 |
|
April 21, 2014
April 18, 2014
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
April 14, 2014
Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
April 11, 2014
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Silence is much more than golden
Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
April 9, 2014
Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
April 8, 2014
Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
April 4, 2014
Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
John Ericson: Older Women: Save Your Heart, Prevent Stroke Don't Drink Diet
John Ericson: Why 50 million Americans will still have spring allergies after taking meds
Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
April 2, 2014
Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
Frank Clayton: Get happy: 20 scientifically proven happiness activities
Susan Scutti: It's Genetic! Obesity and the 'Carb Breakdown' Gene
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Dec. 7, 2010
/ 30 Kislev, 5771
Elites Should Blame Selves, Not Obama, for Believing His Messianic Pretensions
By
David Limbaugh
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Have you noticed among the Obama-supporting elite a desperate agony upon realizing that he is not quite the messiah he made himself out to be and which they so willingly embraced?
Many leftists are disgusted with Obama for supposedly betraying the cause on a number of issues, which tells us how irredeemably liberal they are. But their sense of betrayal runs deeper than ideology.
It's not just their belief that he's abandoned them on numerous policy issues. It's also their belated discovery that he's not superman.
So we're witnessing a number of liberal and conservative elites scapegoating Obama for their own foolishness in deifying him. I say "scapegoating" because no one has a reasonable right to rely on another person's self-portrayal as messianic. If they bought into his claims to personal transcendence, then they are more culpable than he is, and their anger is transferred hostility, redirected from themselves to the now-exposed mortal.
The elites' investing of supernatural hope in Obama was a product of their worldview, which diminishes, perhaps even erases, God's role and looks to man for salvation. Their subsequent deflation was inevitable because no mere human being is transcendent.
My assessment gains further credibility when you consider that some of these former Obama disciples are still torn, not quite willing to let go just yet of their fantastical expectations -- their faith. So in their essays, we can detect both resentment and a sense of residual hope that Obama will return to his godlike state. At once they berate him for betraying them in his holding himself out as almost otherworldly and yet plea for him to return to this very same resplendent glory that they now ambivalently reject.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift reminisces about Obama's halcyon days -- his period as a consummate presidential campaigner -- when he would overcome each difficult challenge by rising to the occasion. "He came through the crucible each time because he realized he would otherwise lose." Clift observes that the left-wing MoveOn.org is running ads "calling on the president to 'be the president we fought to elect.'" She says, "The rest of us (non-Republicans) are craving the leadership we know he's capable of, and time is running out."
The New York Times' Frank Rich attributes "the baffling Obama presidency" to a form of Stockholm syndrome, whereby "the hostage will start concentrating on his captors' 'good side' and develop psychological characteristics to please them -- 'dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.'" "Obama," Rich argues, "has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think." Rich says that Obama is neither the naive centrist the left is making him out to be nor the socialist conservatives claim he is. "The real problem is that he's so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is."
Obama should have broken out of his Stockholm chains and stood "firm on what matters to him and to the country rather than forever attempting to turn non-argumentative reasonableness into its own virtuous reward."
Put aside Rich's distorted perspective in thinking that Republicans have been the aggressors in their relationship with Obama or that he has been conciliatory rather than the bully he's actually been. What's more noteworthy is his disgust with Obama for not being the super-liberal, super-aggressive, super-decisive, super-competent chief executive he and his ilk believed he would be. Rich seems to believe less than some others in Obama's potential redemption.
Michael Lerner writes that liberals "believe it is critical to get Obama to become the candidate whom most Americans believed they elected in 2008." He recommends a primary challenge from the left, which "would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate."
The New York Times' David Brooks, who has sometimes been mistaken for a conservative, begs Obama to make yet another speech (this time on tax reform) and to reclaim the greatness the Brooks "intellectuals" projected upon him. "If Obama moved vigorously on this sort of tax reform, starting at the State of the Union, he would vindicate my description of him, which would be nice." I suppose he means the one in which he lusted after the crease in Obama's pants.
These examples and many others show the pure folly in so many having invested so much in a man about whom we knew so little and what we did know was troubling.
The elites' uniform disenchantment with Obama says much more about them than it does him, namely that they are hopelessly lost in the intoxication of their intellectual elitism and the mire of their crippling worldview and that they didn't have a clue about Obama when they formed their little cult and still don't as they stumble upon, kicking and screaming, his abundant failings.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
| BUY DAVID'S LATEST BOOK … |
|
 at a 45% discount by clicking HERE. (Sales help fund JWR.). |
|
Archives
David Limbaugh, a columnist and attorney practicing in Cape
Girardeau, Mo. Comment by clicking here.
© 2010, Creators Syndicate
|
|
Columnists
Toons
Lifestyles
|
