More impressions about Obama

I thought I would give a few more vague impressions I have concerning Obama, relating to his sanity.

An effective manipulative technique to make an issue seem more of moment than it otherwise would be is to encourage the audience to view it as THE issue. People have the innate tendency to want to view one issue as THE issue. I.e., to view precisely one issue as so important that if you have the wrong opinion about it, well, you're screwed. This is because there is one issue that is always THE issue. Don't get addicted to oral or rectal sodomy, and congratulations, you're already half-way to virtue; at any rate, you quite literally are not screwed.

What strikes me about Obama is that he comes across as believing that his becoming president is THE issue. He has a way of projecting that if we only believe in him and put him in the White House, voilá, he will make our country pure again in the important sense. There are lots of people who try to manipulate thus. For instance, preachers will tell you that if you only believe in the Bible, you will be saved. Or financial gurus will try to get you to believe that if you only follow ther advice with sufficient enthusiasm and belief, money will sprout up all about you and you will get rich. Obama is a little different, though, from the Suze Ormans or the typical evangelical preachers. He doesn't so much play on fear for he seems to think our country (with at least one important exception, namely him) already is screwed-up; the only thing to fear would be more of the same, and most people just aren't very scared of that. But once he comes in, unifies the country and maketh THE GREAT CHANGE, we will be saved, he seems to think.

I could cynically say that Obama is being manipulative, but I actually don't feel he especially is that. My impression is that Obama actually believes that he can make THE GREAT CHANGE in our political system that will lead our country to pristine springs of prosperity and togetherness. Obama is crazy, I'm inclined to think. What is very strange about Obama is that notwithstanding he is crazy, his opinions are fairly normal. Most crazy people rightly feel that THE issue, i.e., the issue to be obsessed about, is always the craziest, weirdest issue imaginable. In a society with correct opinions about sodomy, THE issue is not important, and in other societies, THE issue will tend to be the issue which seems most insane--the issue which the issues of crazy people most tend to resemble--because largely people become crazy to find it. At least in a comparatively pro-sodomy society such as ours, the typical crazy person will be wise enough to believe THE issue is about the bizarre. But Obama does not seem to have done so. What he seems to be saying is that if we just do the typical things liberal Democrats have been suggesting of late, e.g., pull out of Iraq, make the taxes a little less regressive, make health insurance somewhat easier to get, Wow! we will be saved as he parts the Red Sea of disunity before us ennabling our trip into the great promised land of THE GREAT CHANGE.

It is very hard to convince people that THE issue is THE issue, because THE issue (sodomy) is something people laugh at, and because many have addictions that make them feel THE issue is not the issue. What Obama asks of us is easy. He just wants people to believe the standard things that democrats have been saying for years. It is much easier to get people to believe normal opinions. After all, people with self-doubt want to believe in normal, and since Obama comes across as wanting us to believe we are all screwed up, his remedy of normal has a certain appeal. It's a help he has a booming, powerful voice. Zombie people like to be rescued by the strong. The big help to Obama, though, is that he actually believes. Sincerity is hard to fake, and I'm not inclined he has to.

I can imagine how Obama might have become crazy. I have read that in much of his childhood he was separated from his mother. Very possibly he viewed the separation as caused by something screwed-up. In a situation like that it can very easily seem emotionally that not succeeding here, not succeeding in defeating whatever caused his mother to be away, is a defeat by screwing-up forces equivalent to his own self getting screwed up. This can lead to an obsession. What is most peculiar about Obama is that whereas almost any normal crazy person would view his loss as having been caused by extraterrestrials from a planet orbitting Arcturus, or his mother secretly having pledged herself to the rules of the gypsy council, or some other bizarre such theory and that the answer lay only in deciphering the secret codes she has given him that lay all about him, instead he just seems to have decided that the answer to preventing such problems is the most conventional one.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against Obama because I think him a little crazy the way he comes across as believing himself on a mission. On the contrary, craziness rather suggests anti-sodomy characteristics I want in a leader. The craziness itself can be annoying and even disabling if excessive, but it says so much good about character, I can live with it. What bothers me is not that Obama is crazy, but that he is not looney enough for a crazy person. Given his craziness, such absence of looneyness doesn't suggest effective anti-sodomy characteristics, and rather undoes what his craziness suggests about his character. Accordingly, his personality doesn't suggests to me one way or the other whether he is virtuous. And the craziness itself will be a disadvantage, especially since he doesn't appear looney enough to profit from it. I don't know why he is so crazy without being looney. I suspect these traits are in his makeup. It's a very strange combination, I am inclined to think, and can't offer any explanations other than that combinations with small chances can happen, especially in a huge world like ours.