Obama the ideologue

By A.J. DiCintio

During one of those sadly recurring times when the moon reflects a particularly intense form of its lunacy-inducing light, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas bent his knee before a little-known lawyer, community organizer, and state legislator who had been sitting in the Oval Office for fewer than five months to utter words that befouled everything this side of Heaven:

. . . in a way Obama [is] standing above the country, above — above the world; he's sort of God...

Thomas deserved all the mocking slings and arrows that came his way regarding a paean that can arise only from a psyche so perversely disfigured it is incapable of understanding the simple truth that every false, lying, merely-human god is doomed not just to be exposed as a contemptible fraud but to abject failure in whatever he does.

So, too, is Thomas today deserving of a storm of ironic "How's that god thing working out for you?" as Obama sinks in the polls, taking even "safe" Democrats down with him and occasioning commentators such as Mark Halperin to write as follows in Time, a kindred spirit of Newsweek:

Most politically engaged elites have [concluded that] the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless [and that it] hasn't much to offer ... except more of the same that isn't working.

But while news about the public's rejection of Obama's agenda is inescapable, there isn't much being said about the why of the failure.

Sure, there's the partially reasonable point made by some that having inherited not just a profound financial mess but possibly a shocking "new normal" in the nation's socio-economic structure, Obama is faced with problems that may take decades to solve or may never be solved.

And there's the ludicrous assertion that Democrats find themselves in political hell because the president has failed to explain the excellence of his agenda to the public — an argument notable only for its insulting the American people as being infinitely greater nitwits than the protagonists of Dumb and Dumber.

But political spin aside, the fundamental reason for Obama's downfall is this:

The man is an incorrigible ideologue who is doomed to failure as much as any false god.

Now, before evidence for that contention can be offered, a definition is necessary, with the task best accomplished by quoting the American essayist Clifton Fadiman, who defined the ideologue as a person who "is not interested in ideas, but — almost the exact contrary — in one idea . . .[that he] never questions."

And this also from Fadiman:

When [an ideologue] erects this idea into a system and forces the system to give birth to a way of life, confusion often results, usually to his great surprise.

Well, every person blessed with even a bit of education about history knows that much more than confusion reigns when an ideologue forces upon a culture a system he worships unconditionally.

However, comments about the debacles and evils wrought by ideologues of the past must wait for another time; for the purpose here is to offer evidence supporting the idea of Barack Obama as an ideologue devoted to a leftist belief system that has been crumbing so utterly that its only proud proponents these days are nutcases (many of them professors) who admire Fidel and Hugo for carrying the banner of Marxism into the twenty-first century.

So, to get on with the purpose at hand —

The general, overarching piece of evidence that proves the assertion made about the president is that as a lover of centralized authority and bureaucracy — in other words, of the politburo approach to government — he has consistently invited his congressional minions to create every last detail of every last one of his policy initiatives.

Now, while ten thousand words may begin to illuminate the supreme stupidity of such behavior, we can keep things brief if we simply ask ourselves what a Jonathan Swift or a Mark Twain would have to say about it.

Of course, we can't imagine exactly what such geniuses might come up with, but we can be certain they would employ bitter ironies, acidic sarcasms, and mocking exaggerations to satirize the idea that the greater good is best achieved when Yahoos who title themselves with the euphemistic oxymoron "Honorable Members of Congress" are exclusively permitted to craft, in secret, over a period of only several months, an unreadable (and unread) 2,000 page federal-government-fattening abomination that purports to immensely improve the 16% of the economy that is the nation's healthcare system.

Or a secretly stuffed, rotten-pork laden "stimulus" bill aimed at improving economic opportunities for the American people.

Or a border/immigration "reform" that in the name of the worst kind of political power grubbing ignores crucial economic, social, cultural, security, political, and environmental issues that a class of high school students could enumerate in an hour of brainstorming.

Yes, the great satirists would do the right (and creative) thing about illustrating the dangerous absurdity of a leftist ideologue who gives his congressional cronies absolutely free rein to advance the notion that the more government is centralized, the more it is expanded, and the more it spends and borrows, the greater the possibilities for the people's liberty and prosperity.

But those great minds would not limit their response solely to the president's disastrous ideas about government; for they would also bitterly condemn the reality that as he fails, Obama imitates his leftist brethren, past and present, by reacting to the rejection of his policies not just with "great surprise" but by summoning his followers to join him in attacking those who disagree with the "way of life" he proposes with the ugliest kind of name calling.

With that, the case is made for precisely why Obama is failing and why his reaction to failure is causing him to fail all the more.

© A.J. DiCintio