Obama II

I’m prompted to post this after reading a thread on LiveJournal. I have an account under a different username there, generally used for reading filthy fanfiction and other unsavoury activities that I wouldn’t admit my doing to friends or loved ones. My friends list is mostly related to such activities, but since other writers tend not to be as single-minded in purpose as I, posts containing no masturbatory material at all tend to occassionally crop up.

The post in question was regarding Obama’s visit to the Queen – more specifically, Mrs Obama’s conduct when meeting her. Apparently some right-wing newspapers over in the States have got a hold of a picture of the Queen and Mrs O with their arms around each other, and have slated Mrs O for poor conduct. The girl making the thread (my LJ friends are generally Obama-loving female Americans) disagreed that the Obama’s were out of line, and asked for the perspective of a British member of the public to confirm/disagree with this view.

I, representing accurately the British youth, promptly assured her that nobody gives a shit about the Queen, and even if she had been out of line (which I doubt), people like Obama too much for her to ever be in any trouble.

It’s this last assertion that (finally) brings me round to my point – people really do like Obama. They love him. Unquestioningly.

Another reply to the thread stated, “I think it’s a HUGE compliment to Michelle and Barack. They are such genuine caring people who only want to create a better world…”

Genuinely caring people? How the fuck would we know?!

If the public generally perceives Obama and Michelle to be nice, caring and likable people, it’s because their PR team has depicted them so. This has absolutely no relation to whether they actually are. Don’t get me wrong, they could very well be nice people – but we’ll never know. All I’m saying is when people the world over let go of their suspicions of politicians and people in power, and love them unconditionally, then we miss things. So, people love Obama - he’s attractive, young, and the public can find things in common with him.

People loved Mao too. And Stalin. And Hitler.

Cults of personality are dangerous. I can understand why people might want to let go of their inhibitions like this – in an era where we can’t trust our politicians as far as we could throw them, Obama is refreshing – but we need to arm ourselves with a healthy skepticism, and be on alert for anything amiss. The fact is, we CAN’T trust our politicians, and we can’t just assume that because a leader ’seems like a nice guy’ that he necessarily has our best interests at heart.