PrintJanuary 9, 2008
Obama and the Childish Left
What adult would vote for a totally untested presidential candidate by falling in love? Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Senator Joe Biden, and a million other Democrats -- that's who. The New York Times stable of Leftie pundits is reliving the Decade of Love. The Washington press corps has the teenie bopper hots over Barack Obama -- such a romantic name. A real African! Almost.
What does he believe? What has he actually done? Uhmmmm... Well...
It's Son of Camelot! And he's got the youth vote! Children just know these things!
This is straight out of Dumb and Dumber. If you despaired about the media's endless love affair with Bill Clinton, the Master of Slick, because he Cares About You, you'll get to revisit those feelings now. For we have a new national idol!
The Good Parent
Children often have fantasies about a Good Parent -- one who loves you and takes care of you forever and ever, who forgives your transgressions whatever they may be, who demands nothing, and never, ever hurts your feelings. Obama is now the Good Parent of the childish Left -- a good majority of the Dems, it would seem.
Children often have fantasies about a Good Parent -- one who loves you and takes care of you forever and ever, who forgives your transgressions whatever they may be, who demands nothing, and never, ever hurts your feelings. Obama is now the Good Parent of the childish Left -- a good majority of the Dems, it would seem.
In a child's mind the Good Parent is often played against a complementary fantasy, the Bad Parent -- call them Republicans in this case. The Bad Parent stands for the sterner aspects of reality. Since Leftism is basically an infantile protest against adulthood, Republicans represent what Sigmund Freud called the Reality Principle.
Reality is the part of the world we all need to come to terms with in order to earn a living, to deal with losses in our lives, and still be productive and moral adults. Interestingly, most of the GOP candidates look like adults with real records of accomplishment. But then GOP voters are also more adult.
The childish Left constantly needs someone to adore -- FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton before the Fall. Even Hillary during her New York senatorial run. But Hillary looks visibly older today, and the Good Parent can't be allowed to age. That shakes the foundations of a child's perfect world. So all that need for love has to be transferred to a younger Good Parent. It's like the new trophy wife of the aging executive. The Good Parent must be immortal.
Enter Obama. We still know almost nothing about him. But that's the point. The less you know the better you feel, because Obama is a projective figure, a human Rorshach test. The Dems don't want to know any sobering facts. They don't want to know, for example, his relationship with the Chicago Democrat machine. They don't want to know that he voted against saving the lives of infants who survive a botched abortion. They don't want to see his minimal competence in foreign affairs. This is just a mass craving for a Good Parent. You don't vet and check out your Good Parents to see if they qualify. You might do that for a new baby sitter, but never a Good Parent. You are just born into that endless cloud of love.
Hillary's fall from grace has been amazingly quick, because the Dems -- the Party of the Needy, those who Crave to be Cared For, the Emotional Victims -- they have all found a new fuzzy toy to cling to. Hillary Clinton is now yesterday's toy, lying discarded on the floor. And she knows it.
This is the candidate as Rock Idol. It is purely instinctive. The thinking part of the brain has nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, the United States still needs a real adult to lead it through the next four or eight years.
The nation is at war -- though the infantile half of our population lives in denial. Benazir Bhutto was just assassinated in Pakistan, where the throw-back jihadists are eagerly looking for dirty bombs or worse. Ahmadi-Nejad just challenged the US Navy in the Strait of Hormuz with five suicide boats. Forty percent of the world's oil goes through the bottleneck of the strait. Europe is in decline. The United Nations is hopelessly sleazy and corrupt. Almost twenty years of jihadist genocide in the Sudan continues today, with African victims galore. Kenya just exploded in an orgy of violence. Vladimir Putin is running a KGB state in Russia, threatening oil and gas cutoffs to our feckless allies in Europe. And President Bush is making a Hail Mary pass in the Middle East, hoping to make some progress by traveling there. The terrorists have promised to try to assassinate him, too.
The media aren't interested. They're back in the Kennedy days, swaddled in the warm blankets of their second childhood.
Boy, do we need the grownups today.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
