion to becoming the biggest religious clinger extant? Simple, he reacts and absorbs. The Marginal Man becomes the Amoeba, especially when it seems apparent that the Republican opposition candidate to him ,in 2012, will be a Mormon, a member of a church which some Christians, in key battleground states, believe is not a Christian sect but a non Christian cult.
Obama is a born again Christian because Romney is a Mormon. If the Republicans had nominated Gov. Perry of Texas, a well known Christian, President Obama would have been the savior of everything secular, launching an American Cristero War on religion.
"President Barack Obama said Thursday his proposal to raise taxes on wealthy Americans is in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
'When I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,” Obama said during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
He continued, “And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually thinks that’s going to make economic sense.”
Secularists can make a rational assumption that if Obama was such a Christian Believer in the Christian benefits of taxing the rich, he would have shown his Christian faith during his first term,by repealing the Bush Tax Cuts ,when Democrats had full control of the Congress. In contrast, Presbyterian Ronald Reagan, as Governor of California, asked for, and received the highest per capita tax increase in American history. Reagan taxed his own base, going against his own word ,because he needed more taxes for the schools and the social programs of the poor. Reagan's base stuck with him for they understood- a Christian does what a Christian has to do.
Which brings us to-what does President Obama really believe in?
Yes, he does believe in something. He has a religion, beyond his Father's Islam, and his self professed Christianity.
And that religion is?
"A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, ..... Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.
Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of material. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them."
President Obama truly believes in his Cargo Cult, AIR FORCE ONE. Everything President Obama does, every policy, every statement,every interview, every alliance, is predicated on his absolute spiritual hunger to maintain control over AIR FORCE ONE.
President Obama does not want power outside of AIR FORCE ONE. He would GLADLY resign from the Presidency if AIR FORCE ONE was stripped from him. President Obama would resign tomorrow if a deal could be cut which would allow him to retain AIR FORCE ONE if he was out of power.
President Obama's true religion is worshipping AIR FORCE ONE. AIR FORCE ONE is the President's PRECIOUS; only John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had the facility and imagination to understand Obama's true religion.
President Obama and His PRECIOUS.
“But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’ teaching that, ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” he said.
That principle, Obama said, also “mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.”
That principle, Obama said, also “mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.”
Secularists can make a rational assumption that if Obama was such a Christian Believer in the Christian benefits of taxing the rich, he would have shown his Christian faith during his first term,by repealing the Bush Tax Cuts ,when Democrats had full control of the Congress. In contrast, Presbyterian Ronald Reagan, as Governor of California, asked for, and received the highest per capita tax increase in American history. Reagan taxed his own base, going against his own word ,because he needed more taxes for the schools and the social programs of the poor. Reagan's base stuck with him for they understood- a Christian does what a Christian has to do.
Which brings us to-what does President Obama really believe in?
Yes, he does believe in something. He has a religion, beyond his Father's Islam, and his self professed Christianity.
And that religion is?
"A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, ..... Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.
Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of material. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them."
President Obama truly believes in his Cargo Cult, AIR FORCE ONE. Everything President Obama does, every policy, every statement,every interview, every alliance, is predicated on his absolute spiritual hunger to maintain control over AIR FORCE ONE.
President Obama does not want power outside of AIR FORCE ONE. He would GLADLY resign from the Presidency if AIR FORCE ONE was stripped from him. President Obama would resign tomorrow if a deal could be cut which would allow him to retain AIR FORCE ONE if he was out of power.
President Obama's true religion is worshipping AIR FORCE ONE. AIR FORCE ONE is the President's PRECIOUS; only John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had the facility and imagination to understand Obama's true religion.
President Obama and His PRECIOUS.
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