Literary Criticism & Political Commentary

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Influences Driving Obama's Narrative: What's at Stake in the Civil War Between Democrats and Republicans in the 2010 Elections

Last month, Literary Gulag examined Carl Schmitt’s The Theory of the Political and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in order to provide an analytical basis on which to assess the Democratic Party’s strategy (http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/56). This month, Literary Gulag will examine underlying tenets of the Obama narrative based on Schmitt’s friend/enemy political dichotomy before considering how Alinsky has influenced Democratic Party strategy.

Literary Gulag contends that there is a Civil War underway between Liberals and Conservatives. What is in dispute are two fundamentally different views of America, each antithetical to the other. If the Democrats succeed in implementing the Obama progressive agenda with its Rawlsian “justice as fairness” doctrine that shifts resources away from competitive excellence toward social welfare, the result will be an impoverishment in the lives of Americans with the very real possibility that we will never recover culturally, economically, and socially. Literary Gulag will conclude with a prognosis regarding the upcoming November elections.

THE INFLUENCES DRIVING OBAMA’S NARRATIVE

The Post-American Presidency

For more than three generations following the end of the Vietnam War, America has eroded its institutions, its reliance on authority, its insistence on excellence, its advocacy of shared values, and its willingness to advance its interests abroad. Indeed, the very concept of “American exceptionalism,” which John Winthrop, who served as the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, portrayed majestically as “we shall be as a city upon a hill” and Alexis de Tocqueville subsequently characterized in Democracy in America (1835) as the following: “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one” (quotes cited in John R. Bolton’s, “Forward” to The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America written by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer, Threshold Editions, 2010, Kindle Edition, 47-57). Nevertheless, most Americans no longer understand or appreciate our extraordinary heritage. If there was any doubt about the devaluation of “American exceptionalism” consider the perspective of our 44^th president. On his first trip to Europe in 2009, Obama implicitly inaugurated the post-American presidency when he stated, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism” (Bolton, 57-70. See also my essay on “Barack Obama’s Postmodern Presidency and the Implications for Policy,” http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/39).

As Bolton noted, while other candidates for president may have shared this perspective, Obama is the first sitting president to express it publicly (70-83). This cultural relativism has already had a devastating impact on foreign policy as shown by the president’s submissiveness toward China, his treatment of terrorism as “law enforcement” rather than a response to war, his devaluation of “presidential command” in our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, his unwillingness to respond to nuclear threats by North Korea and Iran, and his sustained effort to reduce America’s “nuclear deterrent capabilities” (83-96).

Dinesh D’Souza concurs, noting, “The American dream has been very good for Obama, making his success possible. But it is not what he cares about; as we have seen, he explicitly rejects the idea that America is somehow unique” (The Roots of Obama’s Rage, Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2010, Kindle Edition, Chapter 1, 181-92). Obama’s worldview, D’Souza argues convincingly, is in defiance of our national interests and propelled by rage toward the colonial injustices that, he believed, destroyed his father. Indeed, the tragedy of the father became not only the inspiration of Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, but the driving motivation of his life. Consequently, Obama, as D’Souza notes, was driven less by the American Civil Rights Movement, to which he had no direct emotional connection having never experienced racial prejudice in America, than by a need to validate the dreams of his father and, by extension, himself.

Imagine a little boy growing up in the sunbathed beauty of Hawaii, soaking in the culture, hearing about how the innocent natives were crushed and overrun by horrible invaders and profiteers. Imagine a slightly older child on a bicycle on the crowded streets of Indonesia, learning from his stepfather the harsh code of a developing country, shaped out of the history of European colonialism. Now imagine a young man undertaking a journey to Kenya, for many people a journey to nowhere, but for him a journey to his own past, where through inner soul-searching and conversations with relatives he discovers who his father really was, and what he must do to make good on the dead man’s unfulfilled dreams. This is Barack Obama. But for him these aren’t imaginings; they are memories (D’Souza, Chapter 2, 344-55).

Or in Obama’s own words, “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself” (D’Souza, Chapter 2, 355-66, citing, Dreams from My Father, Three River Press, 2004, 220).

The foundations of Obama’s worldview were inculcated in America’s educational institutions where, D’Souza suggests, he almost certainly was exposed to post-colonial writings by Chinua Achebe, Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, and Edward Said, the last of whom Obama studied with at Columbia University (Chapter 1, 191-212; Chapter 3, 681-93). Indeed, D’Souza makes an intriguing argument that Frantz Fanon’s, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) would prove to be a canonical text for Obama. It would provide the basis for his reinvention of Fanon’s concept of “lactification”—a process by which colonized peoples seek the mask of “whiteness” in order to gain opportunities from their oppressors. In Obama’s case his mixed-race origins, his mulatto skin color, his education in elite American universities (Columbia and Harvard), his ability to transcend ghetto sensibilities in appealing to a broad cross section of ethnically diverse Americans provided the “lactification” necessary to elect him president. Applying Alinsky’s strategy of appearing moderate in order to win over the white middle class by mimicking their looks and behavior would not only enable Obama to become president but also provide him with the means by which he could advance his radical reforms. Thus would Obama be able to attract white, middle class voters who felt guilty about their affluence and proximity to power while also attracting African Americans who longed for the promise of economic gains as a consequence of electing the first African-American president (Chapter 7, 1913-57).

Just what are the tenets of anti-colonialism with their inimitable ties to Marxism and socialism? As summarized by D’Souza, they may be characterized as follows: first, colonial rulers achieve these conquests through murderous acts that are sustained by means of terror; second, colonial rulers systematically dehumanize indigenous populations; third, colonial rulers loot the wealth and resources of the country they occupy; fourth, neocolonialism, that last bastion of colonial domination, is personified by United States; and fifth, the only way to end neocolonial rule is by expelling America and embracing socialism, the countervailing influence to global capitalism (Chapter 2, 411-500).

Given the tenets of anti-colonialism with their emotional connotations for Obama as the root cause of his father’s humiliation and failure, the outcome, D’Souza argues, is a post-American president who does not have our interests at heart. Following the inclinations of his father who as an economist wanted to nationalize Western assets in Kenya (Chapter 4, 995-1029, Chapter 8, 2090-2135), Obama also sought to rectify post-colonial injustices. Consequently, in 2009 he approved two billion in loans and guarantees from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to assist Petrobas, a state-owned Brazilian company, in deep water offshore drilling near Rio de Janeiro. This accrued no financial benefit to the United States. Consider also that the Obama administration only recently lifted its ban on deepwater drilling in America in October of this year. However, his administration has imposed stringent new regulations for environmental and safety precautions that will make the process of obtaining permits for deepwater drilling in home waters both cumbersome and lengthy while, on the other hand, Brazil remains free from similar environmental stipulations (D’Souza, Chapter 8, 2090-2135, Peter Baker and John M. Broder, “White House Lifts Ban on Deepwater Drilling, The New York Times, October 12, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/us/13drill.html).

Nor was this post-colonial advocacy on behalf of “disenfranchised nations” an isolated incident. Present Obama supported the 2009 UN Summit “cap and trade” legislation that stipulated $100 billion be provided by Western industrialized nations to offset carbon limits by developing countries. Not surprisingly, the measure was never approved by Congress, despite the Democratic majority in both houses. In 2007, while serving as senator, Obama sponsored the Global Poverty Act that called for America spending over $800 billion to eliminate poverty and establish global environmental standards (D’Sousa, Chapter 8, 2191-2214). D’Souza regards these foreign policy initiatives as a demonstration of Obama’s intent “to transfer wealth from the colonizers to the colonized” (Chapter 8, 2124-35).

While most Americans support measures to ensure a cleaner environment both at home and abroad, the troubling question remains: How can this be achieved when developing nations disregard “green” policies in order to further their economic growth and America, meanwhile, finds herself struggling to remain economically competitive vis-à-vis the emergent countries while fighting a multi-front war against terrorism and endeavoring to recover from a recession that has brought suffering to the lives of many in the United States?

This challenge is compounded if we acknowledge that the agenda of our post-American president is more global than national. Obama’s worldview reflects the perspective and arguments made by Fareed Zakaria in The Post-American World (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). Zakaria suggests that while the United States is still a dominant power throughout the world, economic and political influence is, nevertheless, shifting away from America toward the powerhouse of developing nations (Chapter 1, “The Rise of the Rest,” Kindle Edition, 52-84). This argument is supported by an assessment at Goldman Sachs that forecasts by 2040 the developing economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico will outperform the most influential Western economies aligned in the G-7—France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States—(Chapter 2, 367-78. Since the publication of The Post-American World, the G-7 has expanded to encompass the G-20, which includes the powerhouse industrial nations, some influential developing countries, and the European Union).

Zakaria’s position is consistent with the argument made by economists Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong in The End of Influence (2010), which suggests that given the rise of key developing nations and the accumulation of American debt, our influence is on the wane (D’Souza, Chapter 8, 2446-62). What, then, may we infer from D’Souza’s argument? Obama’s post-colonial rage causes him to be more interested in remedying the inequities of the developing nations than protecting our national interests. Our post-American president is prepared to allocate our critical resources to aid and abet “disadvantaged” nations while pursuing actions that are likely to contribute to the loss of America’s economic and political hegemony, as well as potentially causing harm to our strategic allies.

It would be hard to overestimate the corrosive influence of post-colonial theory and post-modern values that formed Obama’s worldview (see my essays posted on Literary Gulag, “Academe, Theory, and our Cultural Demise,” http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/18 and my essay “Barack Obama’s Postmodern Presidency and the Implications for Policy,” http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/39). For those readers not residing on campuses since the late 1980s when these concepts became embedded in the academic conceptual firmware, the politics of post-colonial theory conjoined with the espousal of social justice and identity politics in virtually every department of the humanities in American and Western European universities, trumping the Western Canon (that tired, old bastion of “dead, white males”) in favor of the philosophical foundations of “Caucasian guilt” as enshrined in John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971). As I note in “The Great Books and Cultural Identity: The Rise and Fall of Western Memory and Its Implications for Our Time,” Rawls’s “justice as fairness” doctrine shifted the focus from “be fair” to “a sustained advocacy of remedial social justice.” (Consult my essay in Reading in 2010, edited by Michael F. Shaughnessy and published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. It is available as a free “read only” download by going to the publisher’s hyperlink, http://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=14560 and clicking below the PDF icon.)

Given that Obama obtained his law degree at Harvard University in 1991 where Rawlsian philosophy is enshrined, these principles conjoined with anti-colonial outrage and identity politics entrenched in the academe by the late 1980’s to annihilate academic scholarship in favor of progressive politics. The late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan has been attributed with this memorable quote: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” However, by the 1990s the wisdom of Moynihan’s idea had been turned on its head. Triumphant liberalism gave rise to social justice, post-colonial theory, and identity politics. They, in turn, annihilated our conservative heritage steeped in “American exceptionalism.” In its place was liberal doctrine: the feminized “self” devoid of all meaningful cultural referents, enraptured with perpetual childhood, drenched in narcissism, steeped in victimhood, and sensitized to all social and ethnic grievances save the death of her very soul.

CARL SCHMITT’S: THE THEORY OF THE POLITICAL AND ITS APPLICATION TO AMERICAN POLITICS

The Friend/Enemy Dichotomy With Respect to Liberals and Conservatives

The Obama/Liberal Worldview

The Post-American Presidency

■ “There is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one” (the quote is borrowed from Obama’s 2008 Berlin speech, http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/obamas-berlin-speech).

■ America is one of many influential nations that must work together for world peace.

■ World peace will be achieved by social consensus, not military might.

■ Resources should be shared (nations/peoples) to ensure equitable distribution.

■ Consensus [feminine] rather than competition [masculine] shall prevail.

■ There are sufficient resources for everyone to share.

■ The only losers will be bullies who seek more than their fare share.

■ Science and technology are of use only in so far as they benefit society. As such, science is a social construct. Mathematics is in service to the social agenda, not scientific truth.

■ Poverty is the outcome of the inequities of capitalism rather than personal failure.

■ Those opposing this worldview will be shunned. They will be removed from power. If they threaten to overthrow the progressive agenda, they will be silenced.

■ Competition and aggression will be penalized since it fosters winners and losers.

■ In this feminized world, the weak, the infirmed, the outcasts shall inherit the earth.

The Conservative Worldview

“American exceptionalism”

■ “Life is difficult and that the world is fundamentally dangerous” (the quote is borrowed from George Lakeoff’s analysis of the Liberal and Conservative worldview in his book Moral Politics, University of Chicago Press, 2002, 65, see my analysis, “Politics & Literature: Framing the Political Narrative for Victory in the 2008 Presidential Election,” http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/22).

■ The American vision must prevail even if this requires us to go to war.

■ Wealth and resources go to the winners. Losers suffer economically and socially.

■ Nations and people must assume personal responsibility. Resources are primarily allocated based on national security, corporate performance, and personal initiative.

■ Masculine values (competitive excellence) must prevail over feminized virtues (social justice).

■ Resources are limited. Winners must have greater access to scarce resources than losers since they have earned these rewards. This is the fairness doctrine (not social justice). This will determine whether America can remain globally competitive.

■ Science and technology are critical to remaining economically competitive. Space exploration (that male act of aggression and conquest) is a necessity, not a luxury.

■ The economic marketplace rewards and punishes.

■ Competition drives excellence.

■ Weakness begets weakness.

WHAT’S AT STAKE IN THESE COMPETING WORLDVIEWS

Since the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), the Democratic Party has had to ask itself a simple question: Are we the party of America or the party of the disenfranchised? If Carter took his election victory as a mandate upon which to build an entitlement nation, the victory by Reagan in 1980, as James C. Bennett suggested, reflected “The Great U-Turn” (National Review, October 4, 2010, “Vol. LXll, No. 18, 28-34). Indeed, what was remarkable about the Clinton administration—and much to the frustration of Republicans during his tenure—was the extent to which he reversed the course of the Democratic Party, building upon the lessons gleaned while serving as Governor of Arkansas (lean too far left and it will cost you the governorship) and by employing many of the successful tactics introduced by Ronald Reagan (personalize the presidency, create an aura of bonhomie, govern from the center even as you pursue your political agenda). So for those of us studying the resilience of the Republican Party in the age of democracy (see my Ph.D. thesis on the foundations of popular conservatism in Britain, http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9088), what was remarkable about Bill Clinton was that while empathetic to the woes of ordinary Americans, under his leadership the Democratic Party refused to entomb itself by embracing the politics of disenfranchisement.

No more. Not for nothing did National Review’s cover recently feature Jimmy Carter awash in the tints of Barack Obama’s “Hope” poster with the memorable title, “Hope 1.0.” (October 4, 2010) The message is clear. Obama’s efforts to extend social entitlement, his weakness in asserting American interests abroad, his embrace of the disenfranchised while neglecting to ignite the economic engine of prosperity would result in high unemployment, a ballooning deficit, and a stalled economy.

WHO ARE THE FRIENDS AND ENEMIES OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION?

In today’s poll-driven politics, the challenge in determining who is truly a friend or enemy is complicated by the fact that to win parties necessarily court independent voters who may or may not be fundamentally aligned with their interests. Because of Fox Network and the Tea Party, Obama has shelved or discontinued policies that would benefit his natural constituency.

FRIENDS OF THE OBMAMA ADMINISTRATION

The left-wing base of the Democratic Party who subscribe to social justice. This would include almost all African Americans, many multicultural Americans (in theory, based on voting patterns in the last election), illegal immigrants (although deportation efforts and a failure to provide an easy path to citizenship has corroded this alliance), Americans without health care, young adults (in theory, based on voting patterns in the last election, although given the persistent jobless rates this support could erode), academe, unions, unemployed, environmentalists, proponents of alternative energy, the gay community (in theory, based on voting patterns in the last election), Palestinians and most members of the Muslim community who seek to extend their influence, and Guantánamo detainees whose cases will be heard in federal court rather than in a military tribunal.

ENEMIES OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

Conservatives and Independents who reject a socialist oriented government. These would include Tea Party Supporters, the Christian Coalition, the Conservative media, particularly Fox News (especially O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity), as well as conservative publications including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, Americans who feel marginalized because of Obama’s policies, and most independents, along with some defecting Liberals, minorities, and young people, who are disappointed with the administration. Significant portions of the military, NASA, Wall Street, the big Health Care Providers, pharmaceutical companies, affluent Americans earning in excess of $250.000 who do not embrace progressive causes and higher taxation (although Obama has support among affluent progressive voters), entrepreneurial businesses, and, of course, Israel.

ALINSKY’S RULES FOR RADICALS AND HOW IT INTERSECTS WITH SCHMITT’S THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL

If we accept D’Souza’s argument that Obama is a very angry man whose primary motivation lies in fulfilling his father’s post-colonial dreams, then, following Schmitt, Obama is the enemy. He is demonized by conservatives because his agenda is antithetical to their interests. But it is more than that. From the conservative perspective, Obama’s worldview, if successful, will destroy America. His social and political agenda will annihilate an America based on “American exceptionalism,” personal initiative, and entrepreneurial drive. In its place will be a feminized European-style welfare state with post-colonial animus toward power and American initiative. Imagine a financially impoverished version of Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm with all the dysfunction attributed to the failed states of Africa.

The competing Democratic and Republican worldviews reflect a state of civil war occurring in America. If, at Schmitt noted, “War is armed combat between organized political entities; civil war is armed combat within an organized unit” (The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 32, see my essay posted on Literary Gulag, “What Do Carl Schmitt’s ‘The Concept of the Political’ and Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’ Reveal About the Obama Narrative,” http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/56). Nor would Alinsky disagree. For Rules for Radicals, following the political theory enumerated in The Concept of the Political, acknowledges the friend/enemy distinction and the need, where necessary, to kill the enemy (see my analysis in last month’s essay). But for Alinsky the enemy is within America, not situated in some distant land, although the tactics of political warfare remain essentially unchanged. Borrowing from Alinsky, Obama has redefined the enemy, also characterized as “the other,” to encompass individuals who embrace “American exceptionalism,” rugged individualism, entrepreneurial drive, and the pursuit of excellence. Conversely, Obama has characterized his friends as those people who are multicultural or who identify with cultural diversity, progressives, advocates of the welfare state, victims, and the marginalized (or those who, all evidence to the contrary, view themselves as disenfranchised), members of unions, and, of course, academics.

Schmitt explains why the friend/enemy distinction relies on demonizing “the other.” An enemy that is stripped of kinship—“one of us”—and rendered alien may with impunity be attacked.

The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. (The Concept of the Political, 27)

Given that Obama’s progressive mandate is antithetical to the conservative worldview he has been identified by conservatives as “the other.” He is the enemy from within whose worldview is “un-American.” How might such a characterization be made?

To begin with, Hawaii, where Obama spent most of his formative years, was only ratified as a state two years before he was born. It was multicultural and naturally receptive toward diversity. Because of Hawaii’s physical remoteness, its physical separation from the mainland, its newly minted statehood, it was resistant to nationalism and the lore of the founders. (D’Souza, 813-36). Indonesia, where Obama lived and attended school between the ages of six and ten, had only recently achieved independence from Dutch colonial rule. Indeed, Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, had lost his father and oldest brother in the struggle, their family home had been incinerated by the Dutch (1048-1092). So the colonial and post-colonial influences there were palpable. Even Obama’s calm, imperturbable disposition was, more than likely, a learned response mimicking Lolo (Dreams from My Father, 30-31), oceans apart from the open, expressive, and, at times, volatile American demeanor.

Yet beneath that studied aura of calm, what came to be characterized as the “No Drama” Obama, rage percolated. In March of 2009 Gordon Brown, then the Prime Minister of Britain, visited the White House. In a major breech of etiquette, Obama gave the British leader some DVDs that, adding insult to injury, were improperly formatted. By contrast, consider the thoughtfulness of Gordon Brown. He presented Obama with “an ornamental pen holder carved from the timbers of a British anti-slave ship from the 1880s” (D’Souza, 560-71). Nor was this lapse an isolated incident. When the Queen visited, Obama presented her with an iPod (560-71). These insults were much more than the misguided acts of a new president. Anyone familiar with academic sensibilities would immediately recognize these passive-aggressive actions for what they were—attempts to humiliate the Prime Minister and the Queen because of the British domination of colonial Kenya. Should the reader have any doubt, consider that Obama insisted upon returning to the British a bust of Winston Churchill prominently displayed in the Oval Office. Today that bust remains in Washington at the residence of the British ambassador. It helps to remember that in the 1950s Churchill was prime minister when the British quelled the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, home to Obama’s father (571-93).

Nor were these anti-colonial actions isolated. Obama refused to dine with French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy while staying just steps away at the residence of the U.S. ambassador. Though certainly a partisan gesture aimed at protesting the conservative politics of Sarkozy, it was arguably much more, yet another gesture of disdain for the European leaders whose countries had exercised colonial rule. But perhaps the most blatant anti-colonial gesture thus far was Obama’s deep bow to the king of Saudi Arabia (548-70). For most Americans this action, more than any other, demonstrated the “otherness” of Obama. What president steeped in our republican tradition bows deeply to a Muslim king whose government is, in so many respects, fundamentally antithetical to democratic principles? But to an anti-colonialist such an action might be celebrated as defiantly anti-American.

In one of the most bizarre moves of the Obama administration, NASA administrator Charles Bolden, in a program “Talk to Al Jazeera” aired on Al Jazeera television in June of this year, told audiences that one of the primary missions Obama had charged him with was reaching out to the Muslim world in order to “engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering . . . .” Had it not been for Fox News and the Los Angeles Times, Americans would not have discovered that NASA’s responsibilities were being downgraded from space exploration to a public relations gesture to make the Muslim world feel good about their contributions to science and engineering (Judson Berger, “Former NASA Director Says Muslim Outreach Push ‘Deeply Flawed’ Fox News, July 6, 2010, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/06/nasa-official-walks-claim-muslim-outreach-foremost-mission/. The actual video may be viewed at the Los Angeles Times, Top of the Ticket, Political Commentary from Andrew Malcolm, “If you watched Al Jazeera, you know Obama’s new mission for NASA: To help Muslim nations ‘feel good,’” July 8, 2010, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/07/nasa-muslim-world-charles-bolden.html).

Indeed, the Obama administration’s relations with Israel have been troubling to most Jewish Americans concerned about the future of Israel. Caroline B. Glick, writing for the Jewish World Review in March of this year entitled her article, “Why Obama is waging war on Israel” (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0310/glick031910.php3). In June, Morton A. Klein was equally blunt in his assessment published in The Jewish Press, aptly titled “Obama’s Hostility to Israel—Why the Surprise?” (http://www.thejewishpress.com/pageroute.do/43955) The issue of the Obama Administration’s relation to Israel has been sufficiently troubling to the Jewish community for Commentary Magazine to feature a symposium in June devoted to the issue, entitled, “Obama, Israel & American Jews: The Challenge” (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama--israel---american-jews--the-challenge-a-symposium-15449).

Foreign policy issues are not the only occasions when Americans have observed the “otherness” of Obama. Recall the incident when Obama was running for president he counted sixty, not fifty, states in America, noting that he had only campaigned in 57 of them (Top of the Ticket, Political Commentary from Andrew Malcolm, “Barack Obama wants to be president of these 57 United States,” May 9, 2008, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/barack-obama-wa.html). More recently, in response to Governor Jan Brewer’s immigration law, Obama stated erroneously, “Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith” (D’Souza, 671-81). Then, of course, there is Obama’s wavering stance on the Muslim Community Center to be build near the Ground Zero in New York City (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/14/obamas-support-ground-zero-mosque-draws/).

These and other initiatives help to explain why so many Americans have insisted, all evidence to the contrary, that Obama was not born in America. What they have surmised is that the president’s worldview is not American. His instincts are not American. His emotions are not American. Even when he speaks about civil rights, as he did in his Selma speech prior to the presidency, reinventing his father’s past to forge an imaginary link with the Kennedys (D’Souza, 802-13), Obama identified with the movement, as D’Souza noted, by “passing into blackness via a Third World route” (1183-94).

THE THEORY OF THE POLITICAL IN CONJUNCTION WITH RULES FOR RADICALS

However, to understand Obama’s motivations readers must understand the links between Schmitt’s The Theory of the Political and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (http://www.literarygulag.com/blog/show/56). If Obama’s accepts, as do many post-colonial theorists, that America (and by implication Israeli, who many see as a stand-in for America) represents the last colonial power (D’Souza, 429-41), then, the national interests of America are antithetical to Obama, the post-colonialist. That means that for Obama, America is the enemy. Its national interests are to be opposed. American exceptionalism is to be denied. Indeed, Fareed Zakaria’s argument presented in his book The Post-American World is for Obama something to be celebrated. Not surprisingly, Dwight Garner, in his online blog “Paper Cuts” for The New York Times, posted an article “What Obama Is Reading” that featured a photograph of the presidential candidate holding Zakaria’s book while visiting Bozeman, Montana in May, 2008 (http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/what-obama-is-reading/). Since every image of Obama is part of his scripted “narrative” to appeal to selective members of his constituency, the message is clear: Obama intends as president to become the global leader of the post-American world.

But it is Alinsky who provides Obama with the strategy by which our post-American president, will divest America of its greatness and influence throughout the world. Not for nothing did Rahm Emanuel, then the designated chief of staff, note to business executives in November of 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He added, “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before” (Gerald F. Seib, “In Crisis, Opportunity for Obama,” The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122721278056345271.html).

The financial crisis provides Obama with what Alinsky would characterize as the “reformation” to transition America from capitalism to socialism. First, the stimulus legislation, which would revitalize the welfare state. Then, the financial crisis provided Democrats an opportunity to pass health care legislation, which many hoped would be the backdoor route by which private insurance would be eliminated and a nationalized healthcare achieved (Rich Lowry, “On Health Care, Obama’s Dirty Secret: ObamaCare could unravel the entire private system very quickly,” National Review, June 26, 2009, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/227780/health-care-obamas-dirty-secret/rich-lowry). There followed the legislative reform of financial institutions and, finally, the promise of immigration reform.

Most Americans would support intervention by the government to prevent a national or global depression. Many welcomed the impetus for health care reform. Some see the need for financial regulation to ensure that our economy is not destabilized. Others long for a reasonable solution to the immigration issue. However, what if these “reforms” are not what they purport to be? What if their real intent is to provide the basis for lasting institutional changes that fundamentally transform the American experience? What if these policies represent a stealth or not so stealth effort to legislate an ever-lasting Democratic victory bolstered by demographic changes brought about through immigration reform? Indeed the ethnic demographic argument was made by Peter Brimelow and Edwin S. Rubinstein in a cover story for National Review back in June, 1997 entitled, “Electing a New People.” The essay opened with “Demography is destiny in American politics.” In 2001 both authors followed it up with “Swept Away,” an essay that appeared in the Hudson Institute’s American Outlook. It predicted a demographic shift in the 2008 election that would propel the Democrats to perpetual power (see Brimelow’s post on this subject, http://www.vdare.com/pb/swept_away.htm).

Indeed, last month President Obama assured Hispanics, a critical voting block, at a dinner for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute of his intention to legislate immigration reform: “I will not walk away from this fight. My commitment is getting this done as soon as we can.” Adding, “But don’t forget who is standing with you, and who is standing against you. Don’t ever believe that this election coming up doesn’t matter. . . . Don’t forget who your friends are” (Jeff Mason, “Obama: I’m not walking away from immigration reform,” editing Todd Eastham, Reuters, September 15, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68F06H20100916).

Then there is the so-called “Dream Act” that proposes military service and educational opportunity as a path to citizenship for young adults who came here as children without proper documentation and who are willing to enlist. As of last month a Republican filibuster in the Senate prevented its passage (“Dream Time,” editorial, The New York Times, September 19, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/opinion/20mon2.html and Ben Penn, “Dream Act Still a Dream of Obama,” Youth Today, October 12, 2010, http://www.youthtoday.org/view_article.cfm?article_id=4377.

But what if these and other so-called reforms introduced by our post-colonial leader of the post-American world result in an economically impoverished America no longer capable of competing in the global marketplace?

Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is important because it proposed the operative strategy by which Obama can achieve the reformation on route to the radical implementation of his “Brave New World.” To accomplish this change, as Alinsky noted, the leader implementing these changes must appear “passive, affirmative, non-challenging” (Vintage Books, 1989, xix). The leader must be resilient and adapt the strategies to accommodate the ever changing circumstances of political warfare. For as Alinsky notes, “the free-society organizer is loose, resilient, fluid, and on the move in a society which is itself in a state of constant change” (11).

In a sense the Democratic Party has been looking for a leader to accomplish this goal since the 1960s. Since the 1980s it has been searching for a black leader who could convey the promise of a multicultural America as a basis to win the hearts and minds of progressive America. To accomplish this, D’Souza suggests, requires an African American not of the Jesse Jackson stripe or the Al Sharpton variety, but one that would attract Liberals who harbored “an immense fund of white racist shame that had given rise to an equally large fund of white racial guilt” (Chapter 1, 69-80, Chapter 7, 1935-68). The African-American President must not appear to be angry. He must not appear to be motivated by racial animosity. He must not appear to advocate interests that are detrimental to America.

The point here is not to rally animosity toward an African-American president. The purpose is to suggest that leadership in service of American interests should be color-blind. Just because an American President is African American, charming, handsome, articulate, and engaging does not qualify him as the leader best able to further American interests. Indeed, had Barack Obama not been African American, it is doubtful, given his lack of experience, that he ever would have been selected by the Democratic Party to run for president.

What is being argued here is that Americans must remove the mask of the carefully constructed persona of our president and ask the following: “What is motivating the policies of Obama?” If neo-colonial rage toward America and its hegemonic influence is the driving force behind Obama’s policies, then he must be opposed. If President Obama’s mandate for social justice interferes with our global interests and is actively hostile toward entrepreneurial, scientific, and business opportunities, then, he must be defeated.

Literary Gulag does not question the moral conviction of our president. Certainly, President Obama believes his intentions are noble. But ultimately the question is whether his worldview is beneficial or harmful to the long-term interests of America. Sadly, the conclusion is inescapable: President Obama harbors America ill will. He must be opposed. He must be defeated. America’s future depends upon it.

PROGNOSIS OF THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS

Literary Gulag forecasts that on November 2^nd Republicans will gain control of the House, have a long shot at winning the Senate, and return a majority of Republican Governors.

As of now Dick Morris, Republican strategist, pollster, and conservative analyst, suggests “Republicans lead in 53 House seats now held by Democrats and are within five points in 20 more, the margins are very thin.” For this reason, he concludes, voter turnout is critical (“Outcome Relies on Turnout,” October 12, 2010, http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/123939-outcome-relies-on-turnout ). Nevertheless, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have boldly predicted that not only will Republicans win both Houses but that the Democratic defeat could be their biggest midterm defeat in 110 years, possibly surpassing the 1922 Republican gain of 74 seats (“Republicans Will Winn Both House and Senate, Newsmax, September 30, 2010, http://newsmax.com/Morris/housesenatenancypelosi/2010/09/30/id/372050).

Literary Gulag urges Americans to vote on November 2^nd. Our future is in your hands.

- Diana Sheets

DIANA SHEETS