Here is the new breed of Obama critic. This wouldn't have happened a year ago, but now suddenly, everyone has seen the light when it comes to Obama:
There is a personality type common among the Left’s partisans, and it has a name: Holden Caulfield. He is adolescent, perpetually disappointed, and ever on the lookout for phoniness and hypocrisy...He believes with Barack Obama that the only reason (e.g.) Staples does not pay its part-time associates more or schedule them for more hours is so that it can pad its executive pay and protect its “billions” in annual profits.
[...]
Barack Obama has a great, big, heaping dose of Holden Caulfield in him.[Source: National Review Online article by Kevin D. Williamson]
I have read The Catcher in the Rye, and I liked it. I thought Caulfield was intelligent, but that he was dealt a difficult life by his rich but inattentive parents who let him wonder through expensive private schools. I especially liked his spunky little sister with that strange name Phoebe (strange for me when I was reading the book for the first time at age thirteen), and how Caulfield decides to change (somewhat) if only to take care of her.
But in this moment of critic proliferation, almost everyone who writes critically about Obama resorts to explaining his behavior as someone who really doesn't know better: a foolish adolescent.
That in itself is racist, as though a black leader should be excused for his behavior and mistakes with a reference to his immaturity of one form or another: emotional, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, aesthetic.
But Obama is not immature, in any sense.
He is smart. He may have fudged some of his academic papers, but he persistently fought in politics, and won his way through.
He has a strong personality, and can battle through tough competitions.
He is an eloquent speaker. I don't have to agree with what he says, but he says what he has to say very well indeed.
He has a sense of humor, making people laugh during those dour State of the Union events, and at more relaxed moments in front of the press. He teases people around him with confidence, including Michelle Obama, who seems oblivious to his humor. His latest fracas with Buzzfeed was an attempt at humor to get a point across, and it was cleverly done.
The argument can be made about his ethical and spiritual authenticity, but that is nothing to do with immaturity, but in fact a sophistication to convince people, the American public, of the worthiness of some unworthy ideas.
And he may have to deal with Michelle Obama's inferior aesthetics, but he has never made a false move with his presentations.
So, we should take him at face value: An American President.
But we should take him as an American President with a leftist, and even a far left, world view. This causes him to say stupid things. But, it isn't his stupidity, rather his ideology, which does that.
So, instead of getting all twisted up giving him all kinds of excuses, let's drop the screen and reveal the emperor.
Our inability, or more precisely, our resistance, in identifying Obama for who and what he is will have dangerous, and far-reaching, consequences: Jihadi bombs in American and Western cities; illegal immigrants competing for scarce jobs; welfare criminals; race warfare; class divisions; and so on, and so on.
Obama is no adolescent Caulfield. He has his vision and agenda for the world, which the listless Caulfield could not muster even for the next day.
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat