RANGER AGAINST WAR: Oba-Messiah <

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Oba-Messiah


Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee
--Augustis Toplady


Oh, Let us all from bondage flee
Let my people go

--Go Down Moses


It's gonna be a new day for you

A new day for you, new day for you, new day for you

--A New Day for You
, Basia

Fever in the Morning

Fever all through the night,

--You Give Me Fever
, Peggy Lee
___________

Part the third in our Obama trilogy: He is Come.

These are dire times, trouble all across the land. Our conventional leadership has sold us down the proverbial river. A messianic fervor has taken over, and Obamania is that phenomenon.

People have always turned to saviors at such times. Moses came when the people needed liberation and freedom from bondage. The dynamism of such movements propels their prophet onto front and center stage; the problem is the mass blindness which allows this to occur.

Rationalism isn't so sexy and cannot support such a fever pitch, and it is only the fever of being on board a winning team which unleashes the mob energy. Obamania is a political Lollapalooza.

While there are prophets are on every street corner, it takes charisma plus mass desperation to mobilize the mob so they can elevate their prophet to the position of savior.

The Right wing has been playing from the End Times playbook, hastening the degradation of events in the Middle East to facilitate their biblically-ordained Rapture. They feel Armageddon is inevitable and that they will be saved, anyway.

However, the Left feels desolation in the wake of the destructive fundamentalist project in the "Holy lands." They look to Obama to free them from enslavement to this mad project, and he brings Good News -- a message of hope and salvation -- for the price of our devotion and ballot. He is a savior shilling for a vote.

The problem I have with Obamania is its Never-Never land aspect. All will be washed away if we just hop aboard that train. The fanaticism of the left for Obama is as distasteful as that displayed by the right for their presumptive messiahs. Fanatics are fanatics.

The promise of infinite potential is similar to that echoed by two books fronting the entry at my local Borders, both by other O[prah]-gurus.

Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is self-explanatory, and Neale Donald Walsch's Happier Than God, which tells you how you can be, y'know, happier than God. Does anyone else wonder, what if your life's purpose is cleaning out sewer gratings? And is God really all that "happy," what with his immense responsibilities. So you see, even the feel-good books bring with them a sense of responsibility.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but even the Founding Fathers didn't hand us a life purpose and happiness on a plate. All we were promised was the right to "pursue" life and happiness. Attaining them was not guaranteed.

We want a savior to "take us away" from this vale of tears. "www.Mybarackobama" tells us today that one million people "own a piece of this campaign," and that they are "disillusioned by partisan gridlock in Washington." That may be, but what they don't tell us is that a president may not remove that gridlock, photogenic and optimistic as he or she may be.


How does Obama fit the bill of savior:

[1] Obama is dashing and charismatic. It is doubtful that if he looked like his Kenyan father Obama would be rock-star material in the U.S. We are not quite that color blind yet. As it is, even Larry the Cable guys can look at him in approval, perhaps even imagining they share some of his appeal.

Hillary, however, lacks the same "twinning" phenomenon. Fewer people would like to imagine they share Hillary's flat midwestern intonation or frumpy body or over-the-hill persona. The thing she offers is her intellect, unfortunately, something which has never been a winning quality for the American voter.

[2] Obama's acceptance is unconditional. "We will do it," whatever it is. Come all ye faithful. But what we presume is, it is he who will do the heavy lifting in Washington. He asks nothing of us, just promises a new day, via our acceptance (=vote.) In this way, he is both parent and savior, which we know any good religion conflates for us anyway.

The following two points are not p.c. They are gotten from the local street, and our street is not Worth Avenue. We never promised you a rose garden at Ranger:

[3] We are finally admitting that the Savior is not really a blonde/blue Aryan as depicted on the veleteen Dollar Store paintings. Rather, He was most likely of African extraction, and Obama more nearly approximates this reality than the pasty-faced Jim Bakkers of the world.

While Obama is not running for ecclesiastical post, nonetheless, election as president is the closest we get to national ordination. The fervor behind Obama exceeds that accorded to your typical politico.

[4] Pro-ball. America has been idolizing trim, black athletes since Jackie Robinson crossed the color line. Obama is the Superbowl and March Madness rolled into one, with the invocation by team chaplain Dr. Martin Luther King.

If all else disappoints in real life, the athlete's achievement on the track or field is one of pure beauty and clarity. While Obama is not an olympian, either, desegregation and idolization on that field has allowed for his entree as rock star-candidate.

Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home.

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lisa
Personally I would have no problem supporting either Clinton or Obama for president. Your anti-Obama campaign though is so far a "straw man" argument. You have created a straw man Obama in order to easily take him apart.
Personally I don't see how Obama can be held responsible for either the psychological problems of the American people or the writings of the self help gurus on Oprah's book club.
Your "Obama has no substance" cartoons are on the same level as portraying John Edwards as "the Breck Girl." It's a way to create a false public image of a candidate in order to avoid and preclude dealing with the substance of their views.
If you want to deal with Obama as a person instead of a straw man, Obama has extensive policy statements at www.barackobama.com.
I do not see "I will be your saviour " among them.
If you have disagreements with Obama's stated ideas what is it that you disagree with?
Kevin in Granville

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 4:11:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

Kevin,

It is not the man himself, but the culture, and his well-oiled machine, which I am speaking to.

I am disappointed with the fickle press and the society which so quickly hop on "the winning train," before any candidate does has a clear plurality.

I am disappointed with celbrity endorsements which carry more gravity than politician's position statements. As Oprah goes, so goes the country. If Sen. Kennedy and Oprah had gone for Hillary, who do you think would be winning today?

It is the fantasyland aspect of electioneering in some very serious times which disappoints me.

My comments do not extend to Obama's position papers, which are notoriously lacking from his rally's. He is being heralded as a savior by his people, and that is obvious.

Politics is slippery business. What campaigns say is not always what they do.

For instance, his campaign claimed racial neutrality, but Obama has proven himself adept at milking that angle for what it's worth, while at the same time managing to blame HRC's campaign for doing something detrimental on the topic, which is absurd.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 4:55:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Underground Carpenter said...

Another good one, Lisa. I'm enjoying reading your posts. Keep going.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 8:34:00 PM GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lisa,
Essentially you are expressing disappointment in human nature. Most Americans believe that angels are watching over them and that they will meet their family members and pets in Heaven. People have always been like this.
The only thing novel here is that Obama has unusually good oratorical skills and arose so quickly with a message that has resonated with a lot of voters.
You wrote:"My comments do not extend to Obama's position papers, which are notoriously lacking from his rally's."
I wouldn't expect Obama or any other politician to be reading position papers at a rally instead of trying to inspire his supporters to get out and work for him. A rally is not the place for detail it's the place for inspiration. There's nothing notorious about this. It's normal. The detail is on the web site and in the debates where it should be.
Speaking of "the fickle press" and hopping on a train, the two stories "Obama is an empty suit with no concrete ideas" and "Obama's supporters are all crazy cult followers desperate for a saviour" are stories created by and promoted by the press ( yes Kristol counts). I believe that some (like Kristol) who promote these stories are engaging in the Karl Rove technique of attacking a candidates strongest points first. Obama is being attacked for being "too inspirational" in an attempt to paint this as a negative.
I am disappointed that so many people have jumped on this train instead of dealing with the candidates Obama and Clinton on the basis of their ideas and actions.
Kevin in Granville

Friday, February 29, 2008 at 1:06:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

Thanks, UC.
___________

To Kevin:

Essentially, I am disappointed that erstwhile well-meaning, liberal thinkers do not see the fallacy of Obama's claim to present something new, something other than "partisan politics as usual" in Washington.

Unless he is planning to outlaw political parties, there will always be partisan politics; Obama cannot stop that.

The best we can hope for is a candidate with a strong and implementable social agenda who knows how to work within the slimy Washington machine. HRC has proven herself to be such a candidate.

When one looks behind Obama's soaring rhetoric, there is nothing revolutionary. That is a bait-and-switch.

Friday, February 29, 2008 at 11:00:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger libhom said...

Most of the people I know who support Obama are doing so as a realistic political compromise.

The Clinton campaign is claiming that Obama's rhetoric is messianic, but it really is more like FDR's. Considering the mess our country is in, we will need a leader who inspires people to help get us out of it.

Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 11:05:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

libhom,

The messianic imagery came to me independent of anyone else's claims.

FDR asked sacrifice; Obama asks nothing. The average U.S. citizen is unaccustomed to self-sacrifice, likes to get stoked up and has a very short attention span.

That's why the rhetoric doesn't impress me much. I'm old-school, and look for the platform behind the rhetoric.

Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 12:08:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

libhom,

One more way in which the Obama-religious connection works: he does ask one thing of us, and that is to put money in the (his) plate.

Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 10:45:00 AM GMT-5  

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