"Is Obama an Enlightened Being?"
Courtesy of Mark Morford, SF Gate columnist, who is not kidding in his article "Is Obama an Enlightened Being?":
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
Oh-ho. And what is he, precisely?
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
Having studied and UNDERSTOOD history, unlike Morford, I am well aware of the nature of Obama's "aura." The term is "charisma." Every now and then super-charismatic people come along -- but it does not mean that they are wise people, or even good people, something Morford is not getting. The fact that one such person was Adolf Hitler should serve as a clue in that regard.
(not that such people are necessarily evil -- Churchill and Roosevelt were two others).
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
I'm afraid I must plead a sad lack of "antennae." I think my neocortex, which allows me to reason logically, took up the space that would otherwise have gone into them.
But actually I do pick up on Obama's charisma. It even fooled me at one part, during his "throw grandma under the bus" speech. But the fooling didn't last, because I think over my conclusions, instead of just coming to one and sticking to it like grim death. And I also have knowledge of enough history to know how utterly disastrous it can be to blindly follow a supercharismatic leader.
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
This statement might be more impressive if Obama had actually preached any particular philosophy. Instead, what he's done is simulated the way that we IMAGINE someone like Jesus or the Buddha might have behaved, and hence touched our archetypes of the Great Prophet.
Know how I know this? Can you tell me anything that Obama has said which isn't just a standard liberal policy position, often less well thought out than in their original forms because Obama doesn't even seem to get the underlying logic? Has Obama ever successfully defended one of these positions against criticism? What does he do when he's criticized? He declares such criticism to be unfair and out of bounds.
He cannot defend his own positions, gentle readers, because he does not understand them. He is not Jesus, but rather an empty set of robes and sandals.
Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Three assumptions here:
First of all, that JFK was a "peacemaker." He was not, at least not in the sense that Morford meant it. He ran on a hawkish platform ("the missile gap") and he governed as a hawkish President. He launched several major armed foreign interventions (invasion of Cuba, blockade of Cuba, large-scale military presence in South Vietnam). His attempts at diplomacy were, in general, disastrous (notably the Berlin Summit).
The reason why JFK is popularly imagined a "peacemaker" -- and not in the sense of a 19th-century Colt revolver -- is because he happened to be President at the time that the people who would become the generational leaders of the Boomers were impressionable teenagers. They saw him as an alternate father-figure when they were just starting to rebel, and -- after he was safely dead and unable to contradict them -- they decided ex post facto that JFK was "really" a supporter of their own late-1960's to early-1970's political positions.
In order to make this plausible, they engaged in the most extraordinarily selective examination of his legacy. There are mountains of documents showing JFK asking for more money for missiles, for the military in general, and deciding on warlike courses with several countries. What they do is cherry-pick the few cases in which JFK expressed hesitation or doubt on these policies (and of course, there are some -- nobody is utterly consistent) and pretend that this meant that JFK "really" didn't want to invade Cuba or send troops to Vietnam, but was "pressured" into doing so.
They anachronistically take the fact that he was murdered and assume that his role was "helpless martyr" and that he knew it (again, laying a Jesus mantle upon their Designated Messiah). Thus they ignore that, as President, JFK was the most powerful man in the country from 1961-63; certainly not a helpless puppet being blown this way and that way by the Evil People Who Really Ran the Show. (The fact that JFK would have seen this potrayal as Puppet and Martyr as profoundly insulting is probably beyond their comprehension, because they don't even see him as human).
The second assumption is that "the CIA" and "the war machine" was some sort of "dark side." To make this assumption is to elevate Only America Is Real to a principle stretching backward in time before we won the Cold War, and to deny the historical reality, and culpability for violence, of men such as Nikita Krushchev, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh. Assume that the "dark side" of the CIA and the "war machine" had been magically abolished in 1961. How successful would JFK's Presidency have been?
The third and final assumption is that the CIA or the US Armed Forces murdered JFK. There is no real evidence for this theory, and lots of evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did so. In fact, where Oswald is concerned, there is more evidence that he was acting as a Soviet or Cuban agent in the assassination -- not that he was one, mind you, simply that he was more closely associated with those Powers. The best evidence is that Oswald was simply a lunatic.
Parenthetically, I pray to Athena that no assassin claims Obama's life. I don't want to have to hear from now to the end of time about how Obama would have "saved us," and the claim that he supported every cause that the Millenials ever happen to acquire in the coming decades. (No, Virginia, Obama didn't have a position on the rights to AI's of their own copies!)
And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp ...
Bush "laid waste to the land?" Really? Look around you -- are you seeing a "wasted" land? Does Morford even know what the phrase means?
... and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
As a student of evolutionary theory, both biological and cultural, this statement embarasses me more than most of you will understand. Let's just say that Morford's gotten the way evolution works all wrong, and I really wish Morford had said something Creationist here instead.
While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
Why is Morford dragging James Buchanan into this? Or does Morford believe that several States have seceded and we are now on the brink of civil war?
Oh yes, I forgot, not only are Republicans automatically inferior, but "American history" began some time in 1960 or so.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him.
There is something "self-organizing" around Obama's candidacy, but it's more a matter of people who are dissatisfied reading into Obama whatever they want him to be, because Obama is long on style but short on detail. It is self-delusion, and of exactly the same sort used by the classic charismatic leaders.
"Trust The Leader. He is Our Father. He knows what's best for all of us."
It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Osama bin Laden attacked America because Bush was President? I mean, seriously, Morford. Try to use some logic. At least occasionally?
Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.
Morford's mind has just left the building. He'll be back in 2009, either complaining about President McCain, or disappointed about the failure of President Obama to live up to his billing.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
Oh-ho. And what is he, precisely?
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
Having studied and UNDERSTOOD history, unlike Morford, I am well aware of the nature of Obama's "aura." The term is "charisma." Every now and then super-charismatic people come along -- but it does not mean that they are wise people, or even good people, something Morford is not getting. The fact that one such person was Adolf Hitler should serve as a clue in that regard.
(not that such people are necessarily evil -- Churchill and Roosevelt were two others).
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
I'm afraid I must plead a sad lack of "antennae." I think my neocortex, which allows me to reason logically, took up the space that would otherwise have gone into them.
But actually I do pick up on Obama's charisma. It even fooled me at one part, during his "throw grandma under the bus" speech. But the fooling didn't last, because I think over my conclusions, instead of just coming to one and sticking to it like grim death. And I also have knowledge of enough history to know how utterly disastrous it can be to blindly follow a supercharismatic leader.
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
This statement might be more impressive if Obama had actually preached any particular philosophy. Instead, what he's done is simulated the way that we IMAGINE someone like Jesus or the Buddha might have behaved, and hence touched our archetypes of the Great Prophet.
Know how I know this? Can you tell me anything that Obama has said which isn't just a standard liberal policy position, often less well thought out than in their original forms because Obama doesn't even seem to get the underlying logic? Has Obama ever successfully defended one of these positions against criticism? What does he do when he's criticized? He declares such criticism to be unfair and out of bounds.
He cannot defend his own positions, gentle readers, because he does not understand them. He is not Jesus, but rather an empty set of robes and sandals.
Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Three assumptions here:
First of all, that JFK was a "peacemaker." He was not, at least not in the sense that Morford meant it. He ran on a hawkish platform ("the missile gap") and he governed as a hawkish President. He launched several major armed foreign interventions (invasion of Cuba, blockade of Cuba, large-scale military presence in South Vietnam). His attempts at diplomacy were, in general, disastrous (notably the Berlin Summit).
The reason why JFK is popularly imagined a "peacemaker" -- and not in the sense of a 19th-century Colt revolver -- is because he happened to be President at the time that the people who would become the generational leaders of the Boomers were impressionable teenagers. They saw him as an alternate father-figure when they were just starting to rebel, and -- after he was safely dead and unable to contradict them -- they decided ex post facto that JFK was "really" a supporter of their own late-1960's to early-1970's political positions.
In order to make this plausible, they engaged in the most extraordinarily selective examination of his legacy. There are mountains of documents showing JFK asking for more money for missiles, for the military in general, and deciding on warlike courses with several countries. What they do is cherry-pick the few cases in which JFK expressed hesitation or doubt on these policies (and of course, there are some -- nobody is utterly consistent) and pretend that this meant that JFK "really" didn't want to invade Cuba or send troops to Vietnam, but was "pressured" into doing so.
They anachronistically take the fact that he was murdered and assume that his role was "helpless martyr" and that he knew it (again, laying a Jesus mantle upon their Designated Messiah). Thus they ignore that, as President, JFK was the most powerful man in the country from 1961-63; certainly not a helpless puppet being blown this way and that way by the Evil People Who Really Ran the Show. (The fact that JFK would have seen this potrayal as Puppet and Martyr as profoundly insulting is probably beyond their comprehension, because they don't even see him as human).
The second assumption is that "the CIA" and "the war machine" was some sort of "dark side." To make this assumption is to elevate Only America Is Real to a principle stretching backward in time before we won the Cold War, and to deny the historical reality, and culpability for violence, of men such as Nikita Krushchev, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh. Assume that the "dark side" of the CIA and the "war machine" had been magically abolished in 1961. How successful would JFK's Presidency have been?
The third and final assumption is that the CIA or the US Armed Forces murdered JFK. There is no real evidence for this theory, and lots of evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did so. In fact, where Oswald is concerned, there is more evidence that he was acting as a Soviet or Cuban agent in the assassination -- not that he was one, mind you, simply that he was more closely associated with those Powers. The best evidence is that Oswald was simply a lunatic.
Parenthetically, I pray to Athena that no assassin claims Obama's life. I don't want to have to hear from now to the end of time about how Obama would have "saved us," and the claim that he supported every cause that the Millenials ever happen to acquire in the coming decades. (No, Virginia, Obama didn't have a position on the rights to AI's of their own copies!)
And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp ...
Bush "laid waste to the land?" Really? Look around you -- are you seeing a "wasted" land? Does Morford even know what the phrase means?
... and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
As a student of evolutionary theory, both biological and cultural, this statement embarasses me more than most of you will understand. Let's just say that Morford's gotten the way evolution works all wrong, and I really wish Morford had said something Creationist here instead.
While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
Why is Morford dragging James Buchanan into this? Or does Morford believe that several States have seceded and we are now on the brink of civil war?
Oh yes, I forgot, not only are Republicans automatically inferior, but "American history" began some time in 1960 or so.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him.
There is something "self-organizing" around Obama's candidacy, but it's more a matter of people who are dissatisfied reading into Obama whatever they want him to be, because Obama is long on style but short on detail. It is self-delusion, and of exactly the same sort used by the classic charismatic leaders.
"Trust The Leader. He is Our Father. He knows what's best for all of us."
It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Osama bin Laden attacked America because Bush was President? I mean, seriously, Morford. Try to use some logic. At least occasionally?
Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.
Morford's mind has just left the building. He'll be back in 2009, either complaining about President McCain, or disappointed about the failure of President Obama to live up to his billing.