PrintJuly 28, 2008
Deconstructing Obama
Deconstruction, I'm told, is still all the rage on college campuses throughout the Land. Part of the broader movement of postmodernism which has attempted to tear down the old certainties upon which Western Culture is founded.
The academics' pet theory of the past 30 years has touched numerous facets of our society. These thorny deconstructionists have managed to convince many an American college student to sacrifice his God-given common sense and Judeo/Christian values on the altar of presumed white male privilege, from which these students are admonished they now must actively disengage. After all, say the deconstructionists and their postmodernist, post-colonialist allies, every single good in Western civilization has been irrevocably tainted by the despicable, ill-gotten-gain methods of those nasty, imperialist, white, male, chauvinist-pig founders, warriors, inventors, builders, landowners, writers, jurists et al. How dare we, as modern day white Westerners, reap the ill-gotten benefits of such a despicable, greedy, imperialistic lot.
The academics' pet theory of the past 30 years has touched numerous facets of our society. These thorny deconstructionists have managed to convince many an American college student to sacrifice his God-given common sense and Judeo/Christian values on the altar of presumed white male privilege, from which these students are admonished they now must actively disengage. After all, say the deconstructionists and their postmodernist, post-colonialist allies, every single good in Western civilization has been irrevocably tainted by the despicable, ill-gotten-gain methods of those nasty, imperialist, white, male, chauvinist-pig founders, warriors, inventors, builders, landowners, writers, jurists et al. How dare we, as modern day white Westerners, reap the ill-gotten benefits of such a despicable, greedy, imperialistic lot.
Deconstructionists have attempted to remake society around a new set of power relations. In their philosophical re-do, they imperiously take the advantage away from white males and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel to all non-white males and females of all varieties. And presto-change-o the world is still unfair, but it is unfair in a different direction. A more "fair" form of unfairness, or so say the deconstructionists.
Sadly, we have all seen the results of deconstructionist machinations in our schools, our workplaces, our literature, our legal system and just about every other place one dares to look. Why, the deconstructionists have deconstructed just about everything Western, save the old kitchen sink. In some spheres, the results of this attempt at re-ordering our society is called "affirmative action." In others, it's called a "quota system." Then there is the omnipresent "sensitivity training," what communists blithely refer to as "reeducation camp."
Unfortunately, we now must assume, after 30 years of this theory's preeminence, that those of us who do not ascribe to deconstructionist tenets, must actually deconstruct much of what we used to be able to take for granted.
University degrees are no longer objectively standardized, bona fide credentials; they are subjective instruments that could mean just about anything. Job titles are no longer a guarantee of accomplishment; they could just as easily be token positions. And on and on and on this list could go, but there isn't time here.
Perhaps nowhere outside academia itself have the deconstructionists had more powerful sway than within the once-august body that calls itself the Democratic Party. I have, myself, for years now refused to bestow the adjective, democratic, upon the Democrat Party. It has been so thoroughly infiltrated since the early 70s by leftist deconstructionists that it has become a thoroughly undemocratic institution, giving heaps of advantage to everyone other than white males, and has thusly reduced itself to a committee dictatorially run by a rainbow proletariat. The dictatorship of the minorities. How democratic is that?
Because the deconstructionists have thoroughly taken over the Democratic Party in America, it is now incumbent upon us, the citizenry, to deconstruct the candidate they are promoting for President, the not-even-through-his-first-term Senator, Barack Obama.
Deconstructing the Democratic Party Brand
Sadly, we can no longer assume that anyone promoted by the Democratic Party has been properly vetted for disqualifying scandalous behavior, or even on the most fundamental level of actually possessing barely minimal qualifications for public office.
As many have noted during this protracted Democrat primary race, the rules for nominating a Presidential candidate under this Party's label are mystifying in their complexity. Prior to 1968, the Democrats used, by and large, the same winner-take-all formula for primaries that the Republican Party still uses.
This formula is not unlike the wisdom of our Electoral College, which ingeniously allows for majority votes to count by localities and states. It's simple, uncomplicated, clean-cut. Under this old, tried-and-true system the majority rules and life goes on without a whole heap of fuss, which has allowed this Republic of ours to transfer power without bloodshed, uninterrupted for going on three centuries.
Of course, as anyone with a lick of political, historical knowledge already knows, the Democratic Party's system had for the last few decades taken a low-road, backroom approach to party politics that favored insiders and machine bosses over the will of ordinary voters. Their system was already primed for the comeuppance it got in 1968.
The Democratic National Convention of 1968 was a quite raucous and bloody affair, with mobs of young leftist agitators rioting in the streets of Chicago, demanding their way. These home-grown Marxist revolutionaries, many of whom went on to become domestic terrorists and bombers and universal nihilists of all variety, didn't get their way that year. But they did make enough of a dent in the bastions of Democratic Party authority to rewrite the nominating rules around what they considered more egalitarian principles. What resulted from the radical changes to the nominating process is the convoluted mess that formed the basis for this year's slugfest between two affirmative-action candidates.
To be sure, a great many journalists have already tiptoed through this affirmative-action mine field upon which I am about to brazenly march, but so far their dainty ruminations have had scanty effect upon polling numbers.
Actually, that may be a bit understated, since it seems nearly miraculous that the Republican candidate, John McCain, is within shouting distance of the Democrat after a full eight years of leftist press bombardment aimed at the Republican brand, effectively polarizing a sitting Republican President. I personally believe McCain's strong showing so far is owed not to racism, as has been suggested, but due to the obvious affirmative-action nature of the Democrats' candidate, Barack Obama.
The truth is that neither of the Democrat front-runners for the nomination this year would have ever been considered for the highest office in the Land had they not received the benefit of 30 years' worth of postmodernist/deconstructionist machinations that gave them undue advantage owing to their presumed mantle of past grievances on account of race and gender.
One woman who unabashedly leapfrogged her way into the Senate on the back of a still-sitting President, her husband. And the other frontrunner, Obama, has absolutely nothing on his resume but stints in academia, political organizing, a do-nothing state senate gig, and the office of a Senator, which he has shamefully used as nothing more than a launch pad for his audacious attempted catapult into the White House.
By offering us two nominees and a presumed candidate whose demographic background outweighs considerations of experience and merit, the Democratic Party is undermining, deconstructing really, its own brand, traditionally built on the pose of championing the little guy.
Deconstructing Obama
We, the citizenry, are being asked at this juncture to literally turn our time-tested demand for a presidential resume check completely on its ear. We are asked to give advantages to Barack Obama on account of his racial mix that we would never give to a white male, and as some have surmised even to a white female, in the same position.
We are being asked to deconstruct the most powerful political position in the world.
One of the pet "methods" of deconstruction, I'm told, is the critique of binary oppositions. It's proposed by deconstructionists that there are classic dualities in Western thought, which give privileged position to one term over the other, the favored position always going to the meaning most associated with the phallus. Puh-lease.
But, okay, let's play along. A few of the most oft noted binary oppositions in Western thought are: fullness over emptiness, meaning over meaninglessness, identity over difference and life over death.
And, yes, as a mere product of my wholly Western thought, I do tend quite naturally to give a positive weight to fullness over emptiness, meaning over meaninglessness, identity over difference and life over death. Mere common sense would seem to dictate these positive connotations, in my own mind, whether one is Western, Eastern or anything else.
But according to the deconstructionists, if I want to throw my full support to candidate Obama, then I must literally force myself to go completely athwart these Western tendencies, and opt to reverse them.
I must accept that Obama's nearly empty resume for the Presidency is actually better than McCain's full resume.
I must accept that Obama's meaningless, non-defined rhetoric is actually better than McCain's meaningful, painstakingly defined rhetoric and plans.
I must accept that Obama's difference, in terms of his racial makeup is actually better than McCain's common identity with my own. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King's insistence on a colorblind society?
So far, Obama's only plans worth noting are to disarm America and turn over vast amounts of our wealth to refortify failing dictatorships in third-world countries. If accomplished, this will amount to nothing less than handing over our sovereignty and liberty in favor of bondage to international consensus.
I must accept that Obama's death plan for America, the Land that I love, is actually better than McCain's life plan to preserve and protect our liberty.
I might as well go a bit further with the deconstructionists and throw in another purely Western assumption. Liberty over bondage. Yes, it's true. Color me prejudiced to the core of my being.
I actually will prefer to my dying day, with the last breath I draw, as God is my witness, liberty over bondage.
I'm hopelessly, irretrievably, to the marrow of my bones, an American. And I will not give my one vote, earned by the precious sacrifice of millions before me, to a deconstructionist, affirmative-action candidate.
The Presidency of the United States of America is not now, nor should it ever be, an entitlement.
Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.
- Jacques Derrida, Father of Deconstructionist Theory
Millions of dollars, lots of great minds, many slick branding tricks, slogans and sales pitches have gone into creating the "photograph" of Barack Obama's public persona. But in the end, on election day, it will be we "gazers," the voters, who will decide whether the image truly fits the man.
If this were American Idol, Barack would be a shoe-in. But for the most powerful political position in the world?
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com.
If this were American Idol, Barack would be a shoe-in. But for the most powerful political position in the world?
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com.
