, December 27, 2013
Pot, Meet Kettle
Let's try to avoid this kind of thing from now on/Rae K. Hauck
Self-awareness: it helps.
Sort-of-recently discussing the contemporary political scene with Politico’s Glenn Thrush, Obama administration macher John Podesta was sufficiently obtuse to warn that his boss faced “a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress.”
One question about those Jonestown cultists in the House of Representatives: Did they ever clear a stadium to give a speech before a backdrop of faked-up marble columns? This is what a political cult looks like, or this. Screaming, chanting, sobbing, howling with mindless love for Him, for The Sacred One: nothing compares to Obama worship.
A high priest in the cult of Barack Obama thinking that Republicans are a cult is like Montezuma blasting Spaniards as idolaters. If, in an alternative universe, Mitt Romney had been elected to the presidency twice, what magazine editor would have been credulous enough to use “The Second Coming” as a headline?
The collapse of the Obama cult is the best news of the decade, as the limits of poorly implemented policy have a few million willing fools waking up to discover that politicians are actually politicians. Once upon a time, an actual broadcast journalist thought Barack Obama was, quote, “The Messiah.” The problem with this breathtaking mindlessness was never the person taken to be the contemporary Christ; rather, it was the person doing the perceiving, the sad sack taking a political candidate to be Jesus. (It’ll be hard to ever take The View seriously after this, for sure.)
There was, a few years ago, a man named Barack Obama, an adjunct professor who sprinted through the state legislature and into the United States Senate on the wings of some sharp elbows, a sex scandal, and a decent speech. He spoke with something that approached real wisdom, and I liked his ideas a lot. His blunt dismissal of an individual health insurance mandate, for example, was pure gold. Then he became superhuman, Christlike, transcendent. Legs quivered. And holy shit has it all been downhill since then.
The cult transitioned seamlessly, shifting beliefs as easily as its figurehead: Senator Obama was brilliant for opposing Hillary Clinton’s horrible idea for an individual mandate, and President Obama is indescribably wonderful for promulgating an individual mandate. Mercifully, a few hardy souls were always immune to the mindlessness of Obama worship: Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald. They are not viewed warmly in certain precincts of what passes for the American left.
Today, the social and cultural movement that elevated Barack Obama to the status of a Christ is dead, cold, and safely buried. What a magnificent development. Maybe we can sustain a discussion about how government should work, and how it shouldn’t, and maybe that discussion won’t be burdened with movie star idolatry. Maybe now we can be less interested in this person and more interested in this person.
President Obama is no longer a Twilight heartthrob. We can shed this kind of blithering nonsense and get down to business. What a pleasure these next few grim years might be.