When one talks to supporters of President Barack Obama, one quickly learns that his actual policies and their relative success or failure are of no importance for many of them. Some have defected, many more are worried (even if they won’t admit it publicly) but might overcome their doubts and vote for him again.Continue reading The Left’s Very Anti-PC Strategy: Hate, Fear, Stereotype, and Treat Diversity as Evil
The significant factor shaping their views is one of self-image. That’s why evidence and events have relatively little influence on them unless — which may be precisely what happens in America between now and November 2012 — these things become too big to ignore. “Too big to ignore!” Perhaps that should be a counter-slogan against “Too big to fail.”
To support Obama makes them smart, sophisticated, anti-racist, modern, members of an intellectual and social elite standing against the yahoos with the pitchforks out in the provinces. From the defenders of the downtrodden, the left has transformed itself into the well-financed aristocracy sneering at the peasantry.
That’s why the theme of portraying the opposition as greedy, rich, fat-cat, corporate chieftains and simultaneously hillbilly, gun-toting, religious fanatic racists who think Obama is a Muslim-born in Kenya and want to reinstitute slavery is so incredibly effective in shoring up its base of support.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley), and The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas MediaTechnorati Tag: Obama.
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