yustyoking

 

            I wouldn’t publicly air my views about another person’s life, but President Obama has made a fortune writing books— and he won the presidency— based on his “compelling personal narrative,” as his campaign staff calls it. He’s a public figure and he keeps bringing it up! That makes his life fair game for discussion.

            This is what my mom and I said to each other at the dinner table.

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            Kevin: “Fifteen years from now, I don’t think people are going to be flocking to America.”

            Mom: “You’re wrong! It will still be the Land of Opportunity. We are a democracy, and that means people can get ahead through intelligence, creative brilliance and hard work. We may no longer be the world leader, but talented people will still be attracted to the U.S.A.”

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           Kevin: “There’s a reason why the Occupy Movement is complaining about the 99% opposing the top 1%. Corporate America owns the Congress, the presidential candidates, the government. The doors of Washington are always open to corporate lobbyists!

           “ ‘Obamas’ 2011 tax returns show earnings of $790,000’ reads the page A3 headline in April 14, 2012’s The Washington Post. Guess where Obama fits into the battle between America’s top 1% and all the rest of us!”

            Mom: “America is a capitalist country. The entire system was established to produce and maintain a society conducive to private enterprise.

            “But the system has become badly skewed. Thanks to a conservative Supreme Court, super PACs can buy and run ads attacking candidates and we don’t even know who is behind the ad!

           “How can Obama, as a Democrat, bail out Wall Street and let the rest of the country suffer?”

            Kevin: “Obama is actually a corporate shill. He went to Harvard with corporate America. His law school buddies became lawyers representing corporate America. Obama is corporate America! That’s what the movie Inside Job is all about: The fact that Secretary of the Treasury Greenspan and Paulson and Geithner are all representatives of Wall Street, doing Wall Street’s bidding.

            “Obama bailed out the automobile industry, the banks and the brokerage houses— but not Lehman Brothers, they can go hang! Meanwhile— the un-FDR—  Obama lets Main Street suffer and disintegrate. Gee, I wonder where Obama’s true sympathies lie?

           “Forget party labels, the two presidential candidates are the exact opposites of their public images: Romney is actually a liberal while Obama is a conservative, corporate errand boy.

            “How does he get away with it? How can he promise us one thing and three years later, still not deliver? How can this president have even a shred of credibility? 99% of the people are disappointed in him!

            “Obama is a totally manipulative charmer. He gets that old, hypnotic voodoo from his daddy.

            “The first time I ever heard of Obama was at a New Year’s Eve party on December 31^st, 2007. Some neighbors had been to a local fundraiser for a presidential candidate named Barack Obama. Jack and Jill were all excited: ‘He talked to us. Each of our children was allowed to ask a question and he answered each in turn! He’s wonderful! You should vote for him!’

            “And in an atavistic throwback to tribal culture, people bow to Obama as their leader simply because he is very tall. Are the Obamas Luo? The Luo are tall. Michelle is so tall, she could be Maasai. She has a Maasai face, handsomely bony with high cheekbones.

           “Barack Obama shows people the Obama he thinks they want to see. That’s why he can talk like a white man up north, while in Chicago, he speaks with that classy, high-end Chicago accent that Oprah and the First Lady use. Yet, when Obama arrives in the South, he rails like a good ole colored boy.

            “In order to maintain his mental health, Obama has had to compartmentalize his feelings. Obama would become mentally unhinged if he tried to live out all the sides of his personality simultaneously. We are all selective in what positive aspects of ourselves we emphasize at any particular moment. There’s the Obama who can listen to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr. and fully agree with everything hateful the Reverend says. There’s the Obama who can go before a fundraiser consisting of white, Jewish people and convincingly declare his support for the issues they hold dear. There’s the Obama who calls himself a neutral broker, but feuds with Netanyahu and pushes the Palestinian cause. The Obama who tells Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, that he’ll be more ‘flexible’ after the election. There’s the Obama who sits in the White House, representing all Americans.

            “Sometimes the mask slips, like in 2008 after Obama received the Democratic nomination and Michelle Obama said ‘this is the first time in my life I’ve been proud to be an American.’

            “Barry Obama has every reason to hate America: America treats its blacks badly and Obama considers himself a black man.

            “Barry Obama went to elementary school among Muslims in Indonesia. He wouldn’t be normal if he didn’t harbor an abiding affection for the people he grew up with!

            “One of the disconnects of the Obama presidency is his utter lack of empathy toward his constituents. Black people are having problems? Too bad! The middle class is disappointed in the economy? Tough luck!

           “Barack Obama doesn’t really care about anyone except himself, his wife and his two daughters. It’s them against the world.

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            “Think what it was like when Barry Obama left Indonesia and arrived in America to live with his maternal grandparents. Sometimes Obama claims he lived those years in Kansas. Other times, he says it was Hawaii. Is this nitpicking? Hawaii or Kansas? Which is it? Every man’s Everyman, with Barack Obama, you never know the truth.

          “Whichever it is, there aren’t a whole lotta black people. So right from the start, he’s a minority of one. ‘Where’s your momma?’ his classmates ask. What’s he going to say? She’s somewhere in the Indian Ocean having sex with black men. What a cruel joke of nature that this hippie proponent of free love should die at an early age of ovarian cancer! ‘Where’s your daddy?’ ask his classmates. What’s Barry to say? His father is back in Kenya, drinking himself to death, living with one or more of his several wives.

            “A child of a mixed, polygamous marriage, a black boy in Hawaii or Kansas, a stranger, Obama probably got picked last for a neighborhood game of basketball. Extremely bright and gifted, he made up his mind to become so good at basketball, the other kids would pick him first when choosing team-mates. Obama decided to become so good in school, he would get top marks and scholarships to college.

          “Rather than spend life as an outsider, he became an over-achiever and the ultimate insider, attaining any top honor he aimed for. The first black editor of The Harvard Law Review.

           “You read his books, you see he made a fetish out of his voyage of personal discovery. Talk about ego, talk about ‘self-love,’ Obama thinks nobody is as exciting or complicated as he is! He is the ‘me generation’ up in lights.

          “That’s the history of Barry Obama.

          “But there are other Obamas. There’s Barack Obama, the schooled, erudite union organizer and politician. There’s Barack Hussein Obama, who travels to Cairo and speaks sympathetically to the Arab world. He also contributed to Revered Wright’s church year after year, despite the Reverend’s vitriolic feelings about America. 

          “We’re not talking about multiple personalities, because that implies having no control over one’s situation. We’re talking about sublimation, suppressing one side of oneself in favor of another to fit the moment.

           “You have to assume that Obama resents the fact that he has to hide his real self to get ahead. I would. You’d resent it. That’s why you get this frenetic need to love his fellow man. His inclination is the opposite. You get mistreated, you resent it. That’s why Oprah Winfrey has to shout so emphatically, “I LOVE TEACHERS! “ She’s compensating for the fact that she really doesn’t like them.

           “Poor Barry! We don’t love— and didn’t elect— Barry Obama. Him we never saw. We didn’t elect the real Obama, the one visible to Barack Obama in his bathroom mirror in the morning, because we’ve never met him either. I suspect Michelle has. We haven’t.

           “The tragedy is, Obama could get real and still have support, probably more support than he has at the moment. The guy is an American. His true feelings can’t be too different from the rest of us! He pays lip service to our common set of values and ideals— “

          Mom: “Be fair! Even with his own agenda, he’s some sort of American!”

           Kevin: “Okay! It bothers me that he ‘admits’ to having a smoking addiction, but no one ever sees a photo of the president smoking a cigarette. That shows a basic lack of candor, of honesty.

            “The Obama-haters complain about that very fact: They find him dishonest, unreal. A poseur, a snake oil salesman, a circus barker, a  b. s. artist. A drama queen who needs all the air in the room for hisself. A Chicago politician.

           “He’s a speechifier, capable of talking eloquently on any subject. He’s a great performer, but he has his limits. He’s no Shakespearean actor, capable of memorizing entire plays. No, Obama needs a teleprompter. Still, he can talk the birds out of the trees. He got the 2008 Democratic nomination because he so impressed the convention’s 30 ‘super delegates’ with his 2004 keynote address, these learned elder statesmen (!) dubbed him a superstar and awarded him the prize. Having fought hard and won more primaries and caucuses in key states, Hillary went into the convention with more delegates than Obama. Like love-struck schoolgirls, the Dem leadership ignored all that and went with the basketball hero. We’re witnessing politics played as a high school popularity contest. Who’s coolest, who’s in, who’s got it ?” 

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          Mom: “Our California cousins feel Obama is good for Israel. If he gets re-elected, I say, ‘Watch out!’”

           Kevin: “What they said was, ‘Forget what Obama says, look at what he does.’ They point out that the Obama administration has given one billion dollars a year to Israel in military aid, the last three years.”

            Mom: “I didn’t want to say anything, but they’re out in California. It’s not Obama who gave Israel that money, it’s Congress. Congress appropriates the money, Congress passes the bills. When the bill arrives on Obama’s desk to sign, he dare not refuse because then he won’t get the money to win re-election. Once re-elected, there’ll be no way to hold Obama responsible.

            “I can understand a self-hating Jew like David Axelrod— a J Streeter— working for Obama, but I’ve never understood how someone from an Israeli family like Rahm Emanuel could work for him.”

            Kevin: “I think Rahm saw himself as a gate-keeper and Obama’s guilty conscience, holding the president to his promise to behave right towards Israel. With Rahm gone from the White House, things don’t look promising for Israel if Obama gets a second term.

             “There’s a joke inherent in all this, you know. Once re-elected, come 2014, Obama will do a Nixon and gather his staff in the West Wing of the White House and say: ‘Congress passed the 22nd Amendment after FDR was elected president for the fourth time. That was then, but we don’t really need presidential term limits with a president who is as popular and desirable as me. Let’s float the notion in Congress that we ought to abolish presidential term limits! We’ll tell the American people, Look how much we’ve accomplished in these six years! Imagine how much more we can do, given another six! It’s a win-win situation!’”

            Mom: “Ha ha!

            “I don’t understand how Obama could cut appropriations for NASA and abandon the quest for the moon. Doesn’t he realize that America’s hope is intimately tied to space exploration?

            “Look at how many thousands of people flooded the Mall to say goodbye to a piece of metal!”

            Kevin: “The space shuttle Discovery, getting piggybacked atop a 747 jumbo jet…”

            Mom: “If it was a funeral cortège for a person, I could understand the outpouring of love and affection, but for a spacecraft…?

            “It was a dumb move politically to disband America’s quest for space, if people are so enamored of the program. Isn’t the audacity of hope to dream of inhabiting other worlds?”

            Kevin: “‘Space— the final frontier! These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise… Its’ five year mission, to investigate new worlds… and go where no man has gone before!’

            “Obviously, Obama didn’t grow up with Star Trek. He was born in 1961, in Hawaii, and lived in Indonesia. He seems to have missed the whole Star Trek experience. But, yeah, it does seem a dumb move to curtail NASA at this particular moment.”

           Mom: “Now we can only sit back and watch the Russians populate the moon.”

           Kevin: “Or the Chinese!”

           Mom: “The North Koreans sent up a rocket, but it fell apart…”

           Kevin: “Yeah, they need a couple of more years!

           “Why, when we’re supposed to be moving forward, do we always end up two steps back? Obama is doing the Michael Jackson Moonwalk! He faces forward, but his gliding steps propel us backward into the grip of economic ruin.”

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