rastamasta
05-11-2008, 05:34 PM
Obama the Messiah is going to produce profound disillusion
Posted By: Janet Daley at Nov 4, 2008 at 14:19:02
There is a video clip running on YouTube at the moment which shows a black woman moved nearly to tears at an Obama rally, telling a television interviewer that all her problems will be at an end when he is elected president. She won't have to worry anymore about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage because "he will help me". It would be easy to find this absurd - the blind faith of an unsophisticated voter who has clearly mistaken Barack Obama for Jesus - but in truth it is both sad and alarming. I can understand the sense of the miraculous that Obama's likely accession to the presidency must involve for African-Americans: I grew up in the US at a time when even the cities of the northeast were almost entirely segregated. (It was called "de facto segregation" as opposed to the legally enforced version that prevailed in the South, and was even more pernicious and intractable in its way.) But this woman's testimony is a reminder of something deeply disturbing in the Obama phenomenon: the fact that his campaign has shifted its tone from his original "post-racial" stance to one that is subliminally evocative of black evangelism. Far from his earlier intellectually nuanced and racially neutral delivery, his cadences and his frankly inspirational stump speeches now have the unmistakeable ring of the black pulpit. Little wonder that his candidacy is being mistaken for the Second Coming.
What will this mean for the future? What if, as will almost certainly be the case, the great deliverance fails to deliver? The disillusion and sense of betrayal may create divisions in American society that will be greater and deeper than any we have seen for a generation. The sense of hopelessness and bitter disappointment may well be - as Americans say - toxic. Then again, maybe American politics will simply get the grown-up message that no one mortal is the final answer: that the fulfilment of the American dream must always lie within the individual and not with the government. To be fair, Obama himself suggests this when he tells the crowds, "It's not about me - it's about you."
Obama The Messiah IS Going To Produce Profound Disillusion (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/janet_daley/blog/2008/11/04/obama_the_messiah_is_going_to_produce_profound_dis illusion)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jll5baCAaQU
that speech is like the sermon on the mount. It's scary. "yes we can" and the sheep just parrot it back at him like he's Christ almighty.
you shall have no other gods before me., You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, You shall not bow down to them or worship them
Ten Commandments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments)
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u12/Iainwh/globama.jpg
Posted By: Janet Daley at Nov 4, 2008 at 14:19:02
There is a video clip running on YouTube at the moment which shows a black woman moved nearly to tears at an Obama rally, telling a television interviewer that all her problems will be at an end when he is elected president. She won't have to worry anymore about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage because "he will help me". It would be easy to find this absurd - the blind faith of an unsophisticated voter who has clearly mistaken Barack Obama for Jesus - but in truth it is both sad and alarming. I can understand the sense of the miraculous that Obama's likely accession to the presidency must involve for African-Americans: I grew up in the US at a time when even the cities of the northeast were almost entirely segregated. (It was called "de facto segregation" as opposed to the legally enforced version that prevailed in the South, and was even more pernicious and intractable in its way.) But this woman's testimony is a reminder of something deeply disturbing in the Obama phenomenon: the fact that his campaign has shifted its tone from his original "post-racial" stance to one that is subliminally evocative of black evangelism. Far from his earlier intellectually nuanced and racially neutral delivery, his cadences and his frankly inspirational stump speeches now have the unmistakeable ring of the black pulpit. Little wonder that his candidacy is being mistaken for the Second Coming.
What will this mean for the future? What if, as will almost certainly be the case, the great deliverance fails to deliver? The disillusion and sense of betrayal may create divisions in American society that will be greater and deeper than any we have seen for a generation. The sense of hopelessness and bitter disappointment may well be - as Americans say - toxic. Then again, maybe American politics will simply get the grown-up message that no one mortal is the final answer: that the fulfilment of the American dream must always lie within the individual and not with the government. To be fair, Obama himself suggests this when he tells the crowds, "It's not about me - it's about you."
Obama The Messiah IS Going To Produce Profound Disillusion (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/janet_daley/blog/2008/11/04/obama_the_messiah_is_going_to_produce_profound_dis illusion)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jll5baCAaQU
that speech is like the sermon on the mount. It's scary. "yes we can" and the sheep just parrot it back at him like he's Christ almighty.
you shall have no other gods before me., You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, You shall not bow down to them or worship them
Ten Commandments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments)
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u12/Iainwh/globama.jpg