It was observed in this space as recently as January that Barack Obama confounds a majority of Americans because he views his country, and thus his duties as President, through a prism of unaccountability. This was painfully evident again on Wednesday when Obama delivered a budget speech panned very accurately by the Wall Street Journal as "dishonest even by modern political standards."
Because he is so "wise", so "transformational", his thoughts and the words through which he conveys them are sufficient. Deeds are not required. Deeds are for the little people, the insects perched all around him. Reality is for chumps, for voters, for Tea Party activists, and for the most inconsequential human beings of all, members of the U.S. Congress.
In his youth, uncontained rage erupted in Obama's core, an abject contempt for a class of people he dismissed as cold-hearted capitalists and, in most cases, as oppressive colonialists. Author Dinesh D'Souza detailed the origins of these deeply entrenched feelings in his acclaimed book,The Roots of Obama's Rage, and in a Forbes cover story last September, in which D'Souza chronicles how Obama's hostility toward private enterprise only makes sense upon examination of his roots.
History has shown us that men who rise to prominence on the wings of rage are willing to do almost anything to achieve vindication. Whatever carnage litters this journey is of no concern to them. Whatever stands in the way, be it individual opponents or the stability of a society as a whole, must be obliterated.
Every day, more Americans are awakening to a realization that someone very different occupies the White House -- someone unlike any past President who comes to mind. Yet in the mainstream media and across a majority of the disengaged population (such as those glued to the countdown to England's royal wedding), there are two persistent conclusions: Obama is just doing what he thinks is right, so give this young president a chance; or, he's always in campaign mode, playing to the working- and middle-class voters who are certain to re-elect him in 2012.
Much analysis followed Obama's stunningly arrogant speech Wednesday in which he laid out his recipe for harnessing American indebtedness without touching bloated entitlement programs he characterizes as sacred to the nation's fabric.
How many sage pundits are asking: Can this President, having moved to the "center", suddenly become so mule-brained on budget cuts (his so-called compromise with Republicans now exposed as a numbers con), and so resolutely defiant on spending? Why, how can Obama trash Rep. Paul Ryan's budget remedies as not being "serious", vowing to tax those who already pay most of the federal income taxes more aggressively in the future?
Respected commentator Charles Krauthammer said Obama's vilification of the Ryan blueprint was a "disgrace". The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof predictably agreed with Obama on raising taxes on those mischaracterized as "rich", and the Times' editorial proclaimed the speech as proof that Obama is "reinvigorated". After all, you can't have a listless messiah, can you?
Applying logic and conventional thinking is what real-time historians must do. Yes, it is disgraceful for a President to diminish the economic crisis that has defined the opening two years of his time in office by throwing partisan daggers at the opposition game plan. Yes, Obama is reinvigorated, any time he can recite age-old liberal passages from the left-wing hymn book.
But the Times' editorial touched on the true motivation for Obama's defiant polarization of the budget debate.
"The man America elected president has re-emerged. … He set out a very different vision of an America that keeps its promises to the weak and asks for sacrifice from the strong."
Sadly, the Times' Kool-Aid quenched editorial board and Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 will not comprehend that the President has not re-emerged. The rage never subsides. His contempt toward the Americans the Times calls "the strong" (and to whom Obama assigns less complimentary labels) does not become dormant or neutralized by the magnitude of Presidential responsibility, or by threats to our economic solvency.
The man America elected president counts himself among the "weak" to whom much must be promised. Of course, he does not believe he is physically weak, or intellectually feeble. But Barack Obama firmly believes he was sentenced at birth to weakness caused by the oppressive boot on the neck, a boot belonging to bigotry, racism, economic inequality and colonialist arrogance.
Though he escaped the oppression to rise up as a transformational god, it is unlikely he feels godlike in moments of quiet solitude. Rage does not coexist with confidence, with leadership, or with benevolence. Rage feeds on itself. It churns. It bubbles. It flows through the fibers of his being like a psychological lava, obliterating clear thought and blinding him from the perils of his choices.
No one better understands the paradoxical Obama than the author D'Souza. Conclusions about what motivates Obama "aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate," D'Souza wrote in Forbes last September.
"The real problem with Obama is worse -- much worse. … Across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history."
And, in failing to adequately fear Obama's potential to wage war on the very citizens he was elected to serve, we ignore the peril ahead.
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