In the August 18, 2011 edition of The American Thinker,<\/i> writer Matt Patterson published an article titled, \u201cObama: The Affirmative Action President.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patterson wrote, \u201cYears from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. \u00a0How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world\u2019s largest economy, direct the world\u2019s most powerful military, execute the world\u2019s most consequential job?\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cImagine a future historian examining Obama’s pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a \u2018community organizer;\u2019 a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote \u201cpresent\u201d); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. \u00a0He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking at Obama from a distance, Patterson provides an accurate picture of how any objective observer might see him.\u00a0 But how does Obama see himself?\u00a0 Putting ourselves inside his skin and inside his head would be a far more interesting and instructive exercise.<\/p>\n
Just imagine a young black man living in a family of all white people\u2026 mother, grandfather, and grandmother\u2026 after having been deserted by his black father.\u00a0 Just as welfare recipients come to resent the hand that feeds them, it is easy to see how a young black man growing up in a white family, his skin color a constant reminder that he was \u201cdifferent,\u201d would come to resent his white parent and grandparents\u2026 and by extension, all white people.<\/p>\n
Obama stressed his struggle with self-identity in his book Dreams from My Father<\/i>.\u00a0 Regarding white people, he said, \u201cI ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.\u201d<\/p>\n
In describing the man who gave him the only job he ever held outside the halls of government, his job as a \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d in south Chicago, he said, \u201cThere was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. \u00a0And white.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time he entered college, Obama was fully committed to the racial divide between blacks and whites.\u00a0 Of his years as a student at Occidental College, he wrote, \u201cIt remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names\u2026 I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn\u2019t speak to my own. \u00a0It was into my father\u2019s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I\u2019d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have all been confronted on occasion by challenges for which we felt totally unprepared\u2026\u00a0 challenges that appeared insurmountable.\u00a0 That being the case, it is all the more mystifying how a man of Obama\u2019s meager background and experience could believe that he should be seen as a viable candidate for president of the United States.\u00a0 How could a young man, such as Patterson describes, suddenly see himself in that role, knowing that he has never run so much as a sidewalk lemonade stand, knowing that he has no qualifications whatsoever for the job?<\/p>\n
What must it be like to one day look into a mirror and say to the person reflected therin, \u201cYou\u2019re a pretty good looking guy.\u00a0 You were lucky enough to grow up in the tropics, in Hawaii and Indonesia, and even though your parents and grandparents weren\u2019t wealthy, you were lucky enough to go to a private prep school and Ivy League colleges on someone else\u2019s dime.\u00a0 You spent several years working with black activists on the streets of Chicago and you spent a few years as a back-bencher in the Illinois state senate.\u00a0 Hey!!\u00a0 You\u2019re something really special!\u00a0 You should run for president of the United States.\u201d\u00a0 What sort of man could have that conversation with himself\u2026 and do it with a straight face?<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Obama, there was an oversupply of pent-up white guilt within the ranks of the Democrat Party.\u00a0 And in spite of the fact that party leaders knew him to be not only unqualified, but ineligible as well, he was the sort of \u201crock star\u201d politician who would appeal to white liberals and young white Democrats.\u00a0 It mattered little that he would be incapable of governing; all they cared about was that he would look good before the TV cameras and that he could read convincingly from a teleprompter.\u00a0 They would put the necessary words in his mouth.<\/p>\n
But, of all of Obama\u2019s current responsibilities, his relationship with the military is where he appears to be most out of place and ill at ease\u2026 a pair of brown shoes at a black tie ball.\u00a0 In neither of his memoirs does he give the slightest hint that he ever considered enrolling in the ROTC programs at either Occidental College or Columbia University.\u00a0 Yet, just sixteen years after graduating from Harvard Law School, he stood before the American people and proclaimed that he felt capable of serving as commander in chief of the largest and most powerful military machine in the history of the world.\u00a0 What sort of outsized ego would that require?<\/p>\n
Those of us who\u2019ve placed our lives on the line as members of the uniformed services can\u2019t help but experience a stomach-turning revulsion each time we see Obama bounding down the steps of Marine One on the south lawn of the White House, flashing a sloppy half-salute at the well-turned out young Marine standing at the base of the stairs.\u00a0 Any normal person of Obama\u2019s background and experience would feel an overwhelming sense of inadequacy.\u00a0 But what goes though Obama\u2019s mind?\u00a0 And what goes through the minds of those young Marines?<\/p>\n
To serve as a member of the Silent Drill Platoon and Color Guard at the 8th <\/sup>& I Street Barracks in Washington\u2026 the Marine contingent responsible for guard and escort duty at the White House\u2026 is a much coveted assignment in the Marine Corps.\u00a0 But it would be interesting to know what went through the minds of all those young Marines when they first learned that Barack Obama,\u00a0 a man who was too cowardly to wear the uniform of the U.S. military, a usurper who was ineligible to serve in the office, would be occupying the White House for at least the next four years.\u00a0 How could they bring themselves to salute a man so undeserving of their respect?<\/p>\n Most Marines would rather take their chances on the field of battle in Iraq or Afghanistan than to suffer the embarrassment of standing in the rain next to Obama, dressed in spiffy blue-white dress uniform, holding an umbrella over the usurper\u2019s head while he addressed a small group of fawning sycophants in the White House rose garden.<\/p>\n And while it is easy to understand the revulsion felt by the men and women of the enlisted ranks, what goes through the minds of long-serving generals and admirals, their chests covered with row upon row of medals and service ribbons, evidence of their long service to God and country,\u00a0 when they are forced to salute him and address him as \u201csir\u201d or \u201cmister president?\u201d\u00a0 What sort of colossal ego does it take for such an unremarkable man to expect that kind of treatment from men and women of real accomplishment?<\/p>\n What all of this tells us is that what motivates Barack Obama is far more than a super-inflated ego, far more than pathological narcissism.\u00a0 He is, as Dr. Samuel Vaknin has described him, a \u201ctotal incognito with zero accomplishment.\u201d\u00a0 But even that does not describe how Obama sees himself, what goes on inside his head.\u00a0 Instead, we can only conclude that Obama\u2019s opinion of himself is simply beyond human comprehension.\u00a0 Just as the human mind is incapable of comprehending the infinite nature of the universe, neither can the human mind comprehend the boundaries of what Obama appears to see in himself.<\/p>\n When Obama proclaimed in his June 4, 2008 nomination acceptance speech that, \u201cThis was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,\u201d most of us laughed because we knew that just the opposite was true.\u00a0 But there were many who actually believed him and were inspired by his soaring rhetoric.\u00a0 What those of us who laughed knew, intuitively, is that what appeared to be bravado was actually a cover for nothingness.<\/p>\n What best describes Obama is a brief two sentence quotation from Eric Hoffer, the renowned longshoreman\/philosopher, who said, \u201cOur greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness.\u00a0 The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, Barack Obama is an evil man and the political philosophy that guiders his every word and deed are truly ugly.\u00a0 It is that evil and that ugliness that Obama seeks to hide by his bravado and his pretentiousness; it is the emptiness of his promise of hope and change that is at the heart of his pretentions.<\/p>\n And while a majority of Americans still find Obama to be \u201clikeable,\u201d an even larger majority have come to see that there is no real substance to him.\u00a0 As Hofer tells us, \u201cThe hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Where Barack Obama is concerned, there is no there, there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the August 18, 2011 edition of The American Thinker, writer Matt Patterson published an article titled, \u201cObama: The Affirmative Action President.\u201d Patterson wrote, \u201cYears from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and … Continue reading