WHO IS THIS MAN?

Be prepared, storms a comin'.

from freeacre

Almost daily, articles are pushed into my face on sites like Jeff Rense or Steve Quale’s that announce that President Obama is a Christian, a Muslim, and just recently, a Jew – sometimes all on the same page!
“ … I suspect his mother’s father Stanley Dunham was Jewish,” Henry Makow writes from Save the Males. Obama’s mother Stanley Anne Dunham, certainly looked and acted like a communist Jew…” he opines.

And, on another site a writer decries the “fact” that the little girl who asked President Obama “why do people hate you?” was a “plant.” Like the six year old was supposed to have independently hopped on a bus and gotten herself to the town hall and into the room full of political wonks to ask a question. Since she arrived with her mother, an active Democrat, he refers to her as “the moonbat mommy with Julia and Comrade Obama.”

Obama is also (depending on which hysterical and polarized site one reads) a Kenyan or an Indonesian. I don’t know why they are making such a big deal about this. There is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, after all. The constitution rightly attempted to halt the disturbing habit of British Kings ruling by bloodline despite what country they were from. They were sick of their kings being Germans or French or Austrian or whatever. They wanted to insure that the President of our country hailed from this country. Obama’s mother was an American, and he was raised by his American grandparents, and has lived and worked for Americans all his life and his loyalties are here. I don’t give a rat’s ass where he was born. I’d like to have the president who was duly elected be allowed to serve, for once. Those “birthers” don’t seem to give a shit that McCain was born in Panama – and well they shouldn’t. It doesn’t fucking matter. If the Constitution is so important, start looking at the Patriot Act, not the stupid birth issue, for God’s sake. So, what else is going on here?

Some people say he is siding with the fascist takeover by the oligarchs (and, to tell the truth, I find that argument compelling), others think he’s a socialist as he attempts to provide universal health care. Others write that he is part of the global cabal of Illuminati overlords. It is said that he is nationalizing the banks. Conversely, he is accused of siding with the banks taking over the government. Others scream that he is a Godless communist, and ultimately - the Anti-Christ. Oh, yeah, and he’s bi-sexual to boot.

So, I have to ask: Does this seem really strange to you? Unless he is some sort of shape shifter from some cheesy science fiction movie, I am beginning to think that none of these sightings have anything to do with President Barack Obama. And, I have to admit, I am disturbed. Let me explain why:

Let’s go back to the bad old days. Sometimes you can sort of pinpoint a time in history when things began to go seriously awry. Like when Edward Bernaise began to apply his cousin, Sigmund Freud’s, ideas of the structure of the personality to sell products. He used his insights on what motivates people, their desires and their insecurities, and constructed a form of powerful manipulation that has morphed into what we now know as “Marketing.” Or, when a little known resentment-filled house painter got tossed into jail and used the time to write a creepy little book called “Mein Kompf,” - thereby mobilizing a bunch of his compatriots to rise up and feel good about themselves after they lost WWI by telling them that they, as Aryans, were the superior race and their destiny was to rule the world. Or, later, when an economics professor at the University of Chicago named Leo Strauss taught a group of overachievers including Dick Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld that the future of America was to advance the cause of global domination by a fiendish, but tidy, philosophy called “neo-conservativism.” Make up a story, he said, that the sheeple will follow. Never tell them the truth. Make them fearful and ignorant, and never lose site of the goal of power and control of global resources and military might to build a stable empire.

Which leads me to the slimy, but clever little maggot – Karl Rove. As a Young Republican, Karl Rove took up the neo-con standard and merged the money and power of the Republican military/Chamber of Commerce coalition with the energy and paranoia of the Fundamental Armageddonists. Beginning in the Nixon days and running through the first Bush administration, he really got going during the Clinton years. By that time he and his foam-at-the-mouth Christian Coalition minions waged an unrelenting character assassination campaign against Clinton over the heinous “crime” of getting a blow job, of all things. This is when the rest of the world began to suspect that the American people were going nuts. Meanwhile the neo-con agenda really was being advanced with the complicity of Clinton. It was during these years, after all, that NAFTA, CAFTA, and the World Bank began to export the manufacturing base of our land and the regulations on the banking industry were shit-canned with very little fanfare.

But, the Liberal contingent (including me) we so outraged by the outrageous demonizing of Bill Clinton that we began to absolutely hate all things Republican and were distracted from the financial agenda. So, when Bush II got elected, and then really DID do heinous things like bomb countries that had done nothing to us and torture and kill civilians and systematically dismantle the Bill of Rights, we criticized the asshat President with as much or more vitriol as the right-wing minions had used against Bill Clinton. For eight years we despised and insulted and struggled against each other in a no-holds-barred brawl of the “right” versus the “left.”

I would submit that one of the unintended consequences of this on-going national dog fight is what we have now: nobody believes anything that anyone says, nobody knows what is really going on, and the country is polarized beyond anyone’s imagination, leaving it totally dysfunctional. We have driven each other mad.

Enter Barack Obama. I suspect that he is a true centrist. I suspect that, due to his rich heritage of cultures, he is compelled to attempt to heal the divide - much like a child caught in the middle of two parents who are constantly at odds. I fear that he truly desires to be inclusive, to bring out the best in people of all sorts, and probably in denial of their flaws. I fear that he may actually be trusting people around him (even if they are corporate and financial psychopathic scum), and expecting that he can resolve our differences, much like his hero, Abraham Lincoln. And, let us not dwell upon what happened to Mr. Lincoln. It is too scary to me.
And, for his effort, I am afraid that everyone on every side is turning against Barack Obama, except those darn Norwegians. Maybe we’ll find a way to attack them next. Perhaps the next Republican administration will bomb their seed bank in retaliation for the Nobel Peace Prize. Karl Rove is probably working on the plans already.

It’s an old story and one that has been repeated in our lifetimes. Christ was nailed to the cross because he pissed off the Pharisees when he threw the money changers out of the temple. But he also angered his dispossessed followers when he refused to be their militant King. So, when the time came to be judged, nobody stood up for him.

Martin Luther King was assassinated after he over-stepped his role as a racial activist and attempted to enlarge his message to that of peace and freedom for all working people and spoke against the war.

Robert Kennedy, another cerebral, eloquent speaker who wanted to stop the war and work for social justice was shot and silenced.

Are you familiar with the term “racket feeling”? It’s a transactional analysis term that refers to a main bad feeling that people find themselves experiencing over and over due to decisions that they made when they were children. It is usually due to some sort of abuse or discount of themselves. It may be hurt or anger or humiliation, helplessness, rage, inadequacy, betrayal or a plethora of painful feelings. But, whatever one’s racket feelings are, a person often sets him or herself up to feel them one way or another. And, the kicker is that it is done out of their awareness. As Palooka’s Revenge would say, they are in “denial.” They don’t own the feeling. Instead, they project the bad parent or situation onto somebody or something else and then struggle against it and end up re-experiencing the racket feelings over and over.

Barack Obama, it seems to me, is the perfect foil for people’s projections. He is calm rather than emotional, thoughtful rather than reactionary. I don’t think any of us knows what the real deal is with him because we can not see beyond our own projected perceptions, and we have learned not to trust what any of our leaders say. That’s why he can be judged to be everything from the Messiah to the Anti-Christ, a Christian, Muslim, Jew, commie, fascist, corporate tool or bankster overlord. People can comfortably dwell in their favorite emotion of hate, outrage, fear, disappointment, confusion, or even devotion. Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?

Maybe he already has. And, maybe we are so blind and crazy that we can’t see him. Maybe he’s just a guy who is in an impossible situation and he’s trying to do the best he can against enormous odds. Maybe not. I am afraid that we will never know. I think that if I were in his position I’d tell us all to take the job and shove it far into where the sun don’t shine. But because he is part of a larger dynamic, I am afraid that he will be used as a reluctant player in our national game of Doom as we all declare war against each other. Because, we are doing the same thing on other issues as we are doing on Obama. It’s getting to be like the Tower of Babel – nobody understands anybody else on anything.

So, I ask myself, “How do I stop at least the part that I am playing in this insanity?”

I think that I need to identify what my racket feelings are. Personally, I know that mine involve helplessness and betrayal with a good dose of anger. I need to know what I come to the table with, for openers. And then, I need to learn to just stop and put them aside. Look with new eyes. Admit that I don’t know what is going on. Get sane.

Maybe it is time for forgiveness for all our shortcomings. Maybe it’s time to just try to make things better where I can, and attempt to cultivate a peaceful place inside of me. .. some natural place that was mine when I was born, but got lost somehow. And as far as the President goes, I wish him well – whomever or whatever he is. Maybe someday we will get to really know him. Let’s leave the mental door open to the possibility that maybe we and he can do better this time. After all, as John Conner says, “The future is not yet written.”

Birds in back yard, chicks have grown!