A Brief Insight into Obamas Mind

So we all rejoiced on November 4 [2008]. It was the proper thing to do.

To act otherwise would have meant concurring with such hollow mendacity,
such infatilization of the people, as to seem both preposterous and inconceivable in
retrospect. Palin ex machina was the swans song of the Republican ideal and a
pretty lame one to boot. Good riddance to her and her McMentor.
So we rejoiced. Spontaneously. Reverently. For one night and one day.
Then reality came shattering in. The One-In-Whom-We-Rejoiced made a
really, really ominous first move when he named Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff.
The Japanese say that If the father is a frog, the son will be a frog and rightwingers made a legitimate fuss over the fact that Emanuels father does not seem to
have the best possible credentials, terrorism-wise that is. It is true that this particular
baby-frog did not disavow papa-frogs proud statement to the Maaritz newspaper
that his polliwog was not meant to clean the floors of the White House and would
certainly influence the President to be pro-Israel (which for birds of his feather
means a never-never land of plenty amidst ever-growing scarcity). But although
common and scholarly sense dictate that we should not hold this against him, DNA
and the Japanese notwithstanding, his numerous other lurid traits, well described by
the alternate media, are more than ghoulish enough.
Two days later, the One-In-Whom-We-Rejoiced made his second move, an
infamous economic meeting in Chicago on not-so-good Friday, November 7. A
meeting that might have heralded truly novel and benign policies but from which
were conspicuously absent all non-mainstream voices that might have spelled them
out not one union or community leader, no socialists, no greens, just one token
brown, no Ron Paul for some token bipartisanship. Youd think that at least one or
two dissenting Nobel laureates (Stiglitz, Krugman) might chip in. But no. Nada.
Only former Treasury and Federal Reserve officials and assorted chairpeople of the
board. Oh, yes, and also the richest man in the world by speakerphone
The iconic ironic-if-it-were-not-tragic situation How can this most insincere,
pat-Bush-on-the-back sort of man sound so sincere and so sincerely inspire so much

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hope among so many? Are America and the world bound to be duped? Are we all
doomed to be bound?
As the Empire burned, I fiddled around with this quandary until it finally hit
me: Obama has achieved the consummate personality reversal, the quintessential
evagination of the psyche, the ultimate inversion of person and persona. He is a man
totally made from the outside in.
Throughout millennia, the public figure the persona of every noteworthy
zoon politikon always derived from his/her person. That is to say, no matter how
treacherous or beatific they might be, the point of departure of politicians
everywhere has always been their inner mindset. Its the same for all of us. For
better or worse, strongly or feebly, sincerely or hypocritically, our public role
emerges from our self.
Obamas starting point is quite the opposite. He gives every impression of
being what he believes he needs to be. His personality, instead of arising from a
nature+nurture combination of what he is or aspires to be, emerges from a quasiclinical ongoing assessment of what he has to be. The actual mind within him, his
soul, seems to have deliquesced and turned into a hazy amalgam of non-ideological
wordplay wordplay rational enough to be coherent but unable to counter the
ultimate emptiness of his political discourse.
This ass-backwardness can be clearly seen in the case of stem cell research,
reportedly one of the first areas Obama intends to meddle with. This is a
philosophically charged field, one to which most of us have a gut reaction, pro or
con. The public position of sound-minded people cannot but be an expression of our
intimate beliefs. To be sure, politicians are the most self-serving creatures and most
of their intimate beliefs soon go down the drain; Obamas mind might not be prone
to such expediency, but does seems to work in reverse; first and foremost, his
political persona favors stem cell research; only then does it trickle down and
impregnate his rational soul, his nous. He seems to advocate stem cell research
because his public persona favors it as if he couldnt care less and would easily
uphold the opposite if his persona dictated.

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In this sense, then, Obama is a man for whom soul-searching is impossible,

inasmuch as he lacks a true soul: his beliefs are a construct that postdates his
behavior or, perhaps, his ambition.
However strenuously he strives to have a positive persona, it is a dangerous
and precarious state of mind, for it does not make for any deep-rooted notion of right
and wrong (and thus, ultimately, of what works and what doesnt). One can only
speculate on and shudder how his actual person, his inner self, his deep psyche
will react to something foreign to his persona unforeseeable crises, for instance, or
overwhelming pressure, or otherwordly love.
It is said we should always propose a solution when pointing out a problem.
Unfortunately, I see none. For even if Obama were to make a deeply-felt about-face
and attempt to become a true liberator and free his people us from whoever the
hell is calling the shots in this planet (if anyone), the forces now set in motion are
too powerful to be stopped.
This line of reasoning inevitably leads to even more serious matters. But you
really wanna know the truth? Call me a conspiracy buff or a buffoon if you wish, I
believe master prestidigitator Dov Zakheim whose legerdemain made trillions of
dollars (and perhaps a trio of Lower Manhattan buildings) disappear into thin air
has struck again. Or at least his cohorts have.
I am still myself, but who are they?
Im just kidding, of course. But are they?
No, of course not. The war mongers are spawning again. [2016 note]

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