The Self-centered Protagonist
The blueprint of a Sophoclean or even Euripidean tragedy is pretty straightforward. A confident, cocky tragic hero for about the first 600 lines of the play exhibits unconstrained exuberance as he takes on the world.
For an ancient fawning, first-half-of-the-play Greek chorus, read instead a contemporary Chris Matthews, Newsweek, or the New York Times.
The early Oedipus basks in his great wisdom and reason that had solved the riddle of the murderous Sphinx and saved the city. Creon in the Antigone assumes he is the personification of law, order, and stability, a savior regent after the prior mess.
Even in Euripides’ Bacchae, young King Pentheus boasts about his kingly powers and youthful determination to corral the Bacchants—as he sets himself up for a gruesome fall. Early Hippolytus is a sanctimonious puritan, a sort of insufferable prude (who of course will be falsely accused of fornication). Jason in the Medea prances around as if his dumped wife will agree that it was a wise idea for him to have married a younger, wealthier, and Greek princess. With all these personalities, the first person pronoun “egô” is commonly employed. They know at first no self-doubt. They have no clue that what brought them to such heights are the same characteristics, at the right occasion, and with a tad more hubris, that will ensure their fall.
Beware of Nemesis
During these displays of hubris, the flawed characters are warned by various seers, by close associates, and by the sometimes fawning/sometimes anxious chorus that something is not quite right. They are supposed to check their excesses in time. They are advised to seek the golden mean, calm down, and avoid nemesis. But how can they really, when it is all such fun, this being full of oneself that heretofore has brought them so easily so far?
(Not to be partisan: Somewhere around early May 2003, with sky-high ratings, the quick toppling of the Taliban and Saddam, and at the zenith of his popularity and confidence, George Bush may well have assumed that Iraq would ipso facto lead to more dominos falling — even beyond a Syria terrified and about to leave Lebanon, Dr. Khan soon to be arrested in Pakistan, and Libya about to cough up its WMD program. These were the ‘smoke ‘em out’, ‘bring ‘em on’, and ‘mission accomplished’ days. But after the insurrection and 4,000 dead in Iraq, by 2008 Bush’s greatest encomiasts conveniently flipped into his greatest critics, and his once most fawning lieutenants wrote the most lurid tell-all books. After his crash in the polls, I found a great deal of dignity in Bush in 2008-9, especially in the way he ignored vicious hatred, ordered the surge, did not tar his opportunistic former supporters, and in general showed a wisdom and philosophical side not found in 2002-3. He was more an Oedipus at Colonus that Oedipus Rex)
And Now The Second Half of the Play
We’ve just about finished Obama’s first 600 lines. Do we remember a year ago when his various aficionados lamented that the poor Constitution required a lame-duck continuance between election and inauguration, and thus America had to suffer nearly three months of the hated Bush before the Ascension?
Those were heady times of tingling legs, the President as a “god,” schoolgirls singing of the great one, and instantaneous Nobel Prize nominations. Valerie Jarrett cooed (literally) about the prospect of recruiting the brilliant activist Van Jones. To suggest that the nominations of Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner, Bill Richardson, or Hilda Solis were antithetical to the entire Obama reformist campaign was heresy or worse. Did Obama think all this would continue for eight years? Did he think al-Qaeda would put away their IEDs because his middle name was Hussein? Was Putin awed that America had elected an African-American? Did Chavez hang on every Harvard-Law-School-Review “hope and change” banality?
You’d think that 2,500 years after those wise Greeks dramatized this constant human pattern, that we would have learned to recognize the danger signs…
Yes, Obama embodies overweening pride, but his method is deception and the deliberate destruction of the institutions that have kept us strong and free. His intentions were never altruistic, rather he is bent on power (for his clique, and over a collectivized economy) and coercion. He deviates from the pattern of Greek tragedy in that he embraces Nemesis. It does portend a great fall however, for the state, while he is cheered as a tragic hero by his supporters. That is why he must be opposed at every step.
Obama reminds of the role Jack Nicholson played as President in the retro sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks. In that movie, even when humans are being incinerated, Nicholson as the clueless U.S. President keeps believing that a peace agreement can be reached with the Martians. He feels that perhaps they were misunderstood and really did not want war. At the end of the movie, Nicholson was killed and the Earth was almost destroyed.
It is only a matter of time, given the incompetence of our President and his Administration, that a really horrific terrorist attack will take place here at home. In our current political climate of appeasement and reset, our enemies are chomping at the bit.
Hmmmm. Reminds me of this.
Old becomes new again.
Wonderful storytelling.
Obama won by getting over 60% of the under 30 vote.
And why was that?
Because Barack Obama is the biggest clebrity in the world.
VDH: You’ve forgotten, in this essay, to mention the possible irony that while Obama praises Mel in Honduras, expresses affection for Hugo and Raul’s brother, and says he wants to get along with the world, the mullah’s he expressly ignores might be falling along the wayside; my hope at least. Personally, I’m hoping for a Iranian repeat of either the Bucharest Christmas solution or the Milan Chainlink Fence solution for those mullahs and their chosen figureheads.
Yet, Obama will blame his nemesis, his predecessor, for all his regime’s failures, especially the lack of love now shown by the world towards the USA.
A big difference is that the Greeks had great play writers, while Obama’s script has been written by himself, Chris Matthews, Ophrah, Fareek Zakria etc. etc.
So what we got was; This is the last brother of the Kennedy’s, he is facing the biggest set of problems since FDR (not true, the recession is over and never became a depression), he is Lady Di meets Gandhi meets Mandela meets JFK.
Obama is the Tragic Hero of our time with its multi cast of Reality TV, Therapy TV, Hall Mark TV and Missisipi Burning/ Oliver stone/ Sean Penn Hollywood blue print
“George Bush may well have assumed that Iraq would ipso facto lead to more dominos falling…”
They would have had George W. Bush not been so politically correct. Our troops were ordered not to “offend” the Muslim sensibilities of the general populations. They were not even able to freely shoot in the direction of a mosque being used a sniper nest. Our unwillingness to control the rioters in Iraq during our initial entry gave the wrong signal to our enemies.
Bush was bad enough—but Obama is far worse. The latter gentleman is an out and out narcissist. The former president thankfully had a much humbler view of his place in the universe. Both Bush and Obama also believe in big government spending. Once again, however, Obama is the worse of the two men. He is Bush on steroids! The majority of the country’s voters are fed up with “moderate” Republicans and Democrats of every stripe. It’s time for conservatives to step up to the plate.
Professor Hanson – I am a strong believer in Nemesis and the penalty one pays for hubris. My only worry is that it will be all of the rest of us who will pay the costs for this administration’s overweening pride while they walk off scot-free into the remunerative embrace of their media and show-business claque.
Great stuff VDH. Thanks again for your efforts.
Bill,
Be bipartisan enough to look in from the dark,
be openminded enough to admit what you see and
be strong enough to talk about it to me the next time we get together.
Good Doctor:
Rather than the “Heroic Era” analogies, give us instead the comparisons of the peoples who elected tyrants, or oligarchs with the Polis being our own society writ small.
Recite instead the “balancing” function of the Executive Office, its comparatives in the Polis and the later SPQR.
When the balance is lost, or forfeited, what has happened historically to the organization of those other societies?
Our terrorist enemies may not be able to–or interested in–discourse on political/socialist theory in the manner of Obama and his acolytes, nor do they much care about the vindication or lack thereof of “social justice,” and the kind of world order Obamites clearly envision as the wave of the future, but they are exceptional in their feral ability to detect fear and weakness. Obama is providing heretofore unheard of quantities of both. Even as too many Americans do not, our mortal enemies know the difference between feckless rhetoric and issue-settling action, and we are currently very much on the wrong–and deadly–side of that equation thanks to our intellectual superiors in the Beltway.
While admittedly banal, there is my OediPOTUS Wrecks to consider.
I did re-read Sophocles while committing this crime. Will you be at CPAC, sir?
Yes, chambers, it will be all the rest to suffer Nemesis should it come to that. But that too would be just. Martin Luther railed against indulgences for good reason. Voting for Obama was for many, and maybe most, the cheapest indulgence and greatest self-indulgence of this age.
His metamorphosis—when, how ugly, and confessed with which self-aggrandizing paean—has defied prognostication because of our own inexperience, not his, with perfidy.
When will our historic first Islamic apostate president shed his façade, candidly breach his alleged fealty to Western traditions, and bear responsibility for taking charge of Washington’s relentless pillaging of our property, heritage, and aspirations?
It has commenced, not in the open, but under the cover of one-party rule upheld with the legitimacy of free elections, using the diligence of Congress to pass laws remaking the free-born into vassals of zealous bureaucrats.
Yet, no turning point will visibly pierce the silence of his tacit avowal of a life-long attachment to the presumed panacea of state supremacy over individual freedom and equally long held aversion to assign the blame of failed states to the authoritarian clans who rule them; no overt collusion with powers hostile to our way of life will betray his clemency towards them.
For now, he confines himself with the use of his skin to advance the dubious narrative of his otherworldliness. But his legacy has already been written: “He will be remembered only for having once been elected.”
Obama is a modern day Xerxes, a man-child-god. He will suffer a similar fate also – just not at the hands of a foreign army but his own.
Feeding the self-aggrandizing 0bama’s insatiable ego is becoming excessively expensive for a bankrupt
AmeriKKKaAmerica which cannot realistically afford to pander to his [and his crony thug crew's] fantasy life write large fiscally, morally or militarily.The red ink is on the wall.
Tear down that wall, Mr.0bama I/Dr. 0bama II.
Mr Hanson, you say Obama is wandering around the scenery of “Sophocles”, “Euripides” and tragedy. I say Obama is stumbling around the comedy fantasyland of “Aristophanes” and his play “The Birds”.
What do we find in “The Birds” – why a Utopia up in the sky called “Cloudcuckooland”. I can’t read greek but my translation of “The Birds” starts out with two pissed off and cynical citizens who are walking away from Athens. To paraphrase my copy of “The Birds”, these two characters hook up with a low life called Tereus who has magically transformed himself into a hoopoe bird. These two guys con-vince the hoopoe that they are harbingers of a new order; which of course is “for the birds”. The birds will inherit the heavens and the earth they say; so why not magic up a Bird City State and seize the air between heaven and earth? This way they can neuter the Olympus gods by blocking their supplies of incense sent up in to the air by the humans. The humans then become vulnerable to devastating bird raids from the sky. The birds win.
They build and fortify the city and make the hoopoe bird the nominal king. But one of his human advisors, Pisthetaerus (faithful friend) surpasses the hoopoe bird. He becomes deified, marries a goddess and becomes the patron divinity of the new state, Cloudcuckooland.
Once established, Cloudcuckooland quickly goes to ratshit. “Faithful Friend” meets and emasculates a bunch of visitors from abroad, who threaten the illusion. A competent city planner is driven away; then a seller of (competing) inspirational literature is physically attacked. Next a heavenly messenger(with a heavenly message)- beautiful goddess Iris, is denigrated and goes away weeping. A peace delegation from Olympus itself turns out to consist of the three stooges and is easily emasculated.
In other words, a state founded upon a deception and consisting of clouds and cuckoos is volatile and unstable. Dubious oratory; slippery theorizing; bribery and unscrupulous blockades are not the stuff of a new Golden Age. Cloudcuckooland is a beginning – but in the old way and in the same old hopeless direction.
Why does this sound familiar? Doc, I have to say I’m going for the comedic fantasy land – not the tragedy.
Hubris is simply the polite way of describing narcissistic arrogance.
http://www.cafepress.com/ironmassive
Dr. Hanson’s lead line, on the home page, to Obama as Greek Tragedy – Part One, says: “The tragic flaw of hubris has infected the White House, preventing the president from seeing the way things really are.”
Obama sees the way things really are quite clearly, or else he wouldn’t be getting away so easily with so much of what he’s been doing. He’s perfectly aware of all the calamities to come that our seers in the chorus keep warning him, and all of us, against.
Is it the tragic flaw of hubris that makes him think he can get away it? Not yet, it isn’t.
It remains to be seen.
Not a Greek tragedy….more like a Monty Python skit.
As the good doctor has pointed out in the past, the classics are no longer studied or taught as they were several generations ago. Fortunately we have the benefit of his wisdom on this blog and the education we receive about the ancients who recognized and immortalized the human condition in all of its strengths and weaknesses. Will our leaders ever learn?
Obama is an affirmative action president. Organizations that practice elevating people to power without requisite qualifications must practice a conspiracy of covering for him.
Thus I heard Bob Beckel insisting last night that Republican criticism of Obama’s terror policies is unpatriotic, not coming from established philosophical differences. The people who expediently changed course in the middle of the Iraq war to gain power now want us all to join in the conspiracy of affirmative action and pretend that Obama is right because he is half black.
Obama’s biggest problem is that he’s stupid. His academic achievements are the result of affirmative action and all of us who work in academic circles know that recipients of such benefits are never marked or evaluated properly in case the great racism squawk is heard throughout the land when they fail to reach even minimum standards.
Also the Barak and Michelles of the aa scam never take hard subjects like pure and applied science but languish in assorted grievance studies.
Meanwhile Asian students who gravitate to the pure and applied sciences are quotaized. A recipe for disaster if ever there was one.
The One’s supposed “split personality” is actually easily explainable. Once you understand that he holds America, and specifically its people, responsible for all the ills of the world.
Seen in this light, his wielding of every “big stick” he can think of at home while seeking rapprochement’ with anyone and everyone who hates us abroad makes perfect sense. He intends to “get justice” for the rest of the world, by any means necessary, with the United States as the guilty party.
Hence, his “threat matrix” consists not of al-Qaeda, Chavez’, and a nuclear-armed Iran. Instead, he wants to stamp out free enterprise, tea parties, talk radio, private medical insurers… and blogs like this one. They are the “true evil” in the world, in his belief system.
By the edicts of his dogmas, he cannot even consider the possibility that someone who openly hates us, or Western civilization, or even humanity in general is wrong, bad, or “evil”. Because he believes that those attitudes are the result of the evil done by the West in general, and us in particular, and are thus justified.
And when they openly attack us- well, We Can’t Say We Didn’t Have It Coming.
(He won’t allow it.)
Since his ideology, as well as his own colossal narcissism and egomania, will simply not allow The One to even consider changing his views, or behavior, I can only conclude that it will instead lead him into a spiral of political self-immolation much like that of Jimmy Carter.
The difference being that this time, the rest of us might just go down the drain as well.
clear ether
eon
Oh, and don’t forget Michelle O’s $taff:
1. $172,2000 – Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)
2. $140,000 – Frye, Jocelyn C . (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)
3. $113,000 – Rogers, Desiree G (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)
4. $102,000 – Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
5. $100,000 – Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
6. $90,000 – Medina , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
7. $84,000 – Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)
8. $75,000 – Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)
9. $70,000 – Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)
10. $65,000 – Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
11. $64,000 – Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
12. $62,000 – Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator For The First Lady)
13. $60,000 – Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)
14. $57,500 – Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)
15. $52,500 – Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary To The First Lady)
16. $50,000 – Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide To The First Lady)
17. $45,000 – Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For The First Lady)
18. $43,000 – Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)
19. $40,000 – Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
20. $36,000 – Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)
21. $35,000 – Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)
22. $35,000 – Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)
Also: makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and “First Hairstylist” Johnny Wright, 31.
Maybe finally, Michelle (for the first time in her adult life)is proud of America.
Excellent piece! I look forward to Part II, in both senses – we need this fool to be put off the stage!
15. Odysseus:
Right on the money. Obama is one of the indulgences the left has been seeking. Carbon trades will be the next one. For the rich lefties this will enable them to sin and still have redemption. What it will do to the rest of us is as immaterial to them as the fate of their peasants was to the indulgence seeking medieval lords.
There’s only a slight difference in 2,500 years.
Oidipos Tyrannos: Ah, friends, ’twas Apollo’s doing; but I alone am responsible.
Obama Tyrannos: Ah, friends, ’twas that Bush’s doing; so I’m not at all responsible.
Such is the hubris of Obama, Nancy and the rest, they will not see the coming electoral rebuff as a deep expression of revulsion but just another in the cycle of elections.
I don’t know about this tragedy thing. Doesn’t tragedy involve being turned to stone or forced to wander the oceans or plucking out your own eyes or something rather than jetting around the world to attend fancy cocktail parties and dine on Wagyu beef as this egomaniac will be doing well into his dotage? A more apt metaphor I think is the stuffy high-society matron that takes a pie to the face at the end of a Three Stooges short. Only the oeuvre of those lovable knuckleheads perfectly captures the serious mien and thoughtful competence of the Obama administration.
… the classic Greek Drama doesn’t have amongst its cannon elements the ENABLERS.
Yet, the “useful idiots” are an important part of history and in dba Obama’s case, they were of crucial importance to his early successes -
Some months ago, PJM had a piece about the chief flaws (?) of the current educational system and the miserable consequence thereof -
The article was very well attended, and I’d say that more than 70% of commenters came with the lack/ diminishing of critical spirit as a main consequence of the type of education we currently have -
And from this pool came the enablers, the “hope-and-change” and “we want to change the world” crowd who propelled Obama to the power he so lamentably discharges -
Break the school system, mister Gorbachiov! Teach minds that they can be free!
But with the latest news coming from Berkeley USD it seems that we go exactly the opposite way -
Analogies are always attractive, often seductive…and occasionally destructive.
Analogizing Barack Hussein Obama to Oedipus, or to any other tragic protagonist, is clever and in some ways instructive. But if it leads us to imagine that his downfall will see to itself, it will ultimately be to our detriment.
Remember that those who seek power always have the acquisition and retention of power at the top of their agendas. Obama is not an exception — and though we think him inept and clumsy as an executive, as a politician he’s had more than his share of successes. Let’s not collaborate in his accession to unchallengeable power by taking him more lightly than we must.
I feel so much better now that the MAN is back on the job.
not having bought a ticket, i am still forced to watch this comedy/drama, unable to leave my seat to go throw up.
And there are fools out there who think that Sarah Palin cannot beat this guy in 2012 assuming he doesn’t pull back to the middle and right quick?
The hubris is unprecedented by not only Obama but Pelosi and Reid and their staffs are so indoctrinated that nobody points out his hollowness.
As a retired Latin teacher(a little Greek also) I find Professor Hanson’s analogies well put. Obama is the classical tragic hero who brings on his own downfall. However it should be noted that the Greeks were fortunate enough to have an educated cultured class of dramatist that could portray these tragedies in front of a somewhat educated and cultured citizenry. The tragedy of Obama is that he is the creation of a debased unintelligent narcissistic populace. The American state of education is a disaster and I state that with the background of teaching both in the secondary schools and the universities. There is no Sophocles or Euripides present in the reality soaked American culture that has the ability to articulate anything but a rather vile and vitriolic barrage of attacks on a woman who has five children and managed to become governor of a state and candidate for the vice president’s office. The effeminate academic elite in America are afraid of one woman and prostrate themselves before another woman(Clinton). Our future as a viable political state and a somewhat positive culture is very doubtful.
perhaps not.
…a savior regent after the prior mess
The guy mopping up…
So far, the putative mopper is just spreading the stuff around
They are advised to seek the golden mean, calm down, and avoid nemesis. But how can they really, when it is all such fun, this being full of oneself that heretofore has brought them so easily so far?…Did he think al-Qaeda would put away their IEDs because his middle name was Hussein?
Yes.
…to bow and apologize abroad
Fouad Ajami observed that Obama didn’t win many plaudits with Arabs/Muslims in traveling about the world and trashing his own tribe, i.e, America.
Those who under take “man caused disasters” during “overseas contingency operations” have decided that this administration is weak and hasn’t the ability to prevent any attacks. Biden was right, our enemies are stepping up operations because they rightly think this President doesn’t have the ability to lead aggressive anti-terrorist operations against them. He’s too busy trying to appologize for all the ills the he believes America has caused…to our detriment.
“Why does Obama listen to those who trash America when most of them can’t even keep their electricity going, or their streets free of sh-t?”)
Because that kind of country is his goal. Communists, greens, democrats, etc. openly proclaim that the human race is AIDS, that couples should be limited to one child, that good food, good housing, good education (‘consumption’) is bad and bad for the Earth, etc. He does and should admire those who have achieved the sort of society he wishes for America.
Julius Caesar had the name as a birthright. Tiburius or Caligula used the name as a title. I’d wager Obama would insist all future Presidents adopt the signature Roman tradition of calling themselves ‘Obamas’. Collectively, all future Executive Department honchos would be called ‘Obamas’ not ‘Presidents’.
But then, with a megalomania the size of Obama’s, he’d think ‘Caesar’ is too plebian.
“[It]should be noted that the Greeks were fortunate enough to have an educated cultured class of dramatist that could portray these tragedies in front of a somewhat educated and cultured citizenry. The tragedy of Obama is that he is the creation of a debased unintelligent narcissistic populace”
Mr. O’Neill, Dr.Hanson–My siblings and I all had at least 3 years of Latin and enough Classic drama to fill the colisseum. No wonder this scenario seemed so familiar. Dr.Hanson is so right when he credits the Classics for putting old heads on young shoulders, or in my case, an even older head on old shoulders.
Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He never realized that it wasn’t a war against specific nations — Afghanistan, Iraq — but a war against radical Islam. After Iraq, it would have been easy to achieve regime change in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The country would have supported him. The entire mess would have been cleaned up. No more state-sponsered terrorism by the Islam countries. But Bush let the opportunity slip through his fingers and a few years later it was politically impossible.
Obama is both incompetent and a left-wing radical so I see no chance that he will move to the center like Clinton or do what is necessary to divert the country’s downward trajectory.
Sophocles, Trojan Horse, Shakespeare, Obama: Fools learn by their own experience, Wise men learn by the experience of others….
Professor Hansen,
With regard to your 21 year old student’s question, “…“Why does Obama listen to those who trash America when most of them can’t even keep their electricity going, or their streets free of sh-t?…”
Quite simple, his upbringing, education and worldview of his peers does not allow him to LOVE AMERICA the way we do. He does not have an American “soul”.
It’s sad, but it is necessary that we sweep him out of office in 2012. His tenure of less than a year indicates he is capable of doing severe damage to our nation’s economy and security – short term and long term.
The Greeks were not the first to notice this:
Proverbs 16: 18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. 19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
I was on a cruise during Obama’s first foreign trip to Europe, guess it was in March. I’ll never forget catching a tiny portion of CNN, Tina Brown was on gushing…literally gushing about how magical Barrack and Michelle were.
She said that it was as if a UFO had landed and set them down in the midst of mortals, the Obama’s seemed so from the future as they stood next to the Queen, dwarfing her and making her seem ancient and sooo last century. Michelle made Mrs. Sarkozy look positively ‘retro’. I hadn’t been sea sick up to that point. I hope I never have another President whose supporters inanely gush over him and his wife to that extent ever again.
Thankfully he nor Michelle no longer seem to draw that kind of glowing crap praise, or maybe it’s just that I have been fortunate enough not to catch another segement of cnn or msnbc.
Did any of his advisors then warn our young Hippolytus to hush — and limit the apologies to a single occasion? (Or to remind him that a President is elected to keep his country safe and its interests paramount, not to be judged a Gandhi by a mostly corrupt global media).
Those of us who wrote about these telltale signs even then were suspected of racism, as our great leader pressed on with apologies, bows, crazy appointments, and a strange sort of split personality.
Hmmm. VDH, I respect and defer to your vastly superior knowledge and grasp of Greek tragedy, but the ethos, pathos and logos of your argument shift upon the very sands in which they have been constructed.
I see very little “change” (or hope) toward moral enlightenment. This administration came to power flying high upon the wings of protest, not unity of purpose with our countrymen.
Rampant, unchecked and unfettered leftism within the mostly corrupt global media was not merely the chorus, they were lead actors behind very thin masks, promoting the protest culture that they had adopted, promoted and advanced every step of the way…if this administration had not existed, they would have invented it.
MOST national level politicians are as corrupt, unethical, and amoral operating in that fever swamp in Washington, D.C. as the global media. They cut side deals and self-promote behind their own thin masks of “public servant”.
However, this particular administration not only plays hard, rough and mean with their counterparts across the aisle, they have taken on the people in this self-governing land of ours, our countrymen…with the same slap to the face mentality. THAT, it what makes them different from the typical corrupt pol.
Joe the Plumber, “teabaggers”, anyone…who protests the acts of the SUPREME PROTEST GROUP, …is in for very, very, very rough treatment.
By the Protest Culture administration and by the protest culture media in their pocket.
This “king” was invented by the corrupt global media, basically out of whole cloth. More emperor than king, actually. And because the seminal regard for the “non-protestor” (call them the “patriots”) is one of utter disdain, scorn and sneering and abject disrespect, their is no “split personallity” to unveil. There is only the actor with the mask on…and moments when the mask slips.
When there is no honor in leadership, when there is no integrity in our information stream, when truth is a trifling matter…the audience in this play are the victims of the tragedy, not the players.
The apology tour is fully in line with the Protest Culture’s worldview, it won’t change. Mao, Chavez, Che, are not brutal dictators, mass murderers. They are fellow traveling protest culture leaders. YOU…are the enemy. Not them.
Keeping the country “safe” in the parlance of the Protest Culture, is to call YOU a raging maniac, to attack Joe the Plumber, to attack the “teabaggers”, the bitter clingers. YOU are not to be “kept safe”, you are to be marginalized, shunned, peer pressured, made an outcast…allowed to die.
Viewed from the center seats (cfbleachers), these crazy appointments, the apology tour, deep bows to questionable characters, back of the hand to our traditional allies, friendships and associations with Ayers, Wright, Pfleger, Klonsky, Davidson, Khalidi, Said, Frank Marshall Davis…they all seem to make sense in a protest culture worldview.
Hubris, Groupthink, Narcissism…these are valued traits in the Protest Culture.
Crushing dissent, strangling principled opposition, Orwellian trampling of truth…is now our way of life. The corrupt global media has their emperor, a dynasty built upon a pile of lies and distortions.
And YOU…are outside the palace walls. VDH, you are protesting the Protestor. And thereby wrestling the crocodile in their water.
JIM ROCHFORD! ARE YOU OF MEMPHIS TENNESSEE DURING YOUR COLLEGE YEARS?
Oh, by the way, VDH, well done as always!
This is a whole administration of marxists and radicals of every kind.
They didn’t get to power by themselves, but thanks to the effort carried on for forty years by the whole subversives’ movement to conquer media and universities and thanks to a powerful international conspiracy (Soros and Brothers).
They didn’t get to power to manage America but to destroy America.
They couldn’t care less about their own fall, as long as they will have had the time to damage America’s economy, military might, self-confidence.
These are communists.
Communists move WARS against Freedom, they don’t play political games.
America fell victim of its own lack of understanding of what communism is and how communists move.
The only way out is to learn.
Playing intellectual games with an enemy of Freedom will not help.
This is no Greek tragedy, this is a filthy 21st century adventure into the darkness of nihilism and totalitarianism.
The other big thing is the absolutely corrupt and blatant stealing of money – zip codes and cities that don’t exist getting millions upon millions of “stimulus” taxpayer money and no one seems to care. It’s reported on here and there and then, that’s it. It’s as if we elected Al Capone and we now collectively look the other way while he and his Chicago buddies loot the taxpayers for billions. In my state of CT, I’ve found $18M going to the “Chicago Housing Authority” and $20M going to the “City of Upland”. (In case you wondered, there is no Chicago or Upland in this state.)
28. Sule
Sickening. Just sickening.
Why wax so poetic in treatment of bho? Simply put, he is nothing more than the the greatest failure of the USA’s voters. He will be known as the bane of our nation’s existence, should we fail any time soon, God forbid. And his legacy will be that of his wife, as well. I would not be surprised if their eventual last day in the White House would be celebrated by millions… MILLIONS!!
…not since 9/11 have so many terrorist plots been uncovered in a single year. (In fact, over one-third of all the efforts to repeat 9/11 have occurred in 2009…
Actually, these attacks are right on schedule.
The first World Trade Center bombing (the one ignored by Bill Clinton) was followed eight years later by the successful 9/11/01 attack.
Eight years later, 2009, after enough time to forget and let the guard down, here come the attacks.
It’s a pattern.
BHO is not “African-American” any more than I am a “Euro-American”– conflating racial identities with nationalities is illegitimate. Africa and Europe are continental regions, not States. Moreover, as Jesse Jackson caviled, BHO is barely 7% African Negro– 50% Caucasian (white), 43% Semitic Arab, with only a residual Kenyan component. Glorifying mongrel skin-colors is a mug’s game.
While we’re at it, “native American” too is a misnomer. American Indians are aboriginals, meaning their (Mongolian?) ancestors predated others. But everyone born in America, as defined (not Canada or Mexico) is by definition native to the country. PCBS identity-politics are a classic propaganda exercise, designed to divide-and-rule by setting phony constituencies against each other.
As Teddy Roosevelt asserted, “hyphenated Americans” are no such thing. Cease your self-indulgent chauvinistic, even racist bleats and squeaks, and get a life.
A test.
#17 Peter:
Ohhh, one can only hope…
I, too, think it will be the military that will eventually remedy this disaster. Perhaps, if that happens, the young folks in this country will begin to understand that, while freedom is a right, it isn’t given.that would be a change I’d love to believe in.
Your comparison flatters Obama;
Jar-Jar Binks is more like it.
One applicable warning:
“The mask that an actor wears
is likely to become his face.”
Greek Tragedy Dr Hansen? The only “tragedy” is this POS being elected as president. First of all, Obama is STUPID. He has no clue other than what his communist handlers like assholerod and Jarrett tell him to do(does going after the Olympics come to mind?). Second of all, hes viruently anti-american. Not anti-capitalist(he loves when HE benefits from it), just anti-american. This POS truly beleives he is too smart for we the little people, and we need him and his pals to tell us what to do. Thats not tragedy, thats Hitleresque. This punk is just EVIL and so is everyone he associates with(remember Ayers, Wright and Khalihi). There is no such thing as a nice guy in Chicago politics. Lets start concentrating on the FACT that this guy is EVIL,not tragic.
Wonderful group of writers, my first notice of this website, I hail you all. I particularly like the shoot from the hip attitude, calling Obama what he really is, the potential destroyer of this country. He’s no American, his hatred of this country is mere fringe effects from his subliminal Jihad against us. I beat my head against the wall, wondering how I can rally my troops against this bloviating narcissist. Were it not for his Teleblabber machine, he’d blunder his way in speeches big and small. We are in deep fecal matter, comrades. I will meld my angst against this moronic misanthrope with yours anyday. I was jettisoned by James Kunstler’s website for comments that projected my disdain for Obama and his band of dirty faced miscreants. Kunstler is so fixated on peak oil he doesn’t realize we are approaching peak destruction of the country. What a disgrace we have in the White House, a President that already owns the title “America’s Worst”. Now, I must leave you and retch in the sink. But, I’ll be back.
VDH
No matter what the act of this tragedy the good vs evil plot is well in place
and the consequences for the bad guys will be the same as they have always been. Hollywood may hope for a different ending but history will repeat itself; the bad guys will get what’s coming to them in the end.
This is a long running play (4 years) and the ending will be spectacular in it’s complete and total destruction of the main actors on the stage.
Just wait until we find out where the money went during act II or III.
In the final act the good guy will ride in on a white horse with the truth in his mouth and achieve a massive one sided victory.
It is a helluva first act (600 lines) we have had to witness, making us feel certain in our opinion of what a just ending would be.
Even now, the president will not accept any responsibility for the failure. It’s the fault of others. He’s the Commander of the watch. He must accept resonsibility, regardless of “screwups” in the system.
VDH:
Obama has nothing to fear because he believes that rhetoric is more important than history. When “terrorism” was unfashionable, he never considered that terrorism could someday define his Presidency as it did Bush’s. Now, as terrorism is forcing his agenda, he pretends that he can avoid contradictions. But it is a stretch to try to substitute liberal domestic legislation for the promise of successful execution of defense and foreign policy.
Obama’s weaknesses run so deep, and are so apparent, that it seems few of his proponents acknowledge that he could be so obviously wrong. His opponents, however, have no problem seeing through the facade. Obama’s inaction over Iran has given the Iranian leadership hope that they can further oppress their people — until Obama’s hypothetical patience runs out. As if Iran is considerate with the patience of their named enemies.
In a context of wanton adulation, Obama believes he has earned his Presidential doctorate, grading himself a B+. However, it is not apparent what he has learned until now, as glaring problems and errors are left unreconciled (the closing of Guantanamo, and the projected unemployment rate). I am still looking for an indication that he has learned something important while in his first year in office — something that might in the very least manifest itself as a change in his composure. Instead, the consistency of his rhetoric implies that he has not changed his one area of expertise — rhetoric. Over time his rhetoric has sounded more and more banal and unimaginative. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech? That speech should have preceded the venue. Wasn’t it convenient for Obama to adopt the obvious wisdom of leaders who preceded him at the instant the world was focused on him?
History may show that political strategy cannot overcome the failing tactical approaches Obama and the left have used — from Cash for Clunkers to the abject failures of the TARP and HAMP programs. Unfortunately it may take even more failure for the country to finally judge Obama as the below average politician and the dismally bad governor that he is. For Congress, that judgment may come sooner.
60. Rick
“I, too, think it will be the military that will eventually remedy this disaster.”
Rick are you advocating a military coup and dictatorship for US? Yea that will teach (compel) those young folks to vote the right way.
Good piece, Dr. Hansen. And good comments, including the dissenting ones – great food for thought.
Let me take this opportunity to point out how much I also always enjoy the comments of eon and cfbleachers. I don’t pay much attention to names, but I will be reading along in one of their posts, and connecting with it so well, that I look up and discover – it is, again, cfbleachers or eon.
More and more I see the President as an articulate over-inflated Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, designed to attract attention so as to allow the real powers of government to be exercised by the Cook County White House Staff. The power of the Staff depends on keeping the “leader” inflated, and the leader depends on the Staff to manage his affairs. The ultimate problem is that the Staff is as green as the President.
Dr Hanson is an education, both in what he writes and the way he writes it. General comment too is a splendid display of erudition and wit. This got me thinking about the writings of the opposition, the pro-Obama worshipping liberals, Democrat politicians, and Progressive pundits, the columnists in the pro-Obama camp, even a supposed conservative David Brooks, they all, all share one common trait – a mendacious and pretentious elitism. And there is not a shred of this intellectual snobbery in Dr Hanson’s writings or the Comments. It is like walking in the pure air of the mountains.
Leftwing academics are prone to sneer at opponents, to deploy the Oxford put-down. They adopt a tone of aloofness to concepts of individual freedom, the marketplace and patriotism, treating anyone using such terms as intellectually constrained; vague abstractions that have no practical utility. They treat commonsense as just folksy, unserious. Only they, the intellectual mandarins, who shape society are truly serious. Oh there is a lot of talk about credentials, PhD’s, being in a peer group. They burnish each other’s egos with great gusto.
But, but…their nostrums no longer resonate. They are starting to sound tired and threadbare. In a word they are becoming redundant and that is a terrible fate for Guardians. Their power and influence is shrinking. What they say no longer seems to connect with what is actually emerging in the world.
Of course there are still plenty of followers in the Comment space on the liberal articles who rant on emotionally about Bush as the Final Cause of all our woes, from the debt binge ( a global phenomenon, a lot of it run from London) to the Depression, from Capitalism to Islamic animosity towards the West. But also increasingly one sees comment rubbishing the article, pleading for the author to “get real” , “face the facts”, stop “Bush-blame” and to “stop being an Obama sychophant”. In a word, the Liberal ethos is finished. It’s over. The thesis is surrendering to its antithesis.
Last February I wrote that the ancient Greek character that reminds me most of Obama is Phaeton. The similarities are eery.
Also, I believe Obama’s tragic flaw is sociopathy, which is becoming more and more obvious as people observe that he makes promises to get what he wants with no intention of keeping them — indeed, in true sociopathic character, he is angry that anyone dares to defy or embarrass him when he does not keep his promises.
44. SeniorD: “Julius Caesar had the name as a birthright. Tib[e]rius or Caligula used the name as a title.”
I take your point but, actually, Tiberius Julius Caesar Germanicus (originally Tiberius Claudius Nero) was the adopted son of the divine Augustus (originally Gaius Octavius, then C. Julius Caesar Octavianus), the adopted son of the divine C. Julius Caesar. Tiberius, therefore, even before his becoming emperor had the official name of Caesar. Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (Caligula) was the son of Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Tiberius, and his mother, Agrippina, was a grand-daughter of the divine Augustus, and he too legitimately had Caesar as a name.
Nero Claudius Caesar (a grandson of Germanicus and great-great-grandson of the divine Augustus, but originally L. Domitius Ahenobarbus until adopted by his uncle, the divine Claudius), was the last of the Julio-Claudian line, and after his death subsequent unrelated Roman emperors wisely took Caesar and Augustus as titles.
#7 Vandenberg – Obama is the Tragic Hero of our time with its multi cast of Reality TV, Therapy TV, Hall Mark TV and Mississippi Burning/ Oliver stone/ Sean Penn Hollywood blue print.
Your too generous… he’s more like that overrun gazelle on Animal Planet… young, immature, unprotected and vulnerable of his own shortcomings and upbringing… now, it’s left to the hyenas to fight over the carcass…