Boomerang
Rod makes what is apparently a necessary clarification these days:
And Revelation says absolutely nothing about the Antichrist being a Muslim. Nothing.
I could say that these sorts of chain e-mails and the frequency with which they are passed on and believed demonstrate that mass democracy is a profoundly flawed and foolish system, but that would be a bit too easy. This chain e-mail also drives home how culturally and historically illiterate many Americans would have to be to not already know that the Apocalypse of St. John never mentions Muslims because it was composed over five centuries before Muhammad. Of course, that would assume that these people have read the Apocalypse in the first place. What is perhaps more troubling is that those who would be most inclined to take seriously prophecies taken from the Apocalypse presumably consider themselves very serious Bible-believing Christians, and yet giving credence to the nonsense being peddled about Obama would seem to show that they do not know their own Scriptures terribly well. If many Americans are poorly educated in their own history and culture such that they are susceptible to this kind of rubbish, this is hardly their fault alone, but I think I draw a different lesson from the popularity of these absurd e-mails than most.
The kind of worshipful, servile adulation heaped on Obama by the media, giving rise to such things as the “Obama Messiah Watch” and not entirely ironic references to him as some kind of saviour figure, has generated a popular backlash that takes the glowing coverage, the swooning throngs of supporters and references to the “cult” phenomenon among his enthusiasts and reinterprets them in the worst possible way. The action-reaction dimension of this is obvious: journalists propose, basically as a joke for their own amusement, the idea of the Obamessiah, and gradually this moves out into the broader public and the reaction against this is to take the joke all together too seriously and argue that he must actually be anti-Christ. Journalists, pundits and bloggers who have enjoyed the inside jokes about treating Obama as something close to the Second Coming have, in addition to their frivolous trafficking in what tens of millions of Americans would regard as blasphemy, probably failed to consider that this would boomerang and come back to hurt the candidate whom they have promoted so adoringly. This is yet another example of how the excessive boosting of Obama in the most politically dangerous ways is coming back to haunt him. In this case, it is happening in the form of these under-the-radar communications that are taking the elite and official praise of Obama and turning it into powerful and apparently somewhat popular invective against him.
In other words, pretty women who wear short skirts to get the admiring attention of men deserve to get raped.
Wow. What a spectacularly obnoxious way to read a post sympathetic to your candidate. If Obama’s *supporters* promote his candidacy in ways that are almost designed to provoke nasty backlashes that might have been avoided, you can still read this as a criticism of Obama. So now it is not just Obama, but also his supporters who can do nothing wrong. Good to know.
A point: If the Book of Revelation is truly divinely inspired, wouldn’t it be peppered with references to people/places/phenomena that lay well ahead of John’s life?
Not that I believe that stupid e-mail a bit, or think that the Anti-Christ will be Muslim or anything like that. I imagine he’d be, you know, an advocate of Satan, not a different branch of the Abrahamic tree.
If Revelation were a book that was filled with references to be taken plainly or literally, I would say yes, but Revelation is a book that mostly cannot be read that way. I suppose its heavy use of symbolism makes it possible to impute ludicrous interpretations to it, but then this is why the ancient church was so reluctant to include it in the Bible and was even more reluctant to have people trying to interpret it on their own.
I’ve never put much stock in it, myself. I’m just saying, since it is a sanctioned Scripture, it is also considered divinely inspired, yes? And, thus, it is capable of speaking to the future, even if in extraordinarily veiled ways.
But, again, it’s not part of my regular Bible reading, and I don’t think for a second Obama is the Anti-Christ. Though the boomerang theory makes plenty of sense when you consider Americans’ illiteracy in more than one field.
I’ve spoken of his messiah complex a number of times: http://media.www.berkeleybeacon.com/media/storage/paper169/news/2008/02/21/Opinion/Sen-Obamas.Outrageous.Messiah.Complex-3226641.shtml
Daniel,
Talk about obnoxious. Do you really have no clue that you’re just blaming the victim here. Sympathy like that, Obama doesn’t need.
So let’s see. A figure that people think highly of can expect to have his reputation slandered and destroyed because some people think very highly of him. If you are going to compare Obama and his followers to a messiah figure, let’s see how well that idea works with the actual Messiah. You are saying, in effect, that it was Jesus’ worshipful, servile followers who provoked the “boomerang” effect that got him arrested and crucified. It’s not really the fault of the Jewish high priests or the Romans, because they were just reacting in a normal human fashion to this excessive praise Jesus kept receiving. It was the fault of his followers, for not being more critical of Jesus, that made things turn out badly. Is this the new Gospel of Daniel?
Let’s be clear, Daniel. The people trying to destroy Obama are not doing so as a backlash against the praise many people have for him. It’s as a backlash against the actual things Obama wants to do, just as the reaction to Jesus wasn’t a reaction to the worship of his followers, but a reaction to what Jesus actually intended to do in this world. I’m not for a moment comparing Obama to Jesus, but if you are trying to establish some kind of principle here, you’ve chosen the wrong one. I don’t think there’s an Obama supporter out there who doesn’t laugh along with jokes about “Obama Messiah Watch” ideas. And comparing him to a cult leader makes about as much sense as comparing FDR to a cult leader, much less Jesus himself. People are enthusiastic about Obama for some pretty good reasons, in their minds, just as Reagan supporters were enthusiastic about Reagan for what in their minds were good reasons. The idea that enthusiastic support actually provokes some kind of boomerang effect that we should expect and consider normal is just nonsense, however. It’s just a part of the same old slander campaign we’ve come to expect from Republican and conservative operatives.
The reaction to Obama, in other words, is a reaction to the perceived threat that he represents, not to the enthusiasm of his followers. That it gets twisted up in crazy biblical ideas of the anti-Christ is symptomatic of the degeneracy of his opponents and their readiness to exploit fear and confusion without the slightest sense of conscience. They will of course try to turn any positive trait in their opponents into a negative reason to fear them, just as they turned Kerry’s record as a war hero against him, and Gore’s innovative involvement in advancing technology against him (“Gore claims he invented the internet!”) There is a universal human reaction that can turn all changes agents into dangerous threats, reactions that can be exploited in an effort to destroy them – Jesus being the ultimate example of that. Obama is just the most recent such change agent to appear on the American political scene, and one of the more promising ones. Hence, both the support of him and the reaction to him is stronger than for most. But don’t blame his supporters for the reaction. People are responsible for their own reactions, they are not provoked into them merely by supporting someone enthusiastically. And people are reacting to him for what they think are very good reasons – that he represents a real threat to their world somehow. That they have to come up with crazy notions to support their fears doesn’t mean that it’s a reaction to anyone but the man himself. There’s no comparison at all in that respect. Obama’s supporters, contrary to this silly media meme you are trying to promote, do not think of him as a Savior or a Messiah. They just find him – in comparison to the kinds of candidates we’ve had previously – to be quite a notch above the rest. This results in the political enthusiasms and excitements that most politicians would give their right arms to generate. I’m sure you would be thrilled if you had a candidate on a par with Obama who could promote the kind of political agenda you enthusiastically support. As would Republicans in general. If they had such a candidate, they wouldn’t regard enthusiastic support for him to be a negative quality that deserved some kind of boomerang backlash. They’d be attacking boomerangers as un-American and anti-mom and apple pie. It’s only when it’s a Democrat that people are enthusiastic about these Republicans somehow think a backlash is to be expected. The whole agenda here is to somehow try to get Democrats to be less enthusiastic about Obama, to try to nip that enthusiasm in the bud before it can spread. Well, fine, see if you can do that. I just think blaming the victim makes no sense in any sane political lexicon, but go right ahead if you think otherwise.
Daniel, we would be seeing the same sort of invective hurled at Hillary if she were the nominee. The attacks would be slightly different, and perhaps Obama’s background, name and race make him a juicier target, but inflammatory, usually false chain e-mails appear to be a proclivity common among the right-wing. I get them almost weekly.