Obamandias

What’s the truth of what’s happening? The epiphany of Obamamessiah, the semi-divine love object of 80,000 transported souls filling the stadium? Or a vacant fantasy, a vain, empty mummery, the hollow pretentiousness of which is already making it collapse from within?

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Obamandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Sent by John O., apres Shelley’s “Ozymandias”)

* * *

The after-effect?

It’s like any other Obama speech. It’s flashy, and effective, he has great delivery and looks good (that was a great tie), his family looked nice (Michelle wore a much more becoming dress than on Monday night), he looks like a winner, like someone with special qualities and confidence, you can see him becoming president (however that makes you feel), but afterwards … nothing remains. It was a hollow entertainment—not even satisfying as entertainment.

What is Obama about? He doesn’t seem to be about black liberation theology, or leftism, or redistributionism, or any of that stuff. He just seems to be about the presentation of himself. His message is—himself. He is the One we’ve been waiting for. But since his self doesn’t point to anything beyond itself, his message is a nullity.

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes to the Corner:

It is with great humility that I accept this nomination at a temple in front of 80,000 with fireworks blasting overhead.

August 29

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

I agree that Obama looked quite dignified yesterday. He didn’t have that strange pattern where he pauses in unlikely places losing the rhythm of his speech. And he did have a certain gravitas and passion which was presidential. I actually wasn’t listening, only watching for visual cues.

One thing I noticed was his final waves as he left the stage. He looked like a little boy unable to leave the fair—to return to the reality of a mundane life. He kept looking back, with short waves, until he was off. That stage is really becoming his life.

But, I’m not saying that Obama is a Hitler. But he is Hitler-like in the way that he has amassed huge numbers of adulating followers based on a psychic click, and had prominent leaders backing him. Hitler was also pretty much a nonentity, with only one book behind him, and nothing substantial in his records. [LA replies: Hitler wasn’t just the author of a book. After he came out of prison in the mid 1920s, in the next eight or so years before he became chancellor, he built an party organization that was in effect a state in waiting, with its own military, with all kinds of subsidiary organizations including the Hitler Youth, with significant support from Germany’s industrialists and the military. By the time he became leader of Germany he was ready to be the extremely effective leader and dictator he became.] The huge (80,000) crowd was a mild version to what Hitler was able to rally up. And intelligent people were dismissing Hitler for what they perceived as his mediocrity right up until they were forced to leave the country (and even then from afar).

Still, all I kept thinking was that it is an amazing achievement that the life that Obama has crafted -as Charles Krauthammer writes—has ended up on this stage.

Kidist writes:

I do agree with your points. But I did say that Obama wasn’t Hitler, but Hitler-like. I think he was just too impatient. What he did so far, amassing an adulating audience, and, as his campaign shows, very bright people who will do his bidding, was a start. He went for the gold too soon. [LA replies: Hitler was 43 when he took power in Germany, but again, he had spent the previous ten years as the leader of a movement aimed at taking power in Germany.] Hitler also depended on smart people around him, and had those strange mesmerizing (to some) oratory skills, although I will say he was probably smarter than Obama and more “evil” if one can call Obama evil. But either through design or through circumstance, Hitler built his “credentials” up before presenting himself as the country’s leader.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 28, 2008 10:34 PM | Send