EcoChamber @ 12 Feb 2008 01:36 pm by Christina Waters
Or at least that’s the rhetoric du jour being hustled in the O-Ring. Like many demagogues, the tall, dark candidate is a Rorschach for the disappointed entitlement of the masses. (Is there a Leni Riefenstahl in the house?) He appeals to “those who want to believe,” he says. Believe in what? He reaches out “to those who believe in change.” But change from what, to what? Without any content, he can be all things to all people, just like other demagogues who whipped “the people” into a frenzy over a half century ago. But then, hey, who remembers that stuff? It’s the past, and in this post modern climate, the past is just a four-letter word.
We’re tired of money and interests, he tells the adoring crowds. Yet he fails to tell them just how all of these “dreams” and all of these “hopes” are going to be actualized without money, and with no investment of interests.
His people, he assures the cheering crowd, have chosen the future. As if it wouldn’t arrive without him. Alas, it’s been said before, but those who refuse to remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
O man has maintained his anonymity. He is an abstraction, a personality. The people to whom he appeals don’t want reasons, they don’t want specifics. They sure as hell don’t want any actual discussion about tired old stuff like “issues.” They just want an illusion – slogan-driven magic. The check is in the mail. And no one asks just how that’s going to happen, or who is going to pay.
You can bet that John McCain is going to ask what all those generic platitudes are going to cost.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Aaron Wakling
My thoughts exactly. And what does Marina think?
Jane Anne
…apparently the Clinton campaign is now complaining that Obama is using other’s “words” and not attributing them to the author. You just parapharased Santayana “those…history…condemned to repeat it” and did not credit the author. Several of the quotes Obama used are common knowledge to any literate person. “All we have to fear is fear itself”, FDR, “I have a dream” MLKJr….and so on. If every speaker who uses others’ “words” without attributing took the time to credit the author, they’d never get through a speech. Now they want footnotes?
This is plagerism?
Really!!!
With all due respect I would like you to read this piece, which discusses Mr. Obama from the point of view of a lifelong Republican conservative.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/this-good-friday-let-us-_b_92645.html
I would also ask that you have the decency to refer to Barack Obama with a little more respect than “O man” or “the tall, dark candidate” or your other belittling references. We are all entitled to our own opinions and indeed our ignorance. But I would like to remind you that rudeness and insults do not diminish others so much as they diminish you, Ms. Waters.