As They Go Marching

In commenting on an incisive and disturbing article by Benjamin Plotinsky, the mighty Ace of Spades reflects as follows:

Plotinsky's piece does a good enough job of presenting the evidence that Obamaism is essentially a religious/mystical movement (as were Fascism, Naziism, and Lennism/Stalinism, though he explicitly disclaims any attempt to claim that Obama has the twisted ambitions of those regimes).

But I have a question: Why? Or, more specifically: Why now?...

Was it just that Obama was especially well-positioned to play the Cult Card, being handsome and young and a member of a persecuted race? (That latter credential being especially resonant in religion and myth -- Redeemers tend to come from persecuted groups, not the class in current power.)

Or perhaps it's merely that he was the only politician in recent memory narcissistic and cynical enough to play the Cult Card?

Could it be played again?...

I don't know.

All I know is that I find it troubling and ominous when the people who keep telling me they're strict rationalists and empiricists begin chanting prayers to strange new gods.

Ominous? Yes. Nevertheless, it emerges from a deep, seemingly ineradicable aspect of human nature that a great many of us are unable to master: the desire, sometimes approaching an actual, painful need, for a leader.

No one, regardless of anything he might say to the contrary, has perfect confidence in his own percipience, knowledge, or abilities. Yet we are inclined to take the representation of perfect confidence for the Real Thing. In the face of such, the less courageous and more risk-averse among us will tend to march behind an imagined messiah. Inasmuch as there has been only one real Messiah, who was born, preached, died, was resurrected, and shortly thereafter ascended into heaven some two millennia ago, all others to whom such a title might be imputed are phonies: Jim Joneses who would rather give their followers to mass death or slavery rather than admit to ordinary human fallibility.

Barack Hussein Obama fits that pattern. Note how he's absolutely unwilling ever to admit to an error. Note his definition of sin: "Being out of alignment with my values." Note, in his announcements of his course to come, his repeated use of "It's the right thing to do," his unconcealed disdain for those who differ, and his refusal ever to allow that what he has resolved upon might not be exactly that.

Yet this boy-man pretend-president, who has never held a private-sector job, who has never in his life known actual danger or hardship, and who has never before had responsibilities to which others could hold him accountable, is the political world's most reluctant decision maker. It's the most glaring imaginable refutation of his pose of perfect confidence -- consider the many accounts of Obama's extended dithering when faced with important choices, such as the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, or the fatally delayed attempt to rescue the late James Foley -- and one which our former and supposedly present allies cannot have failed to detect.

Those who march behind Obama aren't merely an example of Eric Hoffer's "true believers;" they're the archetype thereof. To follow him as blindly as they do, they've had to accept deceptions -- including self-conceived, self-imposed deceptions, of which you can find any number of examples in the fatuous emissions of Main Stream Media pundits -- that wouldn't have passed muster with an intelligent ten-year-old.

No religion in the history of the world has demanded more uncritical faith and unthinking loyalty from its allegiants than the cult of Barack Hussein Obama demands from its followers...yet they give it willingly. They do so in the face of one policy catastrophe after another because they, too, refuse to admit to error. Any admission of error would destroy their assumption of intellectual and moral superiority to the rest of us, on which all their other beliefs and political positions are founded.

However, there might be a couple of cracks in the church walls. The recent New York Times op-ed admitting that so-called assault weapons are not an intolerable public danger is a straw in the wind. One or two leftist commentators have recently expressed displeasure with Obama and Obamunist policies for the first time since The Won ascended to the Oval Office. And of course we have the unwillingness of foreign potentates to sign on to a military campaign of which Obama would insist on being the "leader."

I wrote, some time ago and in another context, that being a "joiner" is hazardous to one's health. Oftentimes, "joiners" are hazardous to others' health -- yours and mine -- as well. Regard the "joiners" of whom I speak in the above, and shudder.