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How did Obama become a black American? — 20 Comments

  1. Appalled by the “dirty deeds” of “Reagan and his minions” (as he wrote in “Dreams from My Father”)

    How does he square that with his leftist acolytes in the media (perhaps he himself) associating The One with Reagan, in a failed and rather pathetic attempt to save his Presidency?

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  3. This is interesting. I’ve never quite agreed with the idea that Obama is an idiot- even if some of his ideas lack a certain intelligence. His history as a politician in Chicago is evidence enough for that.

    I DO think that Obama put much more thought into his goals than into his policies. I think that he believed that the intelligentsia had articulated enough of that for him, and that he didn’t really need to think the leftist ideas fully through- he only needed to implement them. This is why he sounds like a bumbling idiot whenever he does need to respond thoughtfully to an argument. I think he knows it too, which is why so many people have reported that when they did attempt to engage him in debate, his response was to get snitty and turn their backs on the person engaging in conversation.

    The result is that from the outside, Obama looks to be an idiot as well as a sharp political opponent. His strength lies in convincing people to follow him. His weakness is that he is actually a terrible leader.

  4. Jay Gatsby had the common decency to self-construct himself in pursuit of a woman. Obama has the uncommon chutzpah to self-construct himself in the pursuit of deconstructing, nee ‘fundamentally transforming’, the nation. Purpose is prologue — the one leading to tragedy, the other to… well that chapter hasn’t been written yet.

  5. Neo:

    For quite a while, Obama has reminded me at least a little bit of the F. Scott Fitzgerald character Jay Gatsby–that is, not in the details, but in the fact of being a self-constructed man.

    Which is a very American thing to do. Fresh starts and all that.

    In looking back at Dreams From my Father, I am reminded of where he wrote that when in college he didn’t want to be considered a “sellout,” so he sought out Marxist professors et al. This was someone who was in the process of constructing a persona, who was very concerned with how people perceived him. Also note the political orientation at an early age.

    In another passage from Dreams From my Father , during his community organizing days in Chicago in the mid-1980s, Obama talks with a co-worker’s adolescent son, who once wanted to be an Air Force pilot.

    I asked him if he was still thinking about the air force, and he shook his head; he’d stay in Chicago, he said, find a job and get his own place. I asked him what had changed his mind. He said that the air force would never let a black man fly a plane.

    I looked at him crossly. “Who told you that mess?”

    Kyle shrugged. “Don’t need somebody to tell me that. Just is, that’s all.”

    “Man, that’s the wrong attitude. You can do whatever you want if you’re willing to work for it.”

    Kyle smirked and turned his head toward the window, his breath misting the glass. “Yeah, well…how many black pilots do you know?”

    When I first read this, I concluded that Obama was 1) ignorant of history- no comeback that since World War II and the Tuskegee Airman, there have been black Air Force pilots; 2) lazy- he didn’t bother to find that out and inform Kyle.

    There is also another take. I find it very hard to believe that in the 1980s, a twenty-something black with a college degree was not aware of the Tuskegee airmen. Obama was not aware of the Tuskegee airmen because he was still constructing his black persona, and was not yet very aware of black history.

  6. Occam’s Beard:

    Appalled by the “dirty deeds” of “Reagan and his minions” (as he wrote in “Dreams from My Father”)
    How does he square that with his leftist acolytes in the media (perhaps he himself) associating The One with Reagan, in a failed and rather pathetic attempt to save his Presidency?

    Because of the undying racism in America, blacks are imbued with self-hatred, and as a result, identify with their oppressors. Obama hated Reagan, who was viewed as THE MAN. Obama wanting to be like Reagan is evidence of the self-hatred that racist America imposes on blacks. 🙂

  7. “My gut feeling is that it has the ring of truth.” Agreed. I thought those who, in 2008, suggested that there was something deficient in his American-ness were hitting below the belt, but since then I’ve become convinced that he does in fact not have the deep sense of being an American that most native-born Americans do, no matter what their political views. And moreover that on some deep level that he doesn’t really care much for the place, or the idea–he doesn’t, for instance, think of the Constitution as having a sort of quasi-sacred status.

  8. I’ve always felt that Obama’s marriage to a woman whose complexion is darker than his was part of his effort to establish his identity as black. Successful black men rarely do that.

  9. Mr. Frank Says:
    May 18th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
    I’ve always felt that Obama’s marriage to a woman whose complexion is darker than his was part of his effort to establish his identity as black. Successful black men rarely do that.

    C’mon, Frank, Michelle would be a super attractive potential mate for any left thinking man, whether white, black or really dark dark black complected.

    Mac Says:
    May 18th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
    “My gut feeling is that it has the ring of truth.” Agreed. I thought those who, in 2008, suggested that there was something deficient in his American-ness were hitting below the belt, but since then I’ve become convinced that he does in fact not have the deep sense of being an American that most native-born Americans do, no matter what their political views.

    Mac, you may be on to something. Regardless of where he was born, Barack Obama spent at least 3 and as many as 5 of his formative years being raised in a foreign country (from Wikipedia: “From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School”). And, at least one of his “parents” was NOT an ex-pat American.

  10. This is why I consider Obama uniquely dangerous.

    He doesn’t love America.

    I don’t mean that he is insufficiently jingoistic, or that he’s loyal to some foreign government. I mean that he doesn’t have any affection for this country. It’s not his homeland. He doesn’t fit in anywhere — he wasn’t Hawaiian enough for Hawaii, he wasn’t black enough for Chicago, he wasn’t white enough for New York.

    He has never gone on a road trip and eaten in crummy diners. He has never watched a July 4 parade. He has never been to a county fair. He has never visited the Statue of Liberty. He has never wanted to be a cowboy or an astronaut.

    Contrast Bill Clinton. He was a sleaze and a crook, but he liked America, and Americans liked him back despite his corruption.

    Imagine the two men at a county fair. Bill would be stuffing himself on funnel cakes and polish sausage, laughing at the racing pigs, and trying to pick up underage farm girls. Meanwhile Barack would walk around nervously, worried that all these dangerous rednecks were about to lynch him, worried that the napkins aren’t properly biodegradable, worried that the food is unhealthy, worried that being photographed with the racing pigs will bring complaints from PETA and CAIR.

    And because Obama doesn’t love America, he’s unfettered. Previous Presidents didn’t rule by decree and ignore Congress unless the situation was truly dire, because they understood that we don’t do things that way. Obama has no such constraints. He’s limited by what he can get away with — and with his vast web of media satraps and big-money sycophants, that isn’t much of a limit.

    I always dismissed black-helicopters talk as foolish and crazy. But I pretty much expect Obama to attempt something illegal this fall.

  11. “How does he square that with his leftist acolytes in the media (perhaps he himself) associating The One with Reagan”

    Rank hypocrisy? Just a guess.

    Anyway, on this entire subject of Obama’s “identity” what is remarkable is that although he seems to have no solid roots in America or any other country, this rootlessness is not accompanied by any evident scintilla of self-doubt. It is almost as if his narcissistic affection for himself is so great that he believes he is above *any* country. Especially America, which is so full of, well, Americans.

  12. >>> For quite a while, Obama has reminded me at least a little bit of the F. Scott Fitzgerald character Jay Gatsby–that is, not in the details, but in the fact of being a self-constructed man.

    He always struck me much more along the Zelig lines….

  13. “”How does he square that with his leftist acolytes in the media (perhaps he himself) associating The One with Reagan””

    Liberals only embrace Reagan for the purposes of deconstructing him. They know he was immensly popular and simply want to reshape the history of why he was popular. He was a socialist wealth redistributor very much like Obama don’t you know?

  14. Occam(11:36am,Thurs.)..”How does he square…?”

    Answer: He DOESN’T need to square his self-constructed mythology–read LIES–because he knows that current generations of Americans have little(very little)sense of contemporary history. You know, like way, WAAAY back there 30-years ago!? With the astonishing vapidity of the app-i-thingy generation, grifters have really come into their own.

  15. Gringo,

    That story from Dreams about Kyle thinking there were no black pilots – was your additional take on it (the lack of credibility of him not knowing about the Tuskegee Airmen) meant to imply that like other things in that book, Obama (or Ayers) made up the whole encounter? Because that’s where I assumed you would take that.

    Speaking of, does this mean that Michelle was not proud of the Airmen? Or did she not know about them either?

  16. Yackums

    Gringo…was your additional take on it (the lack of credibility of him not knowing about the Tuskegee Airmen) meant to imply that like other things in that book, Obama (or Ayers) made up the whole encounter?

    I was talking more about the ignorance and laziness of Obama implicit in his tale of Kyle, during the time when Obama was a community organizer. I wasn’t thinking of the story being made up.

    Would the author of Dreams make up a story which reflected so poorly on Obama? The reply might be that the author was not aware that such a story reflected badly on Obama, as the author was ignorant of the Tuskegee airmen.

    However, given the many composite characters in Dreams, it is quite possible that Kyle and the story were made up. Stanley Kurtz, in Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, points out that Obama used a composite character, “Marty Kaufman,” who was involved with Obama in community organizing in Chicago.

    In his book, Kurtz does not shed any light on Ruby, Obama’s co-worker in community organizing, or Kyle, who was Ruby’s son. As to their being real,composite, or made-up characters, I do not know enough to make a stand.

    This brings up a point about composite characters. Like many others, I do not see the need for Obama to have hidden the identities of the people he discussed in his book. The only conclusion I have come to is that he did so in order to hide his tracks, so that what he wrote couldn’t be checked up on. Bill Ayers had plenty of experience in false identities and in covering his tracks when he was underground for a decade. I see the composite characters in Dreams as supporting the hypothesis that Ayers had a hand in writing the book.

    Speaking of, does this mean that Michelle was not proud of the Airmen? Or did she not know about them either?

    The story of Kyle, with its egregious non-reference to the Tuskegee airmen, says nothing about Michelle’s knowledge about or attitude towards the Tuskgee airmen. Barack Obama met Michelle when he was a Harvard Law student at a summer job in Chicago. The story about Kyle occurred when Obama was a community organizer, before he went to Harvard.

  17. My belief is that Barry didn’t decide to be Black until he was at Occidental. He realized that going to a white-hipster college with his (I would bet) lousy grades would not get him into Harvard Law or any other place that would give him a launchpad for his political career. So, he transferred to Columbia, knowing that the gutless wonders of the Ivy League would not only let him in but lionize him. Plus, Blackosity would not get him very far on the West Coast, where Hispanics are the controlloing minority, soon to be a majority.

    The amazing (and amusing) thing to me is how he convinced black people that he’s Black. As I’ve said before here, he didn’t grow up in a black family, he didn’t live in a black neighborhood, he didn’t go to black schools, he didn’t go to a black college, his ancestors were not slaves, his grandparents and parents didn’t live though Jim Crow or the civil rights movement. So how is he black?

    Apparently the “one-drop of blood” rule of Jim Crow is looked on with favor by black people. Go figure.

  18. How did Obama become a black guy?

    A small error in your question. I fixtit fer ya…. The other word, I do not believe it means what he thinks it means.

  19. >>>> Apparently the “one-drop of blood” rule of Jim Crow is looked on with favor by black people. Go figure.

    I have it on good authority that, if he fails re-election, he’s going to run again in 2016 as one five hundred-twelfth Cherokee.

    He was talking about running as the first Transgender potus but his advisers thought that woudn’t fly in flyover country…
    :^D

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