Friday, January 08, 2010

Scamalot and the Obaminable Snowjob

While I have prevailed in my courageous battle against manflu, I slept too late to prove it with a new post. Therefore I'll do the next best thing, which is a repost of the sequel to yesterday's offering. My point in reviscerating these old eviscerations is to see how well they hold up in light of Obama's holdup of the country.

And of course, we also want to check in on the changing contours of the psychic waveform produced by infantile fantasy crashing on the rocks of the reality principle. Given the level of hysterical fantasy projected into Obama, we knew the country was going to be in for a screwed awakening, as this Nobody from Nowhere underwent the formality of actually existing. But I'm pretty sure that only wideawake godballs with 20/∞ cʘʘnvision knew it would be this bad.

*****

I really was never any more than what I was -- a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me. I wasn't a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad. --Bob Dylan

Let's meditate for awhile on the political implications of the Devil card with our UnKnown Friend.

First of all, one must understand that, whatever else you may think of him, the being known as Satan is a source of inspiration; to be in-spired is to receive spirit, and it should go without saying that to merely be "spiritual" is neither here nor there, since there are good and evil spirits. After all, Deepak is spiritual. Marianne Williamson is spiritual. Osama bin Laden is definitely spiritual.

Thus, this demonic counter-inspiration is still a kind of inspiration. In fact, very much so. To avoid premature saturation, let's just call it (-i). Most of us, assuming we weren't permanently damaged by higher education, can recognize (i) when we see it, but many people confuse (i) and (-i), with catastrophic results.

For example, America's founders were quite obviously animated by genuine (i). The reactionary counter-revolutionaries -- i.e., the proglodyte left -- are always more or less animated by (-i). Regardless of what they say, they specifically want to arrest and undo our founding, which revolves around liberty converging upon the nonlocal attractor of the Judeo-Christian God (i.e., e pluribus unum, or freedom converging upon the One, or Sovereign Good). Obviously, the Founders did not envision a radically secularized and demoralized populace converging upon an omnipotent state. Leave that to the radical French revolutionaries to deicide. And therefore genocide.

The campaign of John Edwards, for example, was an exercise in pure (-i). How then did it differ from Obama's campaign? I would say that the Edwards campaign was equally driven by (+H) -- i.e., open class warfare and unhinged primitive envy -- whereas Obama's campaign was imbued with a meretricious (-L) -- that is, a shallow caricature of the higher unity produced by genuine love. Obama, like all men of the left, wishes to enforce unity from on high, which is just another name for tyranny. The bribes, the 2:00 AM weekend votes, the secret meetings -- this is the unity of thieves and criminals.

Thus, there is always deep well of (H) under the (-L), but the obamaniacs are able to split off and deny the (H) by bathing in the (-L). To see this, all you have to do is criticize Obama, which signals to the somnolent zombies that you are not a member of their social trance, which then triggers the anger that is analogous to being rudely awakened from a deep sleep at 3:00AM.

Along these lines, reader Mike M. left an astute comment yesterday:

"This swooning Obama-worship of someone who seems to be an empty suit is bizarre and curious. Note how it follows the irrational demonization of the current POTUS now seen as a figure of such mythic evil that he, George Bush, is held to have deliberately murdered thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11 as a pretext for immoral imperialist war. This is a view which is resolutely held by graduates of our most prestigious universities! That such an event would have no historical precedent and that such a purported crime would exceed the ruthless cynical evil of the purported Nazi burning of the Reichstag cannot be without meaning....

"Given the powerful projection, scapegoating and displacement poured into the demonization of George W. Bush, could it be that this Obamessiah persona is a necessary counter to the fabricated evil Bush-Hitler figure, and the powerful divisive hysteria and paranoia which has accompanied the demonization of George Bush -- sort of virtual particle and anti-particles emerging from a spiritual vacuum?"

Yes. That is exactly what I am trying to say. Genuine (L) is convergent upon wholeness, truth, beauty, light, harmony, and freedom. It is never reactive, but active. On the other hand, the Obama-love (-L) is almost wholly reactive, as it exists side by side with the (H) from which it is derived.

Come to think of it, I saw a fine example of this in the latest lunacy from the Windy Hindi. He writes that "I am far more worried about an invisible epidemic than I am about H1N1. I'm referring to the spread of distrust that has become contagion beyond all reasonable boundaries.... [W]hen mistrust becomes the actual, avowed basis for politics, healthy skepticism has turned malignant. Right now, the political credo has shifted from 'I don't trust your position on the issues' to 'I don't trust who you are and everybody like you.' We would be ashamed to apply such an attitude to people of color, although it was common enough in the past."

But them, without irony or shame, Deepak malignantly characterizes those who oppose socialized medicine as not "so much a dissenting minority as a faction that wants to destroy the Democrats. This is bad faith in action. It has no interest in finding the right answer to a sore dilemma. Its ambition is merely to discredit, vilify, and cast the seeds of toxic mistrust." Feel the Love!

A spiritually normal person is unnerved by the kind of hysterical adulation (-L) being directed at Obama. You cannot help wondering about the impoverished state of his soul, and how it must be a pathological mirror-image of what is being projected into him -- like an unconscious lock that corresponds perfectly to the projected key. Such a man -- as was true of Clinton -- seeks his own center in the periphery of the idealizing rabble, so to speak. It couldn't be more different from a man with an immutable axis and incorruptible center to which people are "magnetized," such as Ronald Reagan.

I read somewhere yesterday -- can't think of the source at the moment -- that Reagan and Obama are mirror images, in the sense that Reagan spent decades dissenting from the foolish liberal orthodoxies and pieties believed by the intellectual elite, while Obama couldn't be more cravenly conformist in his beliefs. He seems to have indiscriminately swallowed leftism whole without ever questioning its faulty assumptions, let alone baleful effects. He's certainly the most provincial and conformist president in my lifetime.

If mother love is like the open circle that is both infinite and enveloping (and potentially suffocating), father love is like the absolute point or axis. The circle must come first (i.e., the ineffable background subject of being), followed by the point, which forms the center (and which will in turn extend "vertically" to the celestial Father, of whom our earthly father is just an authorized deputy).

A man without a father (or father energy, which can come from other sources) is generally a man without a center. He will be either a weakling, or a weak man imitating a strong man (the belligerent Sean Penn or Keith Olbermann or Nameless Troll type).

In addition to seeking his center in the adulation of others, it is also possible for the weak man to fabricate it in a kind of centerless, manic energy -- again, Clinton comes to mind. He is bubbling over with scattered hysterical thought devoid of any coherence or consistency. He is most focussed when he is focused on the adulation of the crowd, which provides him with a faux center and a temporary integration (and also keeps shame and guilt at bay). But it's an addiction, which is why he can't leave politics alone, but also why he has no enduring political principles.

There is a fascinating chapter in Dylan's autobiography, in which he discusses at length the horror of being idealized in the manner he was back in the 1960s. Again, our society has become so narcissistic, that not only is such a bizarre situation seen as normative, but it is something that people actively seek (i.e., the cult of celebrity). People want to be famous and adulated, but obviously for all the wrong reasons. There are few good reasons to be famous. Which is why, as Dennis Prager says, most famous people are utterly insignificant, while most significant people aren't famous.

I am also reminded of something Schuon said, that the spiritually normal man does things because they please God, not for the horizontal affirmation of others. He made a related comment about the purpose of secular humanism, which is "to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as possible." Look at Obama, whose whole economic platform involves making himself useful to the takers against the makers. And once there are more takers than makers, i.e., people dependent upon the state, we may have reached the point of no return. Thus the rush to ram through the ill-considered health care bill, in order to turn all citizens into serfs with his signature.

One can't help wondering if Obama's absence of a father is a critical element here. It is interesting, is it not, that he identifies with his "blackness," even though his father was an utterly useless abandoning-irresponsible-alcoholic-bigamist-Marxist? If a boy is not initiated by the love of a virtuous man, then he will remain left behind in the murky, oceanic, intoxicating, boundary-less realm of mother love, which is as different from father-love as wave is to particle or music to architecture.

Please bear in mind that I am in no way denigrating mother love. Indeed, in watching Mrs. G. interact with Future Leader over the past four years, I am more in awe of it than ever. However, I am equally aware (as is Mrs. G) that if this love weren't tempered by father love, we could have a real monster on our hands.

Awhile back Hoarhey made an insightful comment to the effect that the country wasn't prepared to cope with another fatherless president working out his issues on the national stage. In fact, it is probably no coincidence that in Clinton, the country chose a feminized, mother-bound man as president after the conclusion of the Cold War, since father had done his job and was therefore felt to be no longer necessary. But now, in a time of hot war, were Americans naive enough -- or in such denial -- to think that we could cow our enemies with sufficient mother love?

Yes. We. Were.

32 comments:

Susannah said...

"If mother love is like the open circle that is both infinite and enveloping (and potentially suffocating), father love is like the absolute point or axis. The circle must come first (i.e., the ineffable background subject of being), followed by the point, which forms the center (and which will in turn extend "vertically" to the celestial Father, of whom our earthly father is just an authorized deputy).

A man without a father (or father energy, which can come from other sources) is generally a man without a center. He will be either a weak man, or a weak man imitating a strong man..." This was just beautifully put.

xlbrl said...

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Cousin Dupree said...

We are the ones for whom they were lying in wait.

walt said...

From today's News:
"President Obama is leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America,'' John McCain says in one of the radio ads his campaign is airing.

Now he tells us?

julie said...

Hey, B'atman - speaking of a "world of pain," have you seen this?

KNAVE:...Hear rightly, man!--for thou hast got the wrong man. I am the Knave, man; Knave in nature as in name.

BLANCHE: Thy name is Lebowski.

Tom Cruise said...

Great news, everyone!

Warren said...

>> only wideawake godballs with 20/∞ cʘʘnvision knew it would be this bad

Actually, my main surprise with Obama is that - terrible as he has been - still he has not been quite as catastrophically bad as I had feared.... yet, anyway.

Van Harvey said...

We are the ones who have been waiting for them to get... right... where... we wanted them to be...

Exposed.

Now what?

(just kidding)

FIRE!!!

Cousin Dupree said...

No, no malignant distrust at all on Deepcrock's part. He's above that sort of thing.

julie said...

Re. Scientology, life imitates South Park once again.

Back to the main subject, House of Eratosthenes has an apropos post today which simply features a variety of leftist manifestos (though the last one is a spoof, and I suspect the penultimate one is as well). I think these all pre-date last year's elections. Which means, I'm sure, that the authors have since "progressed" beyond their first principles, which should remain as malleable as a living constitution.

Some precious tidbits (emphasis mine):

"Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

"I believe that the government is no more corrupt or inefficient than a huge multinational corporation (Enron),

I believe the government should be transparent and open to prevent corruption rather than always hiding behind “national security”,"

"At the same time, the president is unconstitutionally seizing power on other fronts. He seeks to liberate himself from the rule of law by issuing hundreds of “signing statements” asserting, with unprecedented sweep and aggressiveness, his right to ignore congressional control. Such contempt for the people’s representatives verges on monarchical pretension."

"The administration’s contempt for science is of a piece with its general disdain for reason — a prejudice that any modern society ought to have left behind."

debass said...

Glenn Beck laid out the last 100 years of the progressive movement in the US. Obama seems to be the final nail in the coffin to bury liberty and capitalism. It appears as though many people are waking up to what is going on though, so we may still be free for a while.
I don't know why people regret voting for him. He is doing what he said he would do. It's in his books and his senate record. Why are people surprised when they are bitten by a snake?

Aquila said...

Tom Cruise: Does that collection of your idol's ramblings include the lecture where ElRon said that Aleister Crowley was his "good friend"? Or the one where he recommended "exteriorizing" people resistant to Scientology with a .45?

Anonymous said...

Mother love is "potentially suffocating". On the other hand, "Father love is like the absolute point or axis" which vertically extend "to the celesyial Father, of whom our earthly father is an authorized deputy."

Females suffocate. Bob is a Perfect Spiritual Authority in his own eyes.

Van Harvey said...

Aquilla said "...Or the one where he recommended "exteriorizing" people resistant to Scientology with a .45?"

Now that goes well with book burning!

wv:affreck
sounds like nobamacare has got to the Affleck duck

JC said...

Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me?

JC said...

Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?

Anonymous said...

Demonstrate your Celestial Colors JC!

Anonymous said...

Tell us how many miracles have You performed lately JC!

hoarhey said...

Bob said,
"One can't help wondering if Obama's absence of a father is a critical element here. It is interesting, is it not, that he identifies with his "blackness," even though his father was an utterly useless abandoning-irresponsible-alcoholic-bigamist-Marxist?"

Normally a leftist becomes so by being in rebellion against a "repressive" patriarchal parental figure i.e. "The Man" (all the while never realizing his own tyranical leanings, just jamming it through for the children and social justice and all).
Obama seems to have projected his subconcious resentment for his absent father onto the world at large ("white folks's greed runs a world in need" Barry O. 'Dreams from My Father') while clinging to an ancestral Marxist fantasy which somehow absolves the old man of being such a shit.
Talk about screwed up!
What's even more of a hoot is that if he ever really dealt with this quandry, he'd be like Dick Cheney without the intelect.

Anonymous said...

One thing I've noticed about you people is that you are always, always, behind the curve. Whatever hysterical adulation Obama may have received during the campaign has dropped off preciptiously and he's now having to deal with angry disppointment from the same people when he turned out to be (surprise) a politician.

It couldn't be more different from a man with an immutable axis and incorruptible center to which people are "magnetized," such as Ronald Reagan

This is the same Reagan who had 138 members of his administration indicted or convicted for serious crimes, from Iran-Contra to perjury, to fraud, to obstruction of justice. But he had a convincing persona (developed during his career as a movie actor) so I guess that's enough to make him a god to the feebleminded. For those not blinded by media, he's clearly in the same class of corrupt and inept Republicans as Nixon and Bush II. The attempts of the right to mythologize him are pretty funny to anyone who knows anything.

He's (Obama) certainly the most provincial and conformist president in my lifetime.

Oh come on. Even you can't be so detached from reality as to believe that.

spanky said...

Whah dah ya mean, you people?
Are you racist?

Cousin Dupree said...

Clinton's administration was the most corrupt in history, but Obama is catching up.

And you'd have to have been to graduate school to know how provincial Obama is.

Aquila said...

OT (as usual): here's a salvo fired squarely at the broadside of scientistic materialism: New Scientist: You Won't Find Consciousness in the Brain

Tom Cruise said...

Aquila, you're glib. I care because I know...

Susannah said...

Deepak is sounding an awful lot like his caricatures. Tea-baggers?

julie said...

Back to the potentially bad characteristics of mother love,

San Francisco: America's Homegrown Anarchic Totalitarianism

"Unlike their Asian, Latin American or Eastern European counterparts, modern Western socialist governments aren’t going to round us up and shoot us. Instead, they’re going to love us to death. They’ll control what we buy, what we eat, how we get our health care, how we educate our children, what we watch on TV, what light bulbs we screw in, what cars we drive, what phones we use, what shopping bags we use, etc., all with the most beneficent of intentions. We won’t be murdered by gun toting government-funded thugs in concentration camps. Instead, we’ll just be infantilized to the point where we’re incapable of functioning without a Nanny state at our backs — and our fronts and our sides, and wherever else the State can insert itself into a citizen’s life. (By the way, if you want to know what that will look like, just cast your mind back to images of Hurricane Katrina. The self-reliant middle class sat on their porches with shotguns, protecting their families and homes. The welfare classes, destroyed not by their race but by their decades-long dependence on government handouts, were incapable of even moving off the side of the road.)"

katzxy said...

There was an episode of Star Trek, TOS, "The City on the Edge of Forever". The main character, Edith Keeler seems a bit like Marianne Williamson.

Cousin Dupree said...

Good point. Except that episode has a happy ending, what with Edith getting smacked by the truck and all...

katzxy said...

'Cuz,

Well done.

Bob has always said he like a good, clean kill.

Touche!

Stephen Macdonald said...

At Harvard they've published a thick tome enlightening us on how Art arose from Darwinian natural selection: On the Origin of Stories.

Too bad such authors couldn't spend a few days hanging around here. Bob & Co. could save them a heap 'o' work.

Susannah said...

Julie, those last two at House of Eratosthenes had me in stitches. Shared the San Francisco post...thanks.

njcommuter said...

Interesting, GB, that i is used in mathematics as the unit in the system of imaginary numbers. Though imaginary, they are pretty well necessary to describe reality. See Complex Analysis. Most of communication electronics (and photonics) and electrical power systems requires this math, as does any oscillating system. It even provides insights into pharmocodynamics.

Theme Song

Theme Song