Dr. Conspiracy
I have a few anti-Obama books here, Obama Nation, The Audacity of Deceit and The Case Against Barack Obama, and at last count a list of 62 anti-Obama web sites (probably the tip of the iceberg) that promote to some extent Obama Conspiracy Theories. The one thing consistent across these web sites is things that are not true. They are either factually untrue, or negative speculation, character assassination, distortions or unfair. The lawsuits–Berg, Orly, Keyes–all are stacked to the gills with demonstrably false lies about law, or Hawaiian birth certificates or what a document or a tape really says. They go further in that they attempt to immunize people from believing the truth when they hear it (warning people that everyone who speaks well of Obama is a paid O-Bot or Obama’s Gestapo).
It makes one wonder just who is behind all of this.
Barack Obama on his Fight the Smears web site makes one suggestion, a loose association of right wing activists who have been active in several campaigns. He draws a chart, and I have an article about it on this blog too. While that could be true, as far as it goes, it is not a particularly satisfying explanation and it does not ultimately explain all of what we are seeing, the venom and the hatred, turning good things like patriotism in to evil things like vigilantism, the denigration of democratic institution and the slander of the Congress and the courts. I would suggest an explanation for you to consider, and to consider seriously. Why are there so many lies? Who would try to turn hope into darkness? Who thrives on the anger of others and through the will of the mob?
(John 8:44 NRSV) You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Doc, here’s another view:
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherers by spiritual predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion ofwhoremaster man to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of stars [or demons].”
Stay well Doc,
Hitandrun
H&R, an apt quote and actually one in line with my own thinking. To me “father of lies” is a defining characteristic of the Evil One, not a descriptive one. So rather than taking some pre-conceived notion of what the Evil One is (specifically a super powerful malevolent intellect) and imbuing it with the characteristic of liar, rather I am saying that, to use your phrase, man’s “goatish disposition” is what defines the Evil One. I would mention the other dark aspects of the human psyche including scapegoating, mob violence, cruelty and the lust for power.
The Evil One is a convenient metaphor for a range of human characteristics which can manifest themselves in things we’ve seen in the nObama movement. I am not saying that all opponents of Obama are evil, only that much of the discourse I’ve seen on certain web sites, and that is discussed here, is. Whether there is a supernatural dimension to the Evil One is rather irrelevant. By quoting the Bible I am pointing out to anyone who reveres the Bible how profoundly wrong telling lies is. I see this controversy as essentially a moral crisis, not a constitutional crisis.
What the article attempts to do is to cast some activities, such as lying, character assassination and violent threats, in moral terms. That is, they are evil.
The reason I spend the time I do on this web site is that I hope to lessen the corruption of otherwise decent people.
Thank you, Doc, but I find all of this just more unnecessarysemantic obfuscation,blackwashing theflight fromresponsibility, as in “the devil made me do it!”
Hitandrun
so, who is behind all this campaign?