I’ve always been amazed at how effortlessly some people can lie. I guess it comes from years of practice, or maybe some kind of genetic disposition, but there are some people who can lie without batting an eye. Barack Obama is one such person. How do I know this? because I have watched him lie repeatedly without batting an eye; not just exaggerations or embellishments mind you, but absolute whoppers. Whenever I have encountered these lies, I am amazed not just at the facility with which he lies, but also at the collusion of the media in hiding the lie or spinning into something altogether different. But one thing is certain: Obama lies, and he is good at it, for he tailors his lies to each group he is courting. By examining two such lies and the groups he addressed, perhaps we can glimpse behind the false persona and into the very soul of Obama.
When speaking to members of the African-American community on March 4, 2008, at the anniversary of the Selma march, Obama told the enthusiastic crowd that:
“There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Junior was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama.” (see notes: 1)
Since Obama was born four years before the Selma march, which ocurred on March 7, 1965. it is hard to reconcile how he could have a “claim on Selma, Alabama”. Nevertheless, his audience was swayed by his rhetoric, despite the ridiculousness of his claim. Truth was lost in the blur of the moment, leaving only the euphoria of acceptance and expectation, the benighted dreams of hope and change.
What Obama did was co-opt a seminal moment in the civil rights movement, thereby insinuating himself into the historical fabric of the African-American community, even though he actually shared none of its history of slavery and oppression. Indeed, having been raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, and later educated at Columbia and Harvard, it is hard to fathom how Barack Obama shared any life experiences with the black community in America, that is until he moved to Chicago to begin his political career and used them as his primary base of support.
There is something very Machiavellian about the way Obama lies in order to pursue his own ends, something very cold and calculating, like telling the Israelis who were fearing Iran that “his committee” had passed legislation forcing companies to divest from Iran, when he was not even on the committee, once again falsely insinuating himself into the narrative of the lives of his audience.
“Responding to an Israeli reporter’s question Wednesday on his commitment to protect the Jewish state, Barack Obama pointed to a bill “we passed” in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that tightens sanctions and authorizes divestment from Iran. “My committee,” he called it.
Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
‘Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee – which is my committee – a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel’.” (See notes: 2)
Obama does not lie just to appease his audience. He lies in order to insinuate himself into their lives, to become one of them, and thereby become their appointed and anointed leader, because he supposedly empathizes with their day to day hopes and fears, their triumphs and their struggles. He lies in order to be all things to all people in order to gain their support. If some see through the ruse, who cares?…as long as he gains the rest. Machiavelli would have been proud.
“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Indeed, Satan would be prouder.
“You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8: 44
notes:
1: Barack Obama, March 4, 2008 (Washington Post Obama Overstates Kennedys’ Role in Helping His Father By Michael Dobbs Sunday, March 30, 2008; A01)
2: CNN Political Producer Alexander Marquardt (Huffington Post- Obama Makes a Gaffe: Says He’s On the Banking Committee.July 23, 2008 02:56 PM)