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Shazzer I hear what you are saying when you say that the video takes Obama’s literal words out of context. That is definitely true, but it does capture the sentiment and meaning of the words that he is inserting in context.
In America, we have learned through decades, centuries and generations to make sure that we listen to the words coming out of both sides of a politicians mouth. We have to ‘read between the lines’ and understand not just the literal meaning of a speech delivered by a pol that was created by a speech writer, and we have to dig into the inflection, the way its delivered, and the body language and much more.
As I put all those things together and watch Barack Obama, this joking video of McCain’s resonates because there is definitely a hint of truth. If it is an insult to Obama, it is an insult because McCain has possibly manage to uncover a raw nerve, a nerve that actually exists, and has some level of truth in it.
Now, I did disclaim the video’s author at the beginning and even the McCain campaign says this was put out to their own group as a joke.
The edits and cuts on the words is not the point at all.
The point is the concept that Obama is starting to buy his own political BS and starting to possibly surround himself with a few to many ‘yes’ people and that could be a significant problem.
If you watch any of the interviews with Michelle and Barack, you can see that she has helped to keep him grounded a bit.
But when you start absorbing the energy of tens of thousands of people, after preaching platitudes to them, you are going to start thinking that the platitudes actually do something.
Here’s the Wikipedia description of the Messiah Complex:
Messiah complex is a state in which the individual believes themselves to be, or destined to become, the saviour of the particular field, a group, an event, a time period, or in an extreme scenario, the world. This could also be the state in which a group views an individual as a messiah, such as followers of a cult leader. The cult leader doesn’t have to claim to be a messiah, but if he is treated as such by his followers, it can also be classified as such.
People with a messiah complex tend to see themselves as saviors to a specific group of people or a specific field, making claims of their own glory, or claiming a self-awareness of their own gift and how that gift can effect a group of people or a field of life.
Messiah Complex may also refer to a person who has formed a habit of "creating" crisis in a given culture, only to later "rescue" or "save" the poor helpless soul upon whom the crisis has been perpetrated.
In the most extreme cases, people with a messiah complex may see themselves as spiritual/religious messiahs with transcendent powers who are destined to save the w
End of Quote
Now I do not think that Obama started out thinking he was the saviour of ‘a group’ like ‘politicians in Washington’ or something.
However, his campaign, his staff, and the masses behind him are definitely pushing him up on a pedestal creating the Messiah Complex for him(see definition above).
Now, if he could keep his own head out of the clouds, he’d probably be OK, but the more he preaches (as opposed to actually doing something or accomplishing something) the more I start to ‘feel’ (reference to the message of the video resonating with me, not my acceptance of edited sound bites as fact) that he is becoming susceptible to the belief that only he can ’save us’ or ’save Washington’.
Its one thing to consider yourself the best person for the job, and fight to get the job. Its a whole other thing to consider yourself the only person that can do the job at all, and simultaneously ‘preach’ to your supporters in a way that makes them codependent on your getting the job to save them.
When he preaches to people, he’s doing the opposite of empowering them. He’s taking power away from them, to elevate himself under the promise that he and only he can save them.
Well, that is where the fallacy of his approach tends to prove him as bad as most other politicians in the Democrat and Republican Party.
As a better alternative, he should work to empower those people to go out and achieve a goal, a result that helps them and helps others and helps our country and our world.
So the thing is this video clip does a good job of going in an slicing out all those ‘extra preachy’ segments and displays them for what they are.
If Obama would remove that preachy crap from his rhetoric and his speeches and stop frenzy feeding off the energy of the crowds to lift himself up he’d have a much better chance of actually succeeding to the White House and more importantly succeeding at getting something done in the White House. (He’d also sound a lot less like the Democratic version of George W Bush, who also likes to use preachy language, even though he flubs it pretty bad.)
There was a marked shift in Obama’s approach right around the time that Bill Clinton was skewered(which doesn’t bother me, because let’s face it Bill Clinton is about as corrupt of a tool as is out there, just a notch below Cheney and Bush). To Skewer Clinton, Obama had to basically go and out preach Clinton, who has long had the style of feeding off of the supporters around him.(See Hillary Clinton for classic Co-dependent example)
Once Obama went down that path, it would appear that there was no turning back(so far~see I have hope!). It was compounded by Obama’s ties already in place with his church. He wore his religion on his sleeve and when his own church turned out to be as flawed as most churches are, he had to denounce the church and his pastor and get up on a super pedestal to preach to the country about how we needed to come together to heal over our racial divide, when in fact he was covering up the racial divide in his own family, church and circle of friends. He basically projected his problems on to the rest of the country.
That’s not to say that the rest of the country doesn’t have racial problems, but not every person in the country has Obama’s racial problems(when I say Obama’s racial problems I’m referring to having friends, mentors, and family that hold, espouse, and get up on national tv to push racists views on others).
For example, I don’t associate myself with a church, so I don’t have the burden of having to defend a pastor that has views that do not agree with my own.
Obama’s life story is a nice example, and there are some moral lessons to be learned there, but that does not mean that large parts of the rest of the country haven’t already learned those moral lessons and started living them years or decades ago. Just because Barack chose to associate himself with one backward segment of the country it is not my fault, nor your fault and at some levels it is not the fault nor problem of those of us outside Chicago.
And so its with that imho that Barack Obama loses any or all authority to preach to me or to anyone. Talk to me, work with me, get people engaged. Fine.
Preach to me and you have crossed the line.
We’re all created equal and in that his preachings have as much weight as anyone’s, ergo none at all. Its worthless babble when he preaches and with all the things wrong in the world and the country, we don’t need someone running the country that wastes time with worthless babble. He might make a good blogger, but with that preachy hang up of his, he could make a flat out awful President.
