Obama the Almighty

In the event that anyone has been passed out in a field for the past week, I feel it is my duty to inform you that Senator Barack Obama has been on a much-publicized trip to the Middle East and Europe. It was a trip that one would expect of the American president, as the office is currently constructed. It is disturbing enough to see an American president checking in on the American Empire, as though he was checking in on his viceroys. What is yet more disturbing is seeing a mere candidate for president doing the very same thing.

Yet it does not stop there. Mr. Obama received a hero's welcome in Germany. Judging by the reception in Berlin, one might have thought the Illinois freshman senator's mode of transportation had been riding a colt and his destination was Jerusalem. Although, this builds into the perception of Barack Obama as the Messiah. And like all Messiahs to appear since the mid-1st Century, this one will prove himself false as well.

All the attention heaped on Mr. Obama and all the accolades make him too good to be true. Oh, the era of Bush is over, many in the United States and Europe are thinking. But, like anyone or anything that seems too good to be true, always is. Barack Obama will be no exception.

Everyone knows that Mr. Obama can put on a great show and he indeed put on a great show for the Germans as he spoke with all the elegant rhetoric that has made him so popular since his 2004 Democratic convention speech. Lost during all this commotion regarding this most recent Messiah is that he is very much another politician who is an empty vessel and only really interested in increasing his power. The Messiah treatment and Messiah complex will only make Barack Obama's tyranny once in office, all the more profound.

He looks good, sounds good, so he must be good, right? While I usually hold to the axiom, If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, I feel the application will be too naive in Mr. Obama's case. When people want to put their trust in someone who only appeals to their senses, they are putting their trust in a false god.

And apparently Mr. Obama believes he is the Almighty one as well. The senator has already claimed that while he is president global warming will cease, America will return to its ideals, and that all divisions will be healed.

These are not just the meanderings of a candidate who will act more like a king than a president, but one who thinks he has the authority and immunity from criticism, of a god. When the "New Yorker" magazine ran its now-infamous cartoon of the Obamas', the candidate said it was offensive to Muslim-Americans, but not a word was said about how conservatives were the intended butt of the joke. This man will heal divisions? Maybe after he thwarts global warming and parts the ocean. Never mind that the notion that man, even collectively, can change the climate of an entire planet is the epitome of self-delusion and idolatry, but this only further proves the senator's Messiah complex (as if he can hold the oceans back from the coast).

Both Mr. Obama's Messianic reception and impenetrable shield from dissent pose real problems. There was revulsion from the Obama camp when people asked questions about his wife who had made some controversial comments on the campaign trail. Remember how nobody could even say his middle name (Hussein) because it implied that the man is a Muslim (doubtful).

Now cartoonists are prohibited from creating any material that could possibly be construed as offensive to Muslims or the Obamas'. Has it not been liberals who have long contended that there is a right to offend in America, a complaint they have long dumped on conservatives and Republicans.

Indeed, an Obama presidency would be frightening. And not even for the reasons that the neoconservatives keep railing about, i.e. that with a President Obama we can be assured of an attack because he will be considered too weak. However, one must ask, would he, as president, actively suppress free speech or any other liberty that we have left? The weakness on foreign policy really does not hold much water. Mr. Obama's position on Iraq is getting closer to John Kerry's indecipherable one, not to mention that he has already suggested bombing Pakistan (which he has no constitutional authority to do) and that he would bomb Iran in order to protect Israel's nuclear hegemony in the region, but I digress.

From the behavior of the Obama campaign, the answer to the question on free speech is a resounding Yes. We know that we cannot criticize him or his wife, so we probably should not be surprised if the Sedition Acts are resurrected. Even cartoons directed at conservatives but which depict Muslim extremism is deemed offensive. This is not the behavior of a republican president, but it is the behavior of a tyrant-to-be.

No one can speak ill of the king and no one can blaspheme against God.