PrintFebruary 10, 2011
The Essential Barack Obama
Today the United States finds itself adrift on a sea of uncertainty; its economy floundering under the weight of oppressive debt and mismanagement, its status in world affairs at its lowest ebb since the beginning of the 20th Century and its citizens openly questioning the future. At such a critical time the country has as its President a man unable or qualified to lead.
Barack Obama is a man without a core, leaving the ship of state without a rudder in the management of foreign affairs and domestic policy which have spun dangerously out of control over the past two years. A cursory examination of Mr. Obama's life and accomplishments reveals a man whose life has been centered around the discovery of two personal attributes (as detailed in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father"): his ability to deliver a speech and his skin color in a nation obsessed with guilt for the past. His writings and the sharing of a strong anti-colonialist sentiments with his father (see Dinesh D'Souza: "Roots of Obama's Rage") portray an overwhelming sense of entitlement due solely to his paternal African descent.
While raised in a sea of Marxist and socialist thinking, these philosophies only served to confirm his deep seated animosity toward the United States and the western world and not as a basis for any firm ideological beliefs. Over the years his reluctance to promote the purity of those ideologies whenever given the opportunity confirms that he has never been an abject true believer.
Rather Obama has used and manipulated the true believers into being the foot soldiers for his personal ambitions. The most overused phrase since he assumed the national spotlight is: "thrown under the bus" and it has been so for good reason as in the case of Reverend Jeremiah Wright whose church Obama joined in order to politically ingratiate himself with the Chicago black community.
Out of his Marxist upbringing, Obama has embraced the doctrine of the end justifies the means, but in his case as a strategy to achieve his egocentric ambitions not political ends except to do enough to keep his left-wing base in line. This cynical belief represents the epitome of corruption in any society. A leader within government or the national community at large who is captive to this thinking must be by necessity devoid of ethics, integrity, or morals.
Relying on his personal and physical traits, the gullibility and support of those desiring atonement for the past, coupled with his entitlement mentality, Obama has been able, akin to a piece of driftwood, to float upon the current until one day he washed up on the shore as President of the United States.
Obama's early adult years were spent as a "community organizer," but only for a period of three years until the realization set in that this was not the road to greatness. He then entered Harvard Law School where his charm and speaking ability resulted in his election as the President of the Harvard Law Review. This move resulted in his first introduction to fame, as he was nationally trumpeted as the first black president of the Review.
He also learned how easily the white elite establishment, in particular the media, could be manipulated as he at age 31 -- someone with no real world accomplishments -- was initiated into the Ruling Class, signed to a publishing contract and given a large advance to write a book which evolved into a personal memoir: "Dreams from My Father". The gullibility of the establishment and Obama's success in manipulating it is epitomized by Joe Biden's remark in 2007 when he said:
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
In 1991 Obama signed on to the faculty at Chicago Law School where for twelve years he served as a Lecturer teaching constitutional law. During that same period he joined the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galahad (1993-2002) specializing in civil rights litigation. He also served on the Board of the Woods Foundation (1994-2002) and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (1995-2002). Obama was now firmly ensconced in the elite circle of the Ruling Class.
In 1996 he turned to politics. In his first state senate race he defeated incumbent Alice Palmer by eliminating her and all other primary rivals from the ballot through successful but highly contentious challenge petitions. Obama won the election unopposed.
In a further revelation of his muddled and uncertain belief system, while in the state Senate (1997-2004) he voted present on controversial bills over 130 times. When given the opportunity he would not take a position on issues and avoided any commitment to his ideological upbringing.
In 2004 Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. His Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, was forced to withdraw three months after the Republican primary when the Chicago Tribune (where David Axelrod worked and had many friends) petitioned a judge in California to release sealed child custody documents. Obama was essentially able to run unopposed, as the Republican Party in Illinois was unable to find a viable candidate within the state and chose Alan Keyes as the sacrificial lamb.
After a lackluster and self-admitted boring two years in the U.S. Senate, Obama decided to run for president in 2006; after all nothing else in his life had been difficult to achieve so why not the presidency? His only real challenge was to eliminate Hillary Clinton. The initial strategy was to compare her to Barack Obama, as she and her husband carried so much baggage they could not compete with Obama's soaring oratory (on display at the 2004 Democratic Convention) and skin color.
As his previous runs for public office and his life's philosophy had shown, Obama firmly believed in doing or saying anything when it came winning elections, and that was true in the 2008 Democratic Primary, so he won yet another primary battle in a Party susceptible to his charm and their own desire to assuage their white guilt, along with near-unanimous support from black Democrats.
Fate continued to be kind to Barack Obama. The Republican Party, bent on self-destruction, chose John McCain as its presidential nominee and in late September 2008 the financial and stock markets collapsed after years of abuse spawned by mainly Democratic Party policies. Barack Obama floated in on a wave and found himself as President of the United States.
However, there are now no other currents to float upon, there are no other waves to ride. There are no longer massive adoring crowds to deceive. There are no more titles to capture. For the first time in Barack Obama's life he is accountable, and upon his shoulders rest the lives and fortunes of millions in the United States and the world. He has repeatedly shown that he cannot deal with, and will never be able to shoulder responsibility, as he is at his core self-absorbed, dishonest, and without coherence in his personal beliefs and convictions, thus putting the United States into long-term economic and international peril.
In 1963, after attending the March on Washington and listening to Martin Luther King give his "I Have a Dream" speech, I became actively involved in the civil rights movement. One day, a few years later, while on a voter registration drive, I walked up to a ramshackle house near a small town in southern Maryland. There on the porch quietly rocking in her chair was the bent figure of an elderly black woman. I went up to her. She turned and looked at me and our eyes met. I could see in those dark sad eyes the years of pain and suffering she had endured. After a look that penetrated to my very core, she insisted I stay saying: "Your eyes tell me you're one of us."
Her name was Acadie and she was originally from Louisiana. She told me she was 92 years old, the daughter of slaves, born in 1873. We talked of her youth and hardscrabble existence in the fields; of the terror wrought by the Ku Klux Klan seeking revenge against blacks for the difficult life for all in Louisiana after the Civil War; of hangings and burnings and near starvation as crops failed for lack of rain or floods; of her and her family packing up their few belongings and with a mule and a cart setting off for anywhere north only to find more subtle but still virulent discrimination; and of losing her husband killed in a railroad accident when she was 35 leaving her with 4 children to support and raise and whom she eventually outlived.
As we became friends, she, by her kindness and openness, became the first person in my life to cause me to openly talk of my early days after World War II when I was alone on the streets of a destroyed city in Europe. We sat there for two hours or more, the daughter of slaves and a displaced orphan from across the ocean, bound together by past life experiences but optimistic about the future. When the time came to leave she gently took my hand and held it in her gnarled fingers long ago deformed by the ravages of arthritis and said: "The times are a'changin, I hope my people will listen to God's word to forgive and lead a good and honest life. May God bless you always."
I never saw Acadie again; I hope she was able to witness the transformation of American attitudes toward intolerance and discrimination. But it was her sacrifices and so many before and after her that made the prospect of black man being elected president achievable. I have often wondered what she would think of Barack Obama, his actions, deceptions, racial exploitation and lack of a core set of principles; and of American society in general where honor and integrity no longer seem to matter. Having had the privilege to meet her and so many like her here in the United States, I think I know.
