Messiah

I haven't much time to write, being on deadline. (That's a good thing: It means I have some work.) But I want to draw your attention to this piece by Max Bluementhal: "Obama, the Failed Messiah."

The Obama phenomenon is impossible to analyze or understand without considering the deep levels of anxiety and desperation that progressives suffered during the radical presidency of George W. Bush. When the Democratic primary began, some progressives seemed to embrace a secular version of the Christian right's salvation fantasy. They ached for a secular messiah to descend from the political heavens, reverse Bush's disastrous legacy and save the country from itself. A mere politician, even with solid progressive credentials, would have been unacceptable to them.

These words come close to addressing the bizarre surge in rabid Clinton Derangement Syndrome among lefties. Alas, Blumenthal is too cowardly to address the rift directly. Doing so would force an admission that the left had imitated the right's most obnoxious traits -- hate-mongering, paranoia, dehumanization of perceived enemies, valuing political victory over civilized behavior, elevating emotion over reason.

The things done in the name of Obamaism were abominable. Never forget; never forgive. And whenever anyone tells you "Get over it" -- don't.

Though he is a social conservative who briefly flirted with involvement in the Republican Party, it is worth noting that Louis Farrakhan, who had consistently ordered his followers to boycott elections and who attacked black politicians from Harold Washington to Jesse Jackson as tools of the white power structure, declared in a dramatic address to his followers that Obama was the Messiah.

Blumenthal's grammar is a bit shaky: Farrakhan, not "it," is the social conservative. Worse, Blumenthal makes a common error in political categorization: He judges Farrakhan by the color of his skin, not the content of his character.

Farrakhan is not just a social conservative; he is a stone-cold reactionary. He favors racial segregation. He values theocracy over democracy. He has allied himself with Sun Myung Moon. To the best of my knowledge, Farrakhan has never said a single word against unbridled Friedman-style capitalism. The separate black nation he has always longed to lead would bear no resemblance to Swedish-style social democracy.

How far right does a black man have to go before people finally start to call him a right-winger? Alas, many ninnies remain entranced by the ludicrous notion that the Nation of Islam is politically locatable on the left. It's an American credo: Any black person who has not officially registered Republican must be a lefty. Even brain surgery cannot dislodge that stereotype from the American psyche.

Do some research: The NOI -- birthed in Henry Ford's Detroit, and founded by a man who, oddly enough, was also named Ford -- is, for all intents and purposes, a black fascist movement. The Nation told members to avoid unions, to sneer at FDR, and -- ultimately -- to support Hitler and Tojo. American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell spoke at events alongside Elijah Muhammed. This covert embrace of fascism was one of the main reasons for Malcolm X's disaffection from the movement. You won't learn about that motive from the Spike Lee movie, but that's what happened.

So why did Farrakhan embrace Obama? I don't know, but the mere fact of that embrace made me very suspicious of Obama. There's a story there; I can sense it. Alas, right now we haven't the necessary data to do more than to speculate about that story.

A third party? Riverdaughter, bless her, uses the Blumenthal article to argue in favor of a third party. Sorry, but in the immortal words of Rocket J. Squirrel: That trick never works. The last time it did work was at a time when some older folk still kept tricorner hats in the closet, on the theory that they might come back.

A truly inspiring figure just might be able to pull off the third-party gambit -- I'm thinking of Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party. But we live in an era bereft of such larger-than-life figures. Perhaps we should be grateful for that absence; the Obama phenomena has taught us to be chary of Messiahs and their movement. As I've said before, all movements are bowel movements.

I hate to disagree with Riverdaughter, one of the most gifted wordsmiths to be found in the League of Unpaid Writers. But a third party is not the answer. An unknown wit once said that what we need is a second party. Amen to that!