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May 11, 2009
Exclusive: The Escher President-Series 2:100 Days
The Escher President described the experience of that large portion of the population not engrossed in, enthralled with, or enchanted by President Barack Obama’s rhetoric - including those who voted against him and those who currently wish they had. This group perceives Obama much as one observes an Escher lithograph – cycling through one narrative until it fades, at which point another narrative projects forward until that perspective similarly fades back into the former.
The two narratives were described as the white and black views – emphasizing that that is how Escher worked and has nothing to do in this case with race. The white view is that which essentially characterizes Obama as a good and well-intentioned man with American values. Under this view, Obama’s actions which seem out of synch with the observer are explained as resulting from one of various factors: naïveté, lack of executive experience, incompetence, faults of those around him, liberal instincts and expectations that have to fail before one realizes they are wrong and so forth. The white view aggravates the observer, but the observer seems able to draw comfort from the fantasy that nothing is irreversible and, perhaps, these are new times that require novel responses.
So, when frustrated with the radical spending levels Obama is spearheading (which will triple the debt levels he castigated during his campaign), the white view blames Obama’s advisers, the pork requirements of Congress, the excesses of the prior Bush spending, the uniqueness of current circumstances which requires extreme responses, a misunderstanding of the causes and remedies of the Great Depression and so forth. When Obama cuts the defense budget to dangerous levels, the white view joins him in questioning our true needs, factors his anti-war bias, trusts that no Pentagon would allow too much degradation, and buys the premise that there is too much excess and too many overpriced no-bid contracts anyway. When Obama entrenches himself in the details of auto and banking industry management, he is simply pushing historical boundaries in order to create a temporary fix and will clearly cease such intrusive behavior as quickly as economic circumstances allow.
When he cowers to our enemies and insults our allies with ridiculous gifts and statements, he is excused as naïve about how to execute the very diplomacy he holds in such high esteem. When Obama attempts to curtail our freedoms by requiring open union voting, bringing the census directly under White House authority, putting right wing voices under the Department of Homeland Security surveillance, stacking the FCC in preparation for chilling anti-Obama political speech, funding ACORN with billions which will assist all Democrats in future elections, the white view starts to fade but still instructs the observer that Obama’s intentions are genuinely valid and perhaps we can survive his tactics for awhile.
Sometimes, personality “flaws” are utilized to maintain the white view. From this perspective Obama is alternatively viewed as needing approval, immature, narcissistic, or simply a black man who has gotten his way throughout his life because no one has ever said “no” to him. Naivety seemingly explains his unawareness of the results of the likely consequences of his policy prescriptions. His actions somehow seem less threatening when the observer is able to relate them to psychological rather than ideological reasons.
And ideology is expressly castigated as exemplified by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s comment that ideology “is so yesterday.” Some say Obama is merely a “problem solver” who can leave long-followed American ideological precepts to fix a problem he deems necessary. His practicality can not be enslaved to ideology and, the white view continues, that is what we need in this complex modern world.
To date, the white view has been the preferred view for those who disagree with Obama’s actions and policies. The white view is less threatening and appears to be survivable. The black view peeks out from time to time but is initially easy to resist; the observer tends to find a way to refocus so as to maintain the white view. Critical to maintaining the white view is the belief that no matter which and how many policies Obama begins to execute, things have not gone too far to be irreversible. As the white view begins to prove unsatisfactory and starts to tire and fade, however, the black view becomes difficult to ignore.
And in this case, the black view is not easy to accept. The black view essentially insists that Obama does not have American values at heart at all. He is not interested in a strong military because he believes America should not use force. He may be embarrassed by or ashamed of past displays of military strength or he may simply not desire America to be a superpower, plain and simple. His is a world in which America is responsible for most ills and must therefore humble itself in order to gain its appropriate place alongside all others.
The black view frames his behavior with our allies - Britain, Canada, Ukraine, Poland, etc. as intentionally insulting in order to “reset” those relationships. He befriends our enemies and makes enemies out of our friends. His failure to counter the actions of Chavez, Ahmadinejad, the Castro brothers, Ortega and others is understood as intentionally demonstrating the weakness he wishes America to accept. Instead of confronting Russia over its assistance to Iran or its threats to its neighbors, Obama chooses a comparatively non-issue, reduction of our nuclear arsenals, as his method of “reset.”
In this view, Obama bows to and perhaps kisses the hand of Saudi King Abdullah because he wants America subservient to Muslim powers – true dhimmitude. In this view (due in large part to his own insistence upon hiding simple information such as his birth certificate, facts about his Pakistani roommate and travels, whether his college and law school education was funded by Saudis etc.), Obama is considered, perhaps, a pawn of Muslim powers – the Meccan Candidate.
Obama emerges in the black view as whole-heartedly anti-Israel, despite the cover he thought he obtained by hiring faux-pro-Israel Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff. Emmanuel has always appeared poised to throw Israel away dating back to his pro-Oslo efforts in the ‘90s. Conditioning a firm response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions upon Israel’s compliance with Obama’s (and Arab) visions for Israel’s future appears as a Mafioso tactic so instinctive to Emmanuel which will likely bring disaster to Israel while excusing Obama from meaningfully confronting Iran directly. Obama’s kowtow to the Saudi king simply punctuates his adoption of the “Saudi Plan” for destroying Israel under the pretense of appropriately bringing about “peace” in the Middle East. Having been intimately connected with the anti-Israel lobby (those elites and intellectuals who deride past administrations for considering Israel’s interests intimately connected with ours), Obama conspires with Mahmoud Abbas (his first call upon assuming the presidency) and the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan to force an untenable arrangement down the throats of the Israelis. Being able to walk away from America’s long term commitment to Israel fits Obama’s global visions and greatly simplifies America’s Middle East strategies. The “Two State Solution” will bring about the state of devolution for Israel if it is forced to “partner” with those who continue to seek its destruction as their own raison d’être.
Immigration is, perhaps, Obama’s largest palette. From the black point of view, Obama is carefully preparing Congress and the nation to give amnesty for many millions of illegal immigrants, not to mention their extended families. While the white view will tend to see this as an issue about America’s compassion, the black view shows how well Obama has capitalized upon the large illegal population of Chicago and nationally to marshal his own power. Not even an epidemic scare will cause Obama to change focus and enforce current laws on the books to secure our borders. Rather, securing the Democrat vote for decades for limitless numbers of illegals is Obama’s greatest motivation and power-securing play.
His hiring of left wing radicals throughout his administration is perceived not as a payoff here or a slipup in a newly engaged vetting process there. Rather, it shows a true intention to finally bring throughout all areas of American life the extreme socialist-Marxist and other policies against which many Americans have died fighting. While he attempts to frame his policies as practical and non-ideological, his actions are direct products of his extreme ideological foundations.
Obama’s “remedies” for the supposed failed economic policies of Bush underscore his clear attempt to carry out the goals of his hero – radical Saul Alinsky. Obamanomics is built around the Alinsky desire to transfer wealth from the Haves to the HaveNots. In direct contradiction to the image he seeks to sell, Obama does not solicit various economic views in an attempt to synthesize a solution. Rather, while he may indulge those who differ with him, he acts solely to execute the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.
And in 100 days, the seeds for this transfer have been well planted. Having used government lending to financial and auto companies as a means to control their ultimate destiny, Obama has demonstrated all of the characteristics of those “greedy Wall Streeters” he so thoroughly chastised during the campaign. Repaying the unions that helped his election with card check and equity control of at least one major auto company is just the beginning. From the perspective of the black view, Obama’s exorbitant spending campaign is simply a matter of creating a government “too big to fail” such that all power is transferred to the unions and those others whose allegiance Obama has secured.
The black view sees the current economic difficulties as a consequence primarily of the extreme money creation policies of Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve. This extreme monetary action amounted to the true “Predatory Lending” as it encouraged, if not forced, all facets of the economy to take on too much debt. The greed that followed (be it from Congressional regulations that forced further distributive lending of this money to inappropriate borrowers or from those who were able to take advantage of inordinately low cost financing) accentuated the economic contraction as well. Accordingly, the continuation of extreme levels of money creation and government spending that Obama is demanding is bent on securing the collapse of the essential capitalist foundations upon which this country has been built. And the black view highlights this collapse as Obama’s goal as it will allow him to redesign the social fabric to his wishes.
In the black view, Obama is a master of persuasive talk. He writes many of his speeches in order to insure his techniques are continuously utilized on his entranced followers; making sure that he carefully re-installs the conditioning he has so craftily established throughout the campaign. His recent speech on the economy revealed his own view of his audience when he said “(t)here’s all too often a lurch from shock to trance with everyone responding to the tempest of the moment until the furor has died down and the media coverage has moved on to something else.” This is a correct assessment of much of the public and has been the canvas upon which he has painted much of his political maneuvers. From the current “whack-a-mole” approach of flooding the media and public each day with a new issue to wear down any opposition to his constant reliance upon the nature of the American mind to move away from that which is frightening to that which is safe and familiar, Obama has manipulated much of the media and public to eat out of his hands.
The black view shows Obama to be a master of saying he is x while doing y. Saying he will promote transparency and accountability, get out of Iraq, tear down Guantanamo, does not want to manage or control the auto and bank industries, support Israel are simply the obvious sleights of mouth. His persistent transfer of attention backward to “the past eight years” while insisting he is looking forward is a tactic followed by the entire administration staff and continued by the media he has so masterfully entranced and enchanted. Saying he wishes to reach out to the Muslim world while releasing enhanced interrogation photos that are destined to inflame it is but one more example. Intentionally lying about his true motivations is what the black view makes incontrovertibly clear. Consequently, it is difficult for one who fully perceives the black view to trust Obama in any meaningful manner.
The essence of the black view is that Obama’s goal is in some sense to destroy that which lies at the heart of America. While he poses as pure American, drawing upon Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and others, the black view exposes his clever disguise of anti-American sentiments. Obama often straddles these two positions when he uses visual phrases such as “see in the future” and “glimmers of hope” and so on. These seeming innocuous poetics are powerful weapons to convince his audience that he is who they want him to be. As stated in his speech on the economy “(w)e can see a vision of an America’s future that’s far different than our troubled economic past;” a phrase which carries different meanings to different observers. Observer’s ears should perk up when they hear him utter visual words – a prelude to this very manipulation. And exactly how “different” from our past the Obama future will be is precisely what torments the black view observer.
Because it is so counter-intuitive to believe that the country could elect such a President, the black view has a tendency to create its own demise. It leads the observer to conclusions that are not simply unpleasant but deeply troubling; so much so that cultural norms pressure the observer to blink it away in order to avoid castigation. Having been fooled, betrayed, or simply bullied by lies, the observer naturally has a difficult time accepting the truth he begins to see. Accordingly, for many, as the black view peaks, it starts to fade and morph back into the white view; just as with all Escher lithographs.
As Obama carries out more and more of his policies, it becomes increasingly difficult for the white view to convince the observer that the nation can so easily recover and reverse direction in the future. Over time, as those who do not support Obama continue to stare at the canvas in an attempt to ascertain which view is correct, more and more have been adapting to the discomfort of the black view. Unfortunately, Obama’s actions during his first one hundred days have made this ever more difficult to resist.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Bill Siegel lives in New York.
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