God help us
I was planning to post today on Obama’s terrifying “Truth Squads,” but when I went for the video I was stunned to see that Obama now has something even scarier:
Oh, sorry, that’s not it. Here it is:
Unfortunately, if you’re like most people and you get your Obama news from the possum-infested media, this comparison will make no sense to you because you think Obama is a nice guy.
Just today I was trying to explain to my mother that Obama has run the sleaziest, most corrupt campaign since Nixon. The voter fraud in the caucus states was massive, with 2000 reported incidents in Texas alone. Almost every one of the baseless smears against Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin has emanated directly from his campaign.
“But if that’s true,” said my mother, “why doesn’t the media report it?”
Why indeed?
The media wanted Al Gore to lose in 2000 and so they convinced the public he was a flake who claimed to have invented the internet, and that George W. Bush was an honorable down-to-earth moral paragon. The media wanted us to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and so they convinced the public that Saddam was out to get us (WMD! 9-11! Anthrax!) and that the Bush Administration was acting correctly.
Now they want Obama to win, and so they’re persuading the public that he’s a wonderful guy (a “lightworker,” so help me) and his opponents (particularly, it seems, his female opponents) are crazy/stupid/evil.
You know what we need more than an election for president? We need an election for the media. We need to throw out these bums and elect a whole new squad.
41 Responses to “God help us”
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myiq2xu says:
Imagine a media that just reports the news instead of trying to make it up.
Imagine if “news anchor” was the weight used to keep the body of a bloviating gasbag from rising to the surface.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:00 pm EST -
Violet says:
I remember that, actually. Back in the 70s.
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Valhalla says:
I remember it too, although these days I often think I dreamed it.
I’ve gotten to the point that anything the MSM endorses, I run the other way.
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Steven Mather says:
I was struck by the same parallel and mentioned it elsewhere. How can one not feel chilled?
There is room at the top they keep telling you still.
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
if you want to be like the folks on the hill.J. Lennon- Working Class Hero
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Mary Tracy9 says:
Awesome post.
By the way, you know what would a an even greater post? (hint, hint) A (somewhat) detailed review of why the media wants Obama to win. Because the reason must be that his policies, postitions, ideas, etc align with the interests of the media corporate elites. And that’s a link I am yet to see anyone make.
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Daphne says:
Wow, this post is so funny…yet so scary…
What freaks me out are those posterized images of Obama’s face. Just like the kind of glorifying portraits you see of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-il, etc.
Do these worshipers not see the parallels, or are they intentional?
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Lori says:
When Bush began running for the presidency, rove went to the media CEOs and told them that Bush would support expanding the percentage of a media market that each company is allowed to own - and of course, that paid off beautifully for the media companies. He even gave them a neato-keen war which really drove up their ratings and made a few careers to boot! One has to assume that something similar has transpired here.
As for the thuggery, one of the things John West told me is that Clinton delegates were coming to see him with bruises on their arms from being man-handled by obama delegates. Anything goes.
Well, should Obama win, it may well shatter the party. He’s not going to govern as a liberal, and its questionable to what degree he will ultimately be able to bring Congress with him. At some point, the much ballyhooed fundraising list will lose it’s mojo and then he is out of luck and congress will be as faithful as a tom cat.
I’m thinking I’m going to sit out this election entirely unless someone or some proposition took an exceptional stand to the tactics employed. I’d rather clean up in four years and scare the bejeebers out of the Dems in the meantime.
I don’t care what anyone says. This so-called crisis and bail-out is a wild card and regardless of what the polls say on any given day, no one knows how this is going to play out. Color me skeptical of both parties at this point.
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anna says:
Don’t you think comparing Obama’s followers to Hitler Youth is a bit insulting to those who were killed by the Nazis, not to mention Obama supporters, who certainly aren’t being trained to murder?
Do you really think McCain is better on the issues than Obama? He may have run a cleaner campaign, but even if Obama is Republican Lite that isn’t a reason to vote for an actual Republican.
As for the little girl singing solo in the Obama video, assuming her voice hasn’t been dubbed or altered she’s really got talent.
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Violet says:
Don’t you think comparing Obama’s followers to Hitler Youth is a bit insulting to those who were killed by the Nazis, not to mention Obama supporters, who certainly aren’t being trained to murder?
No. The creepiness of the scene in Cabaret is the fact that sweetness and innocence — or what you might call Hope & Change — are being used to sell what is in fact a sinister movement. I think the parallel is apt.
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Richard Holsworth says:
Composit Character Dreams of Mein Father
In 1924 a little known communtiy organizer wrote a book that would help catapult him to power. In that same year a man later destined to become president at a time of great economic upheaval gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National convention. Freaky, ain’t it?
I fear Obama’s movement — He’s no FDR. -
soopermouse says:
having grown up under communism- that’s what it looks like. Personality cults are all scary and freakish when saw from the outside, but believe it or not, all looks OK from inside the machine. Do you think those kids had any fucking idea what they were singing about? Even the woman who made that infamous “hot mama for OBama” video onfessed she didn’t support him, just did the video for her boyfriend for fuck’s sakes.
If this doesn’t scare people, then they deserve him. -
sister of ye says:
When I studied German in college, I did a personal side study of the Nazis and their rise to power.
When Bush was running I saw a lot of parallels between him and his supporters and Hitler and the Nazis, more than enough to worry me. But good liberals created Godwin’s law, which shot down every discussion of the topic. Any suggestions of comparisons were dismissed with, “Oh, Bush is stupid and incompetent. Besides, he’s not evil. He can’t be that bad.”
And we got the gutting of habeus corpus, secret prison, torture, domestic spying, routine searches at airports, including pure harassment tactics like ditching mouthwash, rounding up of “illegal” aliens into camps, and wholesale neglect as a major city drowned. Even when the leader’s popularity began to wane, we still had only collaboration from the “opposition.”
Now we have a prospective leader who struts before chanting crowds at mass rallies, who has nothing specific to propose but feel-good cries of “hope and change,” who stirs up resentment against the elderly and middle-aged, employs vile smears against his women opponents, actively campaigns with ministers who want to “cure” gays, presents himself as the champion of “faith and values,” and strongarms all opposition to his rise to head his party, including using physical intimidation.
But people who would point out the dangers now are dismissed with “But a black man can’t possibly be corrupt. He’ bright. He’s articulate. He’s a community organizer like Jesus.”
The parallels write themselves.
Do you think in another 70 years others around the world will be puzzling, “But why did they all go along? Couldn’t Americans see what was happening?”
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Violet says:
Any suggestions of comparisons were dismissed with, “Oh, Bush is stupid and incompetent. Besides, he’s not evil. He can’t be that bad.”
The pushback was always (and is still): “so you’re saying Bush is Hitler? That he’s going to roast 6 million Jews?”
Which of course ignores what fascism actually is. The German variant of it, with its insane anti-semitism, was an astronomically toxic form. But fascism as the Italians invented it — the perfect storm of control, propaganda, and money that stifles dissent and enables power to flourish unchecked — is very much still looming. And as Sinclair Lewis showed us, American fascism won’t look like the European kind: it will arrive bearing the cross and waving the flag.
No, I don’t think Barack Obama has secret plans to murder 6 million Jews. Nor did Bush. But Bush did quite enough damage in his own fashion, and I expect Obama to be even worse. Obama has what Bush had briefly but couldn’t maintain: the ability to make large numbers of people believe he’s actually a force for good. That’s the most dangerous weapon of all.
I’ve seen how Obamabots behave. They believe whatever they’re told and are ready to destroy anything in the way of their idol. All the Obama camp has to do is plant a rumor or spread a smear — that Hillary fantasized openly about his assassination, that a Clinton operative used the “n” word — and they swarm online demanding blood. At places like Huffington Post people literally said that Hillary needed to be killed.
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simply wondered says:
hallelujah! (hope i spelled that right - not overly familiar with the term)
violet socks discovers belief in god!
what prompted this? obama!
he is the messaiah.
roll on the rapture (or is that after the arising of the great beaver with seven nipples in the midwest?) now where did i put that heavy book with all the funny words? -
old dem says:
The video in your link has been removed so I did a search on youtube and found it reposted at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlcIwvHZUl4
I’m sure that this one will quickly disappear, too, although hopefully it will be posted again and again.
There is another almost equally scary one that involves older children and young adults at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjhUFCuZBD8
Besides the usual “hope and change”, this one adds “peace” to the mixture, obviously ignoring Obama’s stated intent to redeploy armed forces from Iraq to Afghanistan and the possibility of widening the war into Pakistan. A section of the video focuses on an older child/young adult who tearfully speaks of her brother going to Iraq that is interspersed with photos of soldiers in that country. She states that she “really wants him to come back” while trying to gain control of her emotions. Others employ words and phrases with a religious connotation, such as “cleanse our name” and “heal our soldiers”. They also speak of “a leader to the whole entire world”, someone who is “gonna look out for us”, and “our last chance, as a nation”.
I have no respect for anyone who would manipulate the emotions of young people and allow them to state their support in a way that brings to mind a messiah rather than a politician. It shows a complete lack of integrity.
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InsightAnalytical-GRL says:
The corrupt CBC, Acorn, Truth Squads…yes, they are running the show now…and the children are singing…
Perhaps some of the things mentioned in this post further illustrate what’s behind Obama…great visual examples…. Calling Chairman Mao?
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Anna Belle says:
The second video disappeared. What was it?
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votermom says:
How can those parents let their kids get exploited this way? I can’t understand it.
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votermom says:
Anna Belle, Here’s the same video, watch it before it gets yanked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTm5rp8r6fE -
Iris says:
So Violet, you happen to know that Obama’s “not a nice guy”…I’d like to know how you came by this insight. Some bad stuff might have come from his campaign but did he approve of it? I think Obama is a nice guy who loves his wife and children. If the standard is bad stuff that comes from a campaign, what about John McCain and Sarah Palin? Cognitive dissonance alert…
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salt h2o says:
Thanks for scaring the crap out of me.
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Kali says:
I’ve realized something over the past few months. The media is not right-leaning or left-leaning. The media is just anti-woman leaning.
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madamab says:
I’m so glad this is making the rounds of the blogosphere. Great post, Violet!
Kali - IMHO, the media is corporate-leaning. Whichever candidate they think will increase their profits, they get behind and push and push and push till that person is elected.
Hillary would have regulated and taxed them. So will McCain, to a lesser degree. They simply cannot allow that.
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Kat says:
Any suggestions of comparisons were dismissed with, “Oh, Bush is stupid and incompetent. Besides, he’s not evil. He can’t be that bad.”
The pushback was always (and is still): “so you’re saying Bush is Hitler? That he’s going to roast 6 million Jews?”
Something else is suggested here, too: no matter how bad an American president can be, there’s only so bad he can be. There’s a bottom limit, which *really* isn’t so bottom, and if you suggest otherwise, why do you hate and disrepected the war dead and embarrass respectable people like us?
Implicit in this statement: anything *bad* in American politics is not as bad as things that happen In Other Places, because first, the system will work itself out and second, we’re just a better breed of people.
What I’m increasingly seeing is the marginalization of any public speech or opinion that isn’t the sanitized pap of the corporate Obama nation. There is no need, for the preservation and expansion of political-economic power, to take people away in the night. Why would you need to do that? They’ll never be heard and if they are, they’ll never be listened to. The single thing that has depressed me the most, and left me feeling the most alienated from the political process in all this mess, is the narraw, controlled media “storyline.” That’s how they can get away with misogyny and then pretend it doesn’t even exist — they have the consolidated power to make it invisible. To make us invisible. This becomes apparent as I interact with people offline.
I recently witnessed an Obama rally (as in, within earshot — I didn’t attend!). It gave me the creeps. Any political rallies that involve chanting, cheering group behavior turns my stomach. That’s exactly the type of (non)discourse that we do not need in this country.
Great post as usual, Violet.
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madamab says:
Violet - Did you see the author of “Goodbye to All That,” Robin Morgan, claiming that Sarah Palin has gotten a free ride from the media? Oh my Gawd!
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/100108.html
She also claims that we cannot, CAN NOT vote for McCain/Palin.
Poor thing. She just cannot stand the idea that the 30% Solution is non-partisan.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Wow, madamab - thanks for the link to Robin’s essay. It was startling to say the least. It seems to boil down to this:
5. Simple: Do not throw away your chance to help elect this nation’s first African American president. Savor that. That vote makes history.
The election of a woman to the office of VP doesn’t come close to “making history” in the same way that Hillary’s run during the campaign wasn’t nearly as “historic” as that of Obama’s.
Robin doesn’t seem to hold any interest in the 30% solution. Feminism seems to be her way or the highway.
It’s all so disgusting.
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madamab says:
TheOtherDelphyne - Yes, put our agenda aside for that of a man. It’s been working for us so far - look at how the ERA has been ratified, how abortion and birth control are free from federal interference and -
Oh, wait…
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libbygurl says:
Thanks for the bitterly funny and truthful post, Violet. Like you, I have finally concluded that Obama will be the next POTUS, since the media did exactly the same thing for GWB - twice! - and for Bush’s Iraq War. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the media are acting on their own - they get their orders from hidden masters who REALLY control things, and want things to remain under their tight control. I am thoroughly disgusted by the way things have been, and have given up - when even the supposedly more objective and fair PBS and NPR cast their lot so blatantly with Obama, the world is lost. No one speaks for us anymore. It’s a clash of the titans - the left and right - and who has the bigger money to push things to go their way? Is a revolution needed? I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is, but the problem surely runs deeper than just the media dictating how things should - and will - be of their own accord. The real powers (now - Soros and Brzezinski and company) remain hidden from view.
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Violet says:
Violet - Did you see the author of “Goodbye to All That,” Robin Morgan, claiming that Sarah Palin has gotten a free ride from the media? Oh my Gawd!
It is painful to watch the establishment feminist movement commit suicide in public like this.
That’s why I’m glad we have The New Agenda.
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Carmonn says:
What’s important to remember, though, is that the media tried to annoint Obama and crucify Clinton in the primaries, and that didn’t work. They couldn’t make the voters hate her or choose him. Hell, they can’t even make voters like or trust him. The American people deserve credit for seeing through this.
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Annie Oakley says:
Obama has been telling us “they’re going to try and make you afraid.” No one has to try. I’m scared crapless.
A sweet child (and a child shall lead them?) singing the praises of a political candidate. The little angel tell us he will change it, lead, rearrange, change not just the country but the world. Others have mentioned the use of words like “cleanse” and “heal.” This is nothing short of a movement based in faith. As per usual, the appeal to come to Obama is fact free.
The founders of this country put our fate into the hands of reason. Government would be run on fact and discovery of the best policies based on truth. These idiots are willing to throw the whole thing into the toilet on a Chicago pol who has demonstrated in word and deed that he is the same old form of dirty politician everyone was complaining about right before they were reborn into Obama.
Dare I say, God help us.
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atheist woman says:
Do you know, I almost feel that the dems orchestrated this whole thing. They *let* the rethugs f everything up so badly so that we would just be so glad to have a dem again that we wouldn’t ask any questions.
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CoolAunt says:
It’s all just too creepy.
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mojave_wolf says:
Heh, I actually titled a post in my lj blog back at the beginning of september “Life is a cabaret” — I’ve had the same feeling going through my head for months about this election.
http://mojave-wolf.livejournal.com/62718.html
sadly, at this point I think we’ve lost, unless Palin hits some sort of impossible home run at the debate tonight (I say impossible because she and McCain are in the impossible position of wooing sane people freaking out about the economy without scaring away their base, and any obvious attempts, as in Palin’s couric interview, to appeal to non-conservatives gets her hammered as being a far right dominionist even at places like Shakes, and why is she being nominally but maybe not really anti-choice “scary”, but the *Dems* putting up a really anti-choice SENATE MAJORITY LEADER or Obama having a homophobe give the keynote speech at his “we love the fundies!” rally NOT scary? I r confuzed); the McCain team has made too many mistakes, from not opposing the bailout to keeping Palin way too much under wraps and letting the media define her for most people. Hopefully I am more wrong about the results of an Obama election than I was about the results of a Bush election (okay, I was wrong about Bush, he was even worse than I expected and did much more damage, so let’s hope I’m wrong in a different way).
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mojave_wolf says:
Unrelated — I linked to a site I found through one of your links at Corrente sometime around Sunday without remembering to hat-tip; realized I should have much later. Apologies.
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m Andrea says:
A line from the song sung by the little girl: “Obama’s gonna lead THEM”. It struck me as wierd and inappropriate, because the line should have ended with “all of us” instead.
Obama supporters have decided the world is divided into two groups: themselves, who are vastly superior and don’t require anyone to tell them what to do; and “them”, who are inferior and defective and therefore it’s okay to dictate to “those people” and demand obedience from them.
They constantly attribute any and all disagreement to racism, while sexism no longer exists — their unwillingness to not acknowledge or confront sexism fascinates me.
Personally, I believe that if Obama becomes president, there will be a huge backlash of sexualized hatred directed at women and punishment for failing to support their Messiah. But this hatred won’t decrease women’s access to abortion or contraception, which will be protected only to ensure a man’s right to enjoy his fucktoy without consequence to him.
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CoolAunt says:
It gets even scarier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUEQz5dltmIIn this one, the kids start out chanting “Alpha. Omega. Alpha. Omega…” Those of you familiar with the Bible will recall that Jesus said that He was The Alpha and The Omega. You don’t have to be a Christian or believe in any organized religion at all to be spooked by a presidential candidate who’s so often portrayed as some kind of messiah.
I’ve never been one to get into conspiracy theories and modern legends and mythology but Obama and Obamabots scare the shit out of me.
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Violet says:
It is terrifying. What’s most disheartening is that the brainwashed followers are the same people who understood quite well the danger of fanatical cults when the object was George Bush or Jeebus. But obviously they didn’t really understand the lesson; they thought dangerous cults always came labeled “Republican” or “Fundamentalist Christian.”
The Obama Cult is just as crazy and scary as anything I’ve seen from the right-wingers. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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NJW says:
This brilliantly sums up the Obama cult:
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DancingOpossum says:
Agreed. This is really frightening stuff.
The most frustrating thing,as Kat notes above, is the silencing of any discussion of this in the media. It’s not as if Obama is hiding any of this. He has been utterly outspoken about his quasi-fundie crackpot religious views and his desire to make them an integral part of his government. He even calls them “faith-based initiatives,” but nobody blinks; indeed, the “progressive” media bends over backward to justify the same thing they vilified Bush for. Obama has never made a secret of his messianic self-perception, any more than Bush did, and actively encourages it just as Dubya did.
I said from early on that the parallels between Obama and Bush were eerily similar. I was hardly the first do so. What amazes me is the blind eye so-called liberals have turned to this fact.
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CoolAunt says:
NJW says: This brilliantly sums up the Obama cult:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Xy4hNyYFs
Ha! I love it! Redrum! Redrum! He’s a bad man. A very bad man. Wish him into the cornfield. Ha!
