Post Obatamy Syndrome

I am the world's biggest loser. As a kid, Charlie Brown kicked sand in my face. If I had gone to high school with Gary Coleman, he would've taken my lunch money. I am a loser in business. I am a loser in love. I am a loser in life. It pains me too much to recite all of my losses, both because it makes me relive my pain and because it is an astoundingly exhaustive procedure to archive all of my myriad failures.
But I, the world's biggest loser, will go to my grave with one eternal satisfaction. I was not duped by Obama. I never fell for his smoke and mirrors and his cheesy stagecraft. I recognized that he was all form and no function. He was all shine and no shoe. He was all package and no product. If anyone thinks I'm too harsh on their deity, I defy them to present any presidential nominee in this country's history who had a thinner resume. Take your time. Go to Wikipedia. Get out the history books.
But of course the Obatamicized will not page through the history books or even scan Wikipedia, for that matter. Facts do not concern the Obatamicized. It is just a given that their deity is superior to mere mortals. True, there are Democratic partisans who recognize Obama for what he is but who will vote for literally anybody the blue team puts forth. They know Obama is a charlatan, but he is their charlatan.
At the core of the Obama movement lie the Obatamicized. The Obatamicized are not necessarily stupid, although that demographic is sufficiently represented. But the Obatamicized are decidedly anti-analytical, anti-rational, and anti-intellectual. They are deliberately ignorant and willfully blind to inconvenient truths. Or convenient truths for that matter. Or truth of any kind. Truth involves facts and facts are a buzz kill. Obatomies vote with the part of the brain that selects American Idol finalists. They are going to vote for the younger, taller, handsomer, deeper-voiced candidate. Change we need.
There are two qualities at work in the post-Obatamy brain: religion and cosmetics. It is hard to separate the two because theirs is is a religion based on cosmetics. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what you can do in style. Above all else ask nothing about your candidate. Ask not about Ayers. Ask not about Dorhn. Ask not about Khalidi. Ask not about Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines and Jimmy Johnson. Ask not about ACORN or Philip Berg or Tony Rezko. Ask not about your candidate's shady and secretive campaign financing. Ask not about your candidate's achievements or even his proposals. Time spent in mental labor is time not spent savoring his greatness.
People are inherently religious but traditional religion is perceived as boring and irrelevant. Of course, religiosity has to be channeled somewhere. There has to be an outlet. If 80% of America still attended church on Sunday, would Obama have a prayer? Would we see lost souls in T-shirts with Obama's face and “Hope” as its caption? Would we have stadia full of zombies chanting “Yes we can” and holding placards reading “Change We Need, ” clueless as to what might be in store for them should their deity convert the White House into his personal cathedral?
Would we encounter, as I have, the mesmerized Obatomy victims who cannot put into words the beatific? Ask them what he said and you get answers like “You just got to see it.” The content of the verbiage (yielding to the benefit of the doubt that content is present) cannot be separated from the speaker. The word and the flesh are one and the same.
We cannot overemphasize the Obatomy religiosity and it is a theme we will return to from time to time. For now, let us briefly consider the pitfalls of deifying a living entity. The old deities will not grow more foolish with the motion of time. Such cannot be stated about living deities. The sins and the gaffes will hit critical mass. The landslide of disillusionment will smother the pilgrims who have not already fled in terror. Eventually, Toto will tug on the curtain and you will be unable to ignore the man behind the curtain.
This writer was once a religious person in the extreme. This writer is not given to the modern practice of introspecting out loud. Thus, I will spare you my philosophical transformations. But my religious experience has left me with two permanent attributes. One, because I was a staunch believer, I tend to be respectful of other people's faith. Two, because I was exposed to religion at an early age, I was immunized against all things cultish. I can walk through the Valley of Scientologists and fear no evil.
Admittedly I am a bit less respectful of people who follow a living, breathing guru. I am less respectful still when the guru harbors political ambition. Religion, by its very nature involves the suspension of normal thought processes. Dogma does not always fare so well when it is pitted against the light of reason. But it does not matter much to secularists because religion usually involves the transcendent. I am content to sit out the celestial heaven versus heaven on Earth argument.
When traditional religion enters the mundane it is usually to decide which day of the week is the Sabbath or which foods and beverages can be consumed. I respectfully respect with maximum respect the suspension of the rational process in these decisions. But it is harder to be so respectful of the followers of a political guru. It is just too dangerous to suspend reason in political decisions.
What it took me a long time to realize is that religion performs a socially utilitarian function. It allowed for the suspension of reason at specific, designated times. Thus, people were less likely to permanently suspend reason as a lifestyle choice. In my unscientific conversations with the Obatamicized, a pattern of willful ignorance emerged. Most of them had zero curiosity about Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson and the Fannie Mae/ DNC/ACORN nexus. I don't think any of them could identify Khalidi or Rezko or Philip Berg. When asked about Ayers and Dohrn they had a vague idea of who they were they answered with a uniform “that was a long time ago and he barely knew them.”
The Obatomy victims were unaware that their guru's campaign had donated $800,000 to ACORN. They had heard about voter fraud but dismissed it because Fox News had reported on it. They were apathetic about Obama's mysterious campaign contributions. My stamina was limited. We can argue about whether or not it is raining, but if one party adamantly refuses to look out the window, why continue the discussion?
Yes, I am the world's biggest loser but I but I have some inner peace. I never fell for the Obama hokum. I did not believe the hype. I was not duped. I did not turn off my mental faculties to better absorb his splendor. I did not bow down to my social superiors in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street or inside the Beltway. I did not bow down to the masters of the media. Above all else, I did not fall victim to the stupid slogans and the empty rhetoric. For all of my feelings of inferiority I have never felt prouder to be who I am. In defeat I found victory. I never chanted the slogans. I never drank the Kool-Aid. I never received an Obatomy.