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You seem to assume that an individual's personality can only be made up of actual experiences. But Obama's book Dreams from My Father is entirely about the attitudes and resentments he took on based on his father's experiences and those of Africans and blacks in general.

No, it isn't -- my point entirely about "sprayed-on" toughness. Real toughness, though, goes to character, and that is acquired through experience, good or bad. People who haven't had it tough aren't tough, is the way to say it.

As for all the rest, you seem to be agreeing with me about its artificiality. If Obama really represented his background, he'd be a go-along guy minding his own business. The interventions of others -- FMD, Red Mommy, Red Granny, all the rest -- certainly account for changes in him, but I don't see anyone in his background who will have imparted the kind of personal tough-guy attitude that someone who'd been up the river for 15 years brings to the table from experience.

Someone went underground once, long ago, with the Weathermen for several months, in order to write an article about them (don't remember where -- it might have been Rolling Stone), and his insight was that Ayers, Boudin, Gold, and all the rest were suburban kids trying to learn to be tough by living rough and not doing the dishes. But they're not the same thing, and he doubted they ever really imbibed the kind of toughness prison and genuine privation impart.

That all said, the most murderous thugs in 20th-century history, at least on the Left, were all middle-class darlings who got their Rad.D. degrees at the Sorbonne or someplace, and then went out and killed a million people in the name of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary principles.

No, it isn't -- my point entirely about "sprayed-on" toughness. Real toughness, though, goes to character, and that is acquired through experience, good or bad. People who haven't had it tough aren't tough, is the way to say it.

Many words that have little to do with my original statement.

Because he has a good dose of street thug in his makeup. He's actually probably exercising great restraint.

Obama is a mixed up mess of many influences that he has picked up along the way. And some of his most authentic influences are probably some that he hides. But the street thug is one of those influeces whether or not he actually lived that life.

Obama time and again has displayed the attitudes of a street thug. Anyone can assume the attitude of any group, or become a wannabe without having actually lived that life. To say that one has to have actually lived a particular life before they can mimic some of its attitudes and behaviors is nonsense.

You are doing something that is all too common around FR: ascribing meanings to someone else's posts that simply are not there so you can disagree.