In the January 2012 Commentary article entitled "The Left's Great Crime" by George Russell, the protagonist of the piece is described in the following manner:

He had a gift for charismatic preaching and took it to black neighborhoods ...where he preached racial inclusion and gathered a mixed-race congregation.

... he already cut a considerable figure in radical circles for his message of apostolic, or divine, socialism-colorblind Communism wrapped in the transport of faith healing and racial inclusion.

The ... show was a highly successful act among the homeless, dispossessed, lonely, and often idealistic core of lower-middle-class and street people who were drawn in large numbers[.]

[He] was friends with other radical showmen and ideologues like Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement, the implacable Communist Angela Davis, and her friends and acquaintances in the Black Panther Party led by Huey P. Newton, the very essence of lumpenproletariat insurrection.

But lurking inside... was a malignant narcissism that made him unwilling to draw any boundary between his pliant followers and himself.  He was a natural totalitarian, infected with totalitarianism's deepest creed.  At the unstable point where utter belief in and obedience to the leader ceases, the end of the world begins.

Spying for signs of disaffection, disloyalty, or violations of ...rules...was encouraged.

He once told an aide that the way to control people was to keep them 'tired and poor.'

One reason respect and reverence needed to be enforced so ferociously was the self-indulgent hypocrisy of ...his inner circle.

He held all night rallies to extol socialism and inveigh against America.

He once ranted, '[f]or socialism, for Communism, for black liberation, for oppressed liberation[.]

Eavesdropping and surveillance were increased for everyone.

In the United States, however, ... [he] lacked one thing that all successful despots need: total information.

The man whom author George Russell is describing is Jim Jones, remembered for the Jonestown, Guyana mass suicide of Americans on November 18, 1978.

Yet as I read this piece, there were certain chilling similarities to the 44^th president of the United States that I could not shake off.  Certainly it was Obama's charisma, not his record that had people swooning before him and claiming as Chris Matthew did: 

I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country.

Early on, Obama claimed that he was gong to be the post-racial president.  Thus, during his keynote address at the 2004 National Democratic Convention, Obama asserted that:

... tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative American; there's the United States of America. ... There's not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

Nonetheless, in a report entitled "The Obama Era: Post-Racial or Most Racial" from the American Civil Rights Coalition, one is reminded that under Obama, the "Federal Government has taken a decided detour from the 'colorblind' creed to which the majority of Americans subscribe."  The June 2011 report documents a number of incidents and events that reveal the race-conscious tendencies of the Obama administration, including racial preferences in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), in financial regulatory reforms, and in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus), and the dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

Obama has publicly sided with the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Their demands are posted on the Occupy Wall Street website, and many of them clearly violate the Constitution as well as promote a socialist/communist philosophy.  Yet the president of the United States views the Occupiers as the dispossessed street people who need his support.

Obama's radical associations are becoming more and more public, and "at some point, the preponderance of evidence of this president's true views and intentions for the country may reach critical mass."  Obama's relationship with William Ayers was not just a casual one, nor was his twenty years of association with Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright of "God damn America" fame.  Journalist and author Erik Rush comments on Obama endorsing professor Derrick Bell, who was a proponent of Critical Race Theory, meant to be a device "of black Marxist intellectuals to apply a scholarly varnish to their ideology, maintain blacks' anger and resentment, and ensure that race would remain an issue in America forever."  Moreover, "in 1994 Bell was quoted as having predicted that eventually America would witness the rise of charismatic new black leaders who, in the interests of retributive racial justice, would "urge that instead of [African-Americans] killing each other, they should go out in gangs and kill a whole lot of white people."

According to John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, Derrick Bell in "an interview in the New York Observer on October 10, 1994, denounced 'all the Jewish neoconservative racists who are undermining blacks in every way they can.' The very same interview began with Bell stating: 'We should really appreciate the Louis Farrakhans and the Khalid Muhammads while we've got them.' (Khalid Muhammad was a Farrakhan ally who referred to Jews as 'bloodsuckers' whose 'father was the devil')."

Repeatedly, Obama's narcissism has come to the fore.  Obama has asserted that "where Congress is not willing to act, we're going to go ahead and do it ourselves."  It "now appears that such a mindset applies not only to economic matters but to the distribution of foreign aid as well--in particular, foreign military aid for the Muslim Brotherhood, who now hold the reigns in Egypt[,]" even though the Muslim Brotherhood espouses anti-Semitism, sanctions murder of Coptic Christians, and engages in virulent anti-American sentiments.  Besides his obvious hubris, why is Obama giving money to avowed enemies of America even when Congress has halted military aid until Egypt can show progress on basic freedoms and human rights?

Self-indulgent hypocrisy reigns supreme in Obama's court.  He admonishes Americans to be more civil and is indifferent to the coarse and vile statements emanating from his own supporters -- e.g., Bill Maher.  He cautions Americans to be frugal, and then his wife and daughters take various jaunts that add stress to the already overburdened American taxpayer.

Judi McLeod, editor of Canada Free Press, whose slogan is "[b]ecause without America there is no free world," is terribly alarmed by "Obama's new Amerika," in which Obama pushed through his Defense Funding bill "which will allow American citizens to be arrested as terrorists on home turf to be 'disappeared' forever without rule-of-law trial."

But Jim Jones "lacked one thing that all successful despots need: total information."  Aye, there is the rub.  Unfortunately, the Fourth Estate in America has become the fifth column, as far too many newspapers and media outlets simply act as shills for Obama.  They ask no hard questions; they demand no in-depth answers. 

Jim Jones' ministry committed suicide although it was clear that many had no idea what was truly going on, and a number of them actually resisted.  Is there a lesson in this horror?  Are far too many Americans still drinking the Kool-Aid and not seeing the obvious?  Will those 50% of Americans who remain deluded or in denial see how they are being used as dupes?  Will the rest of us be brought down by their delusional ignorance?

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.