Quotes of the day

How do you start that conversation with followers of a Cult of Personality? ‘Cult of personality’ is a much more troubling symptom, and one which needs a healthy discussion, too. For example, how many today even know what that phrase means?

RickZ on January 19, 2009 at 6:52 AM

It’s going to be a very difficult task, no doubt about it. The problem is more severe than just getting past Obama’s cult of personality, which will inevitably fade over the next few years. The diehard Obama True Believers are not much different from the hardcore constituency of the Democrat Party, and cannot be communicated with or educated under any president – they would have been no less mindless in their devotion to John Kerry, they just would have been less open enthusiastic about it. The great mass of middle American voters will sour on the hero worship stuff, not only because of Obama’s personal deficiencies and the outcome of his policies, but because the American character is just too ornery and individualistic. They’ll simply get tired of him, and the media worship will just accelerate that process, because it will make Obama an annoying omnipresence they can never escape from. It’s already happening – I’ve heard a lot of people grumbling over the in-your-face excesses of the inaugural, and heard a whole room full of people groan out load when they saw a CBS commercial using Obama’s campaign slogan to advertise their TV shows. Obama might be the first president to generate a significant amount of public fatigue before he even takes office.

The real problem is communicating with an electorate that has largely abandoned its sense of reason in favor of pure emotionalism. Too many of them respond to mindless, and often blatantly illogical, emotional manipulation, a state of affairs the cultural Left has been deliberately building for generations. Was there every any real doubt that these massive stimulus and bailout bills would get passed? There was a brave moment when congressional Republicans tried to slow down the gravy train, in the first days after the Fannie Mae crisis broke, but it seemed inevitable that the Treasury spigot would be opened, because it’s become inconceivable that the federal government would not react to any crisis by loudly announcing its intention to immediately spend a huge amount of money. It’s also inconceivable that they would not react to a problem in the private sector by trying to seize control of the industry involved. The public has been conditioned to demand nothing less, and they demand it immediately – the media whips them into a frenzy. It’s the same technique that car salesmen use to keep you from wandering off the lot to carefully consider the $30,000 purchase you’re about to make.

Over the next year or two, the panic-spending approach will begin to go bust, either because the titanic Obama deficits cause the economic system to collapse, or because horrific tax increases will be slapped on the American people to pay for all this “stimulus.” This will be the moment to speak frankly to the voters, and patiently, passionately explain the dangerous precedent of allowing government to seize control of the private sector. – especially when blind worship of a power-hungry, charismatic leader is mixed in. Republican politicians must make them understand they’re about to take their nation over a cliff, and resist this disastrous course in every particular, no matter how many of their esteemed Democrat colleagues must be exposed and censured in the process. The voters are still, for the most part, adults – they just need to be reminded of what they are, what they were, and what they could be again. This will be a painful process – it will be much easier for Republicans to embrace Obama and his allies, announce what a swell bunch of guys they think they are, and hope the media rewards them for being “bipartisan.”

Doctor Zero on January 19, 2009 at 10:40 AM