"Obamaism" 101

A more rational definition of "Obamaism" would describe it as a pathology, rather than an ideology. It is an alloy of impervious credulity and militant leader-worship that reveals itself in the tendency to invest one's hopes in a figure who supposedly embodies hope and change.

Obama and the "Predator Left" by William Norman Grigg

Dear Leader: The 2009 version.

Many ancient societies were ruled by a figure regarded as a divine emperor-king, a transcendent figure whose goodness and power not only protected his subjects from harm, but also made the rains descend, the fields fertile, and the kingdom prosperous.

Modern Americans are too sophisticated for such primitive nonsense. Rather than a divine emperor-king, they have a "Commander-in-Chief" who holds the teeming terrorist masses at bay, labors to "heal the planet," and dispenses wealth in great compassionate abundance on desperate, otherwise hopeless people.

See? Those are two completely different concepts.

Dear Leader: The 2003 version.

Whatever the powers attributed to him by his minions and worshipers, Barack Obama is the first politician to be seriously recognized as the "President of Planet Earth." In any case, that's the title given to him by Howard Fineman in a Newsweek column that was less a work of opinion journalism than the printed equivalent of a prolonged fit of public rectal osculation.

"Obama isn't going to be sworn in as planetary president. But it doesn't matter; in his mind, he already is," grovels Fineman, who — it must be clear — offered that view approvingly. "In office for a mere nine months, Obama is now a full-blown `ism.'"

As defined by Fineman, "Obamaism" is " the idea that there must be shared global responsibility for virtually every problem we face." By his reckoning, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama was less an individual commendation as it was a ratification of the "ism" Obama supposedly embodies.

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