298 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyasserts that personal and social perfection is possible. Such perfection, however, usually
requires a few sages who understand the truths and who must sometimes rather ruthlessly and
violently impose “perfection” on others. Both fascism and communism, according to Voegelin,
are gnostic-like attempts to “immanentize the eschaton;” that is, to overcome the limitations,
anxieties, and uncertainties of human experience for an enlightened vanguard to build a “heaven
on earth.” (A wonderful theory, its implementation always goes astray.) One destroys real
democracy and politics in the process of imposing a “perfect” social vision. (Wikipedia)
Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger has made the following observations about communist ideology,
which are also highly relevant to our current discussion of a fascist mentality: “...where the Marxist
ideology of liberation had been consistently applied, a total lack of freedom had developed, whose
horrors were now laid bare before the eyes of the entire world. Wherever politics tries to be
redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine,
but demonic.” These remarks are included in Ratzinger’s “Liberation Theology” (2007), a critique
of currents in theology which share a great deal with the James Cone “Black liberation theology”
taught by the foundation-funded racist provocateur Jeremiah Wright, who is evidently a special
favorite of Michelle.
THE SAVIOR
The gnostic mantle of the Obama campaign envelops both Barack and Michelle, each in their
assigned role. Obama supporters are often apolitical or anti-political. They are fans, groupies,
cultists, enthusiasts, adepts, and they avidly crowd around the divine couple. The great violinist
Yehudi Menuhin wrote that, having witnessed both modern rock concerts and Nazi party rallies, he
could sense something in common between the two, and concluded that rock concerts might well
represent a preparation for authoritarianism and fascism later on.
The first generations that cannot remember a world without orgiastic rock concerts and mosh
pits are also the ones that provide Obama with his idolaters:
“People don’t come to Obama for what he’s done in the Senate,” says Bruce Reed, president of
the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “They come because of what they hope he could be.”
What Obama stands for, if anything, is not yet clear. Everywhere he goes he is greeted by thrilled
crowds, trailed constantly by a reporter from The Chicago Tribune who is writing a book about the
senator with a preliminary title so immodest that it embarrassed even Obama’s staff: The Savior.
The danger here is that the public has committed the cardinal sin of political love, forcing Obama
onto the national stage before knowing him well enough to gauge whether he’s ready for it. The
candidate they see before them is their own creation — or, rather, it is the scrambling of a skinny,
serious, self-reflective man trying to mold his public’s conflicted yearnings into something greater.
“Barack has become a kind of human Rorschach test,” says Cassandra Butts, a friend of the
senator’s from law school and now a leader at the Center for American Progress. “People see in him
what they want to see.” (Wallace Wells, Rolling Stone)
The London Sunday Telegraph reported: “Barack Obama criticized over ‘cult-like’ rallies.” The
article went on to report: “for a growing number of Barack Obama skeptics, there is something
disturbing about the adulation with which the senator and Democratic presidential frontrunner is
greeted as he campaigns for the White House – unnervingly akin to the hysteria of a cult, or the
fervour of a religious revival.”