A new explanation is given for why so many people hate President Obama. It is based on two historic inflection points that cause people to blame Obama, wrongly, for the loss of American greatness. by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
I can explain why so many Americans are angry about President Obama and dislike or hate him with passion, and why it has little to do with his actions and policies. But first I must examine the confluence of two historical inflection points that explains so much resentment and opposition to Obama.
The first is the increasingly recognized but painful reality that in almost all respects that matter to citizens the USA is no longer the great nation it once was. As a recent Time magazine issue proclaimed, especially a great essay by Fareed Zakaria, the US is in decline, similar to what happened to other once dominant nations. The Great Recession and the huge numbers of unemployed, underemployed, foreclosed, homeless, hungry and other pained citizens have drilled into the public consciousness that America is like a terminally ill cancer victim. There is little realistic hope for truly better times. For example, new research data show that upward mobility in the US is now worse than in a number of other industrialized countries, such as France. The American Dream, in other words, is dead. The game is lost.
Consider the incessant use of Obama's new phrase "winning the future." This time it is for his campaign to stay in office. In one rational sense it seems to recognize that current times are bad, but Obama has totally refused to acknowledge that the country he leads has already "lost the present." He is in a dangerous state of denial or, alternatively, cannot find the courage to be brutally honest to his citizens. To openly confront the truth about the present would provide the motivation and a needed sense of urgency to adopt policies and programs to turn the curve around. It would make the notion of winning the future against so much domestic corporate corruption and foreign competition a whole lot more challenging.
The thing to notice about President Obama when you look at him when he talks about national conditions and what needs to be done, or when he has to speak about national tragedies, is the lack of visible, genuine and strong human emotions. He seems always to be talking about things in an intellectual, professorial style. Analysis, rather than principles seem to shape his thinking.
Great leaders connect to their audiences by openly expressing deeply felt passionate emotions. They feel our pain through much more than mere words. You relate to them because they really seem to relate to you. Obama has what psychiatrists speak of as flat affect. When he campaigned for the presidency a New York Times writer referred to "his soft diction, flat affect and refusal to project anger." Sure he can give great speeches now and then, but ordinarily his style shows an existential dissociation from the painful realities he is talking about and addressing through presidential actions. While Obama personally won the future through timely smiles and clever words, he hardly ever connects to most people in a visceral way when it comes to the most painful situations.
The result of his personality and style is that there is little reason for Americans to feel confident that Obama can or will turn the nation around for the better.
Now consider the second inflection point. In the history of American presidents Obama defines a historic inflection point, namely when white Americans have lost their majority status to minorities, notably blacks and Hispanics. The first African-American president with a foreign name represents a remarkable departure from history, not just our line of presidents but something much larger for American society. He won the presidency because non-whites, not whites, voted so strongly for him.
Put the two historic inflection points together. The US has lost its greatness and at the same time American society has shifted from a white to a darker skin character.
Those Americans, who harbor so many strong negative feelings towards Obama in their own minds, either explicitly or implicitly, create causality between the two inflection points. In other words, the loss of national greatness is blamed on the loss of a white, Caucasian society. This is far different than ordinary racism. It runs deeper. This explanation also helps explain why so many of the people who reject Obama do not see themselves as racists. No, with my explanation it is better to see all the anger and hatred about Obama as connected to a patriotic, nationalistic frame of mind. Of course, Obama-hating people have put the blame on the wrong people. The single most powerful reason why the US has declined is its capture by a white-dominated corporate dictatorship and wealthy upper class.
Obama himself shoulders considerable responsibility for wrongly blaming non-white people. His intellectual detachment or existential dissociation from conditions that are greatly impacting so many Americans, especially whites who have lost a good middle class life or economic security, makes him seem alien, not a genuine part of American culture. This sustains all the nonsense about him not being an American citizen.
Obama does not connect in all the right and necessary ways to be a true and effective national leader, not like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did. The inevitable consequence of his shortcomings is that he pursues public policies that are wrongheaded and ineffective in delivering what the public wants, including deep reforms of the political and government system. He has not delivered the changes so many Americans were waiting for and that he once promised. How can he? He does not really connect to most suffering Americans that see their country already a loser in the new global reality at exactly the same time it has become a nation overrun by people of color. He does not openly and strongly attack the corporate dictatorship that hijacked the US economy and political system. So many Americans, not just those on the conservative right but also progressives on the left, see Obama as the president of elites, the wealthy, the powerful, not their own. Also, like Republicans, he can be seen as someone sacrificing the middle class and the American economy to globalization, foreign competitors, and the corporate powers benefiting from foreign activities.
When Obama speaks of winning the future he reminds Americans seeing themselves as victims that we have lost the present, something he refuses to acknowledge. His existential dissociation keeps him from being one of us. For being a great leader and president, being smart is not enough.
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Don't hold your breath waiting for Obama to attack the corporate dictatorship. Said dictatorship vetted Obama years ago, filled his campaign coffers to overflowing, and orchestrated his election. He will never buck his corporate puppet masters. The corporate dictatorship, with help from the CIA (google: Wayne Madsen Obama CIA), created the perfect front for the US empire: a biracial black face that acts as kryptonite against dissent and criticism. 99% of black folks have lost all common sense and rational thinking when it comes to Obama. Half the whites on the Left aren't much better; the other half won't call his ass out for fear of being labeled racists. This leaves actual bigots, Fox News, and Tea Party types whose rantings are easily dismissed as being racist. The silence and tepid hand wringing on the Left is allowing this cyborg president to cement the greed, imperalist agenda of the corporate class. Said corporate class is high-fiving itself like mad at their good fortune in creating the perfect Manchurian Candidate.
Obama's face may be black but for racial classification, the man is biracial. Why are Obama and Tiger Woods considered black while Keanu Reeves, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Beals are white? Carey and Beals are products of a black and white parents. Reeves has one Asian parent and one white parent.
Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: March 9, 2011 11:06:06 AM
Very insightful column.
I suppose if the Republicans can produce a better candidate, I'll be willing to keep an open mind. However, if the Radical Right or the neoconservatives manage to get one of their own on the ballot, I'll have to stick with the Devil we know and hope that in his second term he's able to actually do something about the "corporate dictatorship".
It's not out of the question. After all, George W. Bush managed to actually show some leadership in the last year of his second term. It might have been too-little-too-late, but at least it was something.
Posted By: Nobiius
Date: March 9, 2011 03:46:59 PM
Hi Joel - just wanted to add my two cents, and hopefully I'm not TOO far in the minority of americans on this.
First off, I don't hate Obama - at least not any more so than most politicians in general. Strong dislike for the general group.
The main issues I have with him are that effectively, he's more of the same, and I see him as either overly ignorant or just wrong. He was supposed to be a constitutional authority, but has continued prior administrations' trampling of the oath he took.
He's continued (and expanded some as well as effectively initiating more) wrongful wars, hasn't attempted to address long-standing offenses against our republic such as the drug war, and has broken faith with us by welching on promises he made to get into office (states' rights on medi MJ, closing Gitmo, getting us out of Iraq, etc.).
He's just a typical politician, and is effectively Bush 2.0 IMHO. He promised us change, but I haven't liked what little we've received thus far. Like most on the hill, he's an oath-breaker. And I simply cannot abide that. It's not that hard to look at your sworn oath, and then say to yourself "Well, perhaps I should read this document and the words of those who helped contruct it to make sure I really DO execute this office faithfully."
Generally disappointing. And sadly, we'll likely continue to get more of the same unless everyone can rise above divide & conquer tactics such as fragmenting us against ourselves instead of the monolithic conspiracy Kennedy mentioned via false left/right, conservative/liberal, republican/democrat polarizations. People need to realize that when all these sides keep moving the same direction on several very very large issues, they're being played and really need to wise up already.
