BrianGarst.com

There’s been lots of talk regarding the discovery that the White House website has appended pro-Obama propaganda to the official biography of numerous past Presidents. Included among the chatter has been well deserved and extremely funny mockery.

The consensus has been that this is another example of Obama’s narcissism. And while I largely consider him the most narcissistic president in our nation’s history (though I don’t profess to be a presidential historian, and have only personally lived under a few administrations), it isn’t my biggest takeaway from the story. In fact, it’s unlikely the President even had knowledge of the additions before they happened. At least, I can’t imagine a President being involved in such minutia, but I’ve also never occupied nor worked in the White House.

What concerns me is the continued parallels, this being yet another in a long line of examples, between the whole apparatus surrounding Obama – his campaign and followers – and the behavior of tyrants. A common feature of dictatorships, for instance, is the erosion of the line between the individual leader and the state, and even the nation. He is the state. He is the nation. The two cannot be separated. This is why you see the faces of people like Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez plastered all over the place.

The leader’s presence is everywhere, not just within the nation, but also its history. The leader is tied into the very fabric of the nation’s history, often times through out-and-out revisionism, but also in more subtle ways, such as through carefully crafted narratives, either embellished or outright falsified, whereby the leader’s story becomes an archetype for the social and cultural values of his people.

Obama, in his attitudes toward governance, his policy preferences and the disposition of his followers, resembles more the typical South American strongman than an American Chief Executive. I do not worry that Obama is going to become a dictator in any real sense of the word, but the willingness of a certain sect of the population, namely his most ardent followers, to not only so readily accept these attitudes but to gleefully propagate them through their own initiative is concerning. It is not entirely surprising, as they are the folks who already ideologically lean toward collectivism, but it nonetheless highlights a disturbing strain of political thought in this country, and ought to remind us that freedom is only ever a generation away from extinction.

Barack Obama collectivism