“Whatever. It seems to me that Obama plans to be reelected on the basis of successful (rhetorical) promulgation of the mantras of class and racial division....”
Spirited: Obama’s magic successfully mesmerizes because it speaks to what his listeners really want to believe about themselves and others.
Broadly speaking, Obama’s listeners fall into two categories: self-righteous do-gooders and victims, the patients and/or clients of the do-gooders.
Do-gooders (commissars in the Soviet Union) really want to believe that with enough power and money they can save the planet, save their clients (victims of social injustice), and perfect man and society. As they are impervious to their own capacity for wrongdoing, like stiff-necked bulls in a china shop, they trample, smash, bankrupt, and cause great suffering on behalf of their clients, saving the planet, etc.
Since clients—the victims— want to believe that they are in no way responsible for their suffering, real or imagined, do-gooders enable and perpetuate feelings of victimhood in order to empower themselves.
As the relationship between magician, do-gooders and clients is parasitic (enabler/enabled) it turns society upside-down in order to thrive. The upside-down society is the “total inversion of Reality” betty boop referred to.
In an upside-down society the covetous (envy-filled souls)are enabled to believe that they’ve been wrongly denied the property (i.e., status,wealth, success) of another. “Other” is evil-doer rather than the covetous ones.
The violence-filled soul is enabled to believe that the object of its’ hate deserves not only to be hated but likewise deserves whatever violence befalls the object.
The lazy, slovenly, and indolent (i.e. Occupiers) are applauded and financially and legally empowered rather than condemned.
Pathological liars are enabled to believe that their lies are ‘personal truth claims’ deserving of respect and consideration.
And of course “gays” are enabled to believe that state-and-school-sanctioned sodomy, bestiality, lesbianism, pedophillia, and pederasty really are valid expressions of ‘normal love.’
The magician is really just a more powerful mirror image of his self-deluded listeners hence he knows their darkest desires. He knows what they want to believe and his job consists in enabling and empowering self-delusion and fomenting disordered passions.
By which means Obama means to transform citizens into helpless, hapless victims of an overweening state....
His pitch to, and manipulation of, human weaknesses is hardly an appeal to "the better angels of our nature."
He is deliberately trying to destroy the "human capital" which created and sustains our strong and prosperous nation.... The entire culture of Liberty must be expunged in order for Obama to achieve his goals.
We can't call Obama the Father of Lies, because that title belongs to someone else already. But he is a chronic, pathological liar: Anything he says, believe the opposite. His rhetoric and the reality of what he is actually doing never match up.
Kinda reminds me of an old TV commercial for a perfume: "Promise her anything, but give her Arpège."
Thank you so very much, dear spirited, for your deeply insightful and illuminating essay/post!