NOT NATION’S FIRST FALSE ‘MESSIAH’
‘HE’S not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.” That line from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” seems to sum up a lot of commentary on Donald Trump’s speech accepting the Republican nomination. But, actually, it applies to a lot of candidates besides Trump, though you wouldn’t know it from reading the post-game write-ups. Yes, Trump has a huge ego. But so does Obama, though the press seldom notes it.
As Michael Barbaro wrote in a New York Times Page 1 “news analysis” piece, “He portrayed himself, over and over, as an almost messianic figure prepared to rescue the country from the ills of urban crime, illegal immigration and global terrorism. ‘I alone,’ he said, ‘ can fix it.’ ”
In The Forward, Jane Eisner warned darkly of “Donald Trump’s messianic vision for America,” writing: “On display last night was a man who believes that he alone is the answer to everything.”
And The Weekly Standard, a firmly anti-Trump publication on the right, rounded up quotes from a lot of convention attendees — parents of a child killed by illegal immigrants, the mother of a Benghazi victim — as saying that Trump was “sent by God.” Though, to be fair, the Standard also quoted convention speaker Scott Baio, who said that Trump is not the Messiah, just a man. “A man who wants to give back to his country.”
Well, Trump’s certainly not the Messiah, or even a messiah. He’s a candidate running for office. But, you know, this sort of talk isn’t exactly new. When Obama was running for office in 2008, many of his followers showed a messianic fervor that his campaign didn’t exactly discourage. Between the Greek temple set that he used for his own acceptance speech (complete with styrofoam columns), his followers’ reference to hope and change and his own talk of “fundamental transformation,” Obama played a similar tune.
In his own speech accepting the nomination, he said: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” To his credit, Trump hasn’t promised to turn back the tides.
And earlier, Obama said in New Hampshire, “A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany . . . and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama.”
And then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called Obama “a leader that God has blessed us with at this time,” sounding much like the Trump supporters quoted by the Stan- dard. Going further, in June of 2008, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford informed us that “Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.”
Obama, he explained, is a “Lightworker” — “that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.
“These kinds of people actually help us evolve.” (There’s even a blog, at obamessiah.blogspot.com, collecting messianic imagery of Obama going back to before the 2008 elections.)
Obama has continued in this vein much more recently, telling police, “I’m your best hope,” in his address after the police shootings by black nationalist Micah X. Johnson.
Obama wasn’t the Messiah, of course, and his feet of clay are now abundantly evident to everyone, except probably him. (With US troops fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan today, even that ending-war stuff turns out to have been a sham, never mind the rise of the oceans stuff. And all the email-deletion and documentshredding doesn’t look very messianic either.)
But that’s no surprise. If it’s salvation you seek, you won’t find it from a politician of either party. They’re pretty much all very naughty boys. And girls. Vote accordingly.
Nancy P el o si called O ba ma“a leader ’ that God has blessed us with .”