(Not The Bee) It was always one of the most frustrating aspects of Barack Obama’s rise to power. While the famous keynote speech he delivered at the 2004 Democratic National Convention catapulted him to fame, the rhetoric he used there was a startling departure from his previously established reputation as an instigator and agitator.
Obama cut his teeth in the dirty arena of corrupt Chicago politics, having learned the duplicitous art of “community organizing” from some of the most notorious theorists (Saul Alinsky), and even criminal mentors (Bill Ayers).
I remember desperately asking my less politically engaged colleagues and friends – those who had bitten down hard on the false promises of “hope and change” – “Where exactly is the hope?”
It was at first a campaign, and later a presidency, constructed entirely around:
- Grievance mongering: These people have taken from you for years and they owe you, so it’s time to take what is yours.
- Fear mongering: These people are evil, and will mistreat, abuse, or kill you if you don’t do this now.
- Race-baiting: Pay no attention to all the positive indications of racial harmony that surround you; they are a mirage that veils the underlying spirit of Jim Crow that lives loudly in communities of color.
That isn’t hope. It was never hope. It was never going to be hope. Why? Because hopeful people aren’t easily manipulated or whipped into a frenzy; fearful people are. But you can’t market yourself as an agent of fear. After all, people are far less likely to purchase a copy of, “The Audacity of Fear” than “The Audacity of Hope.” So the public charade persisted with all rational protestations falling on deaf ears.
The cult of personality, like the one that surrounded Obama, is so difficult to escape from because it involves the discomforting recognition and embarrassing public admission that you were duped. But anyone who ever believed that former President Barack Obama was a change agent peddling hope, rather than an ordinary politician with extraordinary oratorical skills stoking bitterness and resentment, was guilty of imbibing a bit too much South Side Kool-Aid.
What animated Obamism was always cynicism and anger, and absolutely nothing has changed:
Pres. Obama’s message to young people fighting for climate action: ‘I want you to stay angry, I want you to stay frustrated, and channel that anger’ pic.twitter.com/HcRHb4KMGO
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 21, 2023
This is what I despise about politics. It’s so self-centered, so self-aggrandizing, so self-worshipping. Obama himself does not live like this. He isn’t angry and frustrated about climate change and everyone knows it.
You don’t fly on private jets, relax comfortably in palatial estates in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer and Hawaii during the winter, and only show up for climate events to collect your speaking honorarium checks if you truly believe the earth is on a collision course with heat combustion.
He is not the one “in the trenches” for Mother Earth because he knows it isn’t a crisis. He doesn’t want young people to “stay angry” so that the climate will stop changing; he wants them to stay angry so that they’ll continue financing the grift that benefits him. It’s using people – the definition of dishonest fraud.
