The Cult Of Barack Obama
The Obamagasm phenomenon apparently knows no bounds:
BALTIMORE — Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings has held elected office for more than a quarter-century, so he’s seen his fair share of politicians come and go.
But apparently he’s never seen one quite like Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
“This is not a campaign for president of the United States, this is a movement to change the world,” he said as he introduced Obama last week in Baltimore.
“You do not get 13,000 people in this auditorium with a campaign.”
True, perhaps, but at some point it becomes necessary to ask why this is happening, and what it means for our political system.
But Cummings is mild in his praise compared to some people:
“He walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere,” George Clooney told talk show host Charlie Rose.
“I’ll do whatever he says to do,” actress Halle Berry said to the Philadelphia Daily News. “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”
Really Halle ? You’d do anything he asked you to ? I don’t use Nazi analogies often or lightly, but that is precisely the kind of thing that people thought about Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. It’s the reason that people went to Guyana with Jim Jones. It’s the reason they burned to death with David Koresh. And, it’s the reason they continue to give tons of money to religious hucksters.
I don’t take back my decision to vote for Barack Obama in Virginia’s primary; in the end, it was a vote directed more against Hillary Clinton and what kind of America she would create than it was a vote for him anyway. However, I’ve got to admit to having serious misgivings about the cult of personality that has arisen around Barack Obama.
It truly seems like people aren’t thinking, or don’t even care to think about what he might do as President because they’ve fallen in love with his slogans and they seem to believe, as Michelle Obama said last week, that only he can “save our souls.”
I addressed that issue yesterday and the words ring even truer in light of stuff like this:
Barack Obama isn’t going to “save our souls.” No President can save our souls, assuming we even have them. No one man is essential to the future of our nation, but listening to what Michelle Obama, and other Obama supporters say, one gets the clear implication that they believe that Barack Obama is some sort of political savior.
It’s the same sort of attitude I’ve noticed from some Ron Paul supporters, who have said in comments and on the Internet that freedom and America are doomed if Ron Paul is not elected President.
Assertions like this are not only wrong, they’re dangerous. Once you start putting that much faith in a political leader that is a flawed human being just like the rest of us, it really does become the cult of personality that some people have started talking about in connection with Barack Obama.
Whenever I hear any American saying that they’d “do anything” a politician says, like Halle Berry does (and I think she accurately reflects what many other Obama supporters believe), it scares me to death. Leaders like that are not good for America, and they’re not good for liberty.
