In His Narcissist's 'Service'

Was it not Franklin Delano Roosevelt who originally pondered, “Why should 9/11 be a day of infamy when it can instead be a moment to learn how to organize your community and practice social work?” Well, if not him, then another Democratic Party politician, President Barack Obama — America’s Alpha Centauri — certainly implied it by signing legislation in April to rename the anniversary of the dastardly attacks on this country as a “National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Yes, from now on, each year we are advised to recall not the evil of our foes, but rather the importance of doing “good deeds” and cherishing “the spirit of service, tolerance, and compassion.”

This is foolhardy for numerous reasons. Obviously, what makes for a good deed depends upon how corrupted you are by our new dispensation. No doubt blasting Osama bin Laden deep into the catacombs of a Waziristan cave is not to be the type of Samaritan act appreciated by those elites who believe in hope as opposed to reality.

Yesterday we strove to defeat, but today we dawdle to assist. Not only will we serve … we will Serve.gov. Yet another government website/bureau was forged with the purposes of getting the general public to donate not only their money but also their time to the Obama administration.

Toxicities like Serve.gov are inevitable given the current occupant of the White House’s fetish for titles, status, and URLs (think Change.gov and FightTheSmears.com).

This particular neo-agency ordained that September 11 should be used to find “a volunteer opportunity in your neighborhood or download tools to create your own project with family and friends.”

Our president confirmed such an interpretation in a speech “in honor of those lost” at the Pentagon. He lobbied for us to “serve our communities” while insisting that the real lesson of the event is to note “the human capacity for good.”

This is absurd and also disturbing. Admirable and noble incidents of heroism — of which there were no shortage on 9/11 — are not what we should remember most, as the labors of the truly wicked made the slaughter possible.

Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, recognized this eventuality. He duly compensated the villains who toppled the World Trade Center towers by decimating their ranks and terrifying their sympathizers.

In juxtaposition, our 44th president is so eager to deemphasize the gauche “war on terrorism” that he renamed it an “overseas contingency operation.”

Obviously, if you can bureaucratize a “war” into an “operation,” then alchemizing a memorial into the job corps is but a stroll across Martha’s Vineyard. Words are very important to deceivers and a deceiver is precisely what President Obama has been since his initial arrival upon the national stage.

As with everything involving The One, things are never what they seem. The recent glamorization of “service” and the method by which the concept is being used to bastardize history call to mind a bit of cultural effluvia known as the “I Pledge” video.

How quickly we forget those headless days of January 2009 and the great time we all had laughing at the spectacle of shallow Hollywood A/B/C-list celebrities confusing enviro-New Age-statist-control freak mumbo jumbo with profundities.

Most of their overproduced drivel was innocuous as the glitterati promise to be more green (yawn), flush less (eek!), mentor others, stop giving people the finger (seriously), and cut down on plastic bag use.

The stars also vow to “smile more, to laugh more, to love more” — which, to the self-absorbed person, obviously improves the world because it improves him or her self.

A drug-addled rock star pledges his “allegiance to the funk of the United States of funkedelica,” a mouthful of asinine claptrap if there ever was one, but such malarkey serves a purpose.

It lets the uninformed presuppose that the Democrats are the party of the cool, which may directly impact the youth vote — an independent illustration for why we should raise the minimum voting age to 30.

Yet amid all the goofy cringe was an undeniably abhorrent undercurrent which resonates more strongly today than it did eight months ago. The video was not only an advertisement for Barack Obama as lord and master, but also a significant portent of what was to come.

Our president’s face, depicted in its ubiquitous pop–art blue-red configuration, flashes heroically at beginning and end, suggesting the accuracy of George Orwell’s warning that no politician’s portrait should ever be larger than the size of a postage stamp.

Between the seamless vacuity, the rock diva returns and pledges to “be of service to Barack Obama.” This matched the group’s stated purpose: to let their idol know he “is not alone.”

Yet in case we somehow failed to grasp the significance behind his pathetic, subservient gesture, Demi Moore (“the queen of all cougars!”) repeats it, vowing to “be a servant to our president.”

The entire four-minute glossy advertisement for the leader embodies the collective pathologies of the political left. It’s all about the personal and confusing your own life with the life of the nation, but it was even more than that.

Unlike with Las Vegas, the heinous machinations of Hollywood are seldom content to stay there. Before President Obama’s prepared speech for America’s returning schoolchildren, one principal in Utah took the stars’ hustle seriously and decided to play it for her students. She got caught — unfortunately, only after it was shown.

Guess what her justification for disseminating the propaganda was? Yep, “service.” And that mellow government-sponsored word also happens to be their “school’s theme for the year.”

If the principal really wanted to enhance the education of her wards then she would have been wise to expose them to the teachings of Thomas Sowell — a man right about absolutely everything — and inform them that leftism is nothing but a vehicle for self-congratulation.

From there she could have cited our own Roger L. Simon, who describes the notion of the “Mini-Me” in his Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror:

Hollywood personalities develop an alternate persona, almost a “Mini-Me” out of the Austin Powers movies, that is an extreme liberal wind-up Good Guy (or Girl) who parades as publicly as possible his unbound altruism and devotion to the poor and downtrodden. Then, once that Mini-Me is paraded and gets his applause and acknowledgment from the masses, he can be put away in his closet again. This Hollywood personality can resume his or her normal life, raping and pillaging all those who come in the way of his success.

These sources enlighten more than Serve.gov or the self-righteous confabulations of Ashton Kutcher. The confluence of indoctrinatory events did produce something positive, however.

It brought about a reexamination of the original video by the conservative press and made many of us wonder aloud: what exactly is it Obama wants from our children?

As always, with Obama’s intentions, there is wide divergence between what he desires and what he states. A partial answer can be found in the original recommended lesson plans for classrooms across the country.

The curriculum recommended that teachers ask students: “What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?” and “Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?”

I suppose the easy answers are “none” and “no,” respectively. Note, though, the obvious question many conservatives would have insisted upon — “What did Obama just lie to us about?” — was suspiciously left out.

Yet the query I would like to address is, “What would you like to tell the president?”

Well, first off, why can’t the president and his flunkies in Congress simply mind their own business and leave us the heck alone?

Second, isn’t Barack Obama and every other federal employee supposed to Serve.gov us? If he expects us to work for him then we’re the ones who should collect massive salaries and live in one of the grandest mansions on earth.

Rather than donate our allegiance to him, let us accept the suggestion of a celebutard and “find the humor in everything” by offering up some conservative pledges of our own.

Conservatives of America, let us vow to ridicule mercilessly the cult of Obama, those videos honoring him, and the entire left wing of the political spectrum.

Let us also labor to fight socialism and government expansion whenever or wherever it is initiated, combat emotion with reason, and expunge lies with truth. From now until death we will argue with our foes, refute their every contention, and labor tirelessly to take our country back — starting with the elections of 2010.