By Selwyn Duke

Perhaps I was wrong about
Barack Obama. Maybe his words can bring peace to the world. That is to say, if
he keeps talking, he just may put all the world’s peoples to sleep and keep
them that way.

This became evident during
Obama’s recent European trip. Despite the fact that Obama shares the Old World’s
socialist vision – and contrary to the image lent by the media’s inundation of
us with footage of fawning European crowds –some of that continent’s denizens
find him more sandman than savior.

One of these anomalous
individuals (although I suspect they will one day, in a political universe far,
far away, transition from anomalous to average) is Telegraph columnist Iain Martin, who wrote a piece titled
“Barack Obama really does go on a bit.” Martin points out that while he
welcomed Obama’s victory “as offering the possibility of a fresh start and a
boost to confidence . . . .” (I look forward to the day when this transitions
from disclaimer to hard-to-extract confession), he also asks, “. . . am I alone
in finding him increasingly to be something of a bore?” He complains that
Obama’s “speeches have long under-delivered, usually leaving a faintly empty
sensation in this listener” and concludes with, “I'll wager that within a year
or so he'll be marked down as a wind-bag.” Well, with a bet like that you can
gain a few pounds, old chap.

Perusing the more than 300
comments attending Martin’s article, it’s obvious he’s not alone. Yet what
explains the contradiction here, the disconnect between Obama’s Wizard of Oz
image and the man-behind-the-curtain reality? It’s simple: the image is the
media’s handiwork, but the reality is better explained by Hannah Arendt’s
famous phrase “the banality of evil.”

Unfortunately, most people’s
understanding of evil reflects modern portrayals of it. Let’s consider Hollywood
depictions, for instance. They have always been a tad fanciful but today have
less acquaintance with reality than ever. We saw the character Hannibal Lecter,
the cannibalistic psychiatrist with inerrant insight into man’s nature; the
larger-than-life, almost-superhuman criminal Max Cady in the remake of Cape Fear; and the philosophizing hit
men in Pulp Fiction.

In reality, though, evil isn’t all
that interesting. Serial killers obsess on satisfying their own distorted
nature, not understanding man’s; and hit men’s conversations are typified by
profanity, not profundity. It is superficiality that attends the sinister, not
sagacity.

As far as more “sober
commentators” go, they should know that our Hussein doesn’t have to be equated with
Iraq’s Hussein for my point to be valid. We don’t have to know whether or not
Obama’s heart is dark as pitch. Evil often takes subtle forms, such as
indifference to Truth and the living of a lie – and the emptiness that results.

For instance, many have made
light of Obama’s assertion that knowledge of when a baby attains human rights
is “above his pay grade.” But while it was a flippant dodge, it was no joke. To
paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “If we think about any issue for long enough, there
is a real danger we will discover the truth about it.” Obama has clearly avoided
that danger – and abdicated his responsibility as a being gifted with reason.
It reminds me of when David Letterman hemmed and hawed upon being asked by Bill
O’Reilly if he wanted the U.S. to win in Iraq. When O’Reilly pressed him,
saying it was a simple question, Letterman responded, “Not if you’re a thinking
person.” Really? Actually, Dave, if you were a thinking person, you would have
already thought about the issue
in-depth and would have had an answer at the ready. A thinking person doesn’t
wait to be asked to start thinking.

My point is that there is a
reason why Obama seems boring.

It’s because he is.

He exhibits the banality typical
of a moral relativist. He doesn’t believe in Truth; thus, he doesn’t search for
it, and for this reason doesn’t find much of it. This makes such people empty, and
when there’s nothing of substance within to emerge, you’re boring.

Another common manifestation of
this spiritual defect is verbosity. Brevity isn’t just the soul of wit, but
also wisdom. Things that are worthy are seldom wordy. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
took approximately 20 minutes, our Constitution can be read in just over half
an hour and God gave us only ten commandments. In contrast, government imposes
more than 250,000 laws (and counting) nationwide; Fidel Castro was well-known
for interminable speeches – during one seven-hour marathon he actually passed
out (lamentably, he regained consciousness, living to drone on another day);
and Bill Clinton’s calorie-laden memoirs, My
Life, weighed in at nigh on 1000 pages. Try flushing that down a
toilet.      

What explains this wordiness?
Well, it’s like that old quip about how you make money peddling a worthless
product. The answer? Volume.  

Obama isn’t the Ten Commandments;
he’s the tax code. Yet, like many empty vessels, he exhibits a fault of which Martin
made note. The journalist talked about how Obama can’t seem to stop saying
things such as “When I was born” and “Few people would have predicted that
someone like me would one day become an American President.” (If Obama means a
closet-communist urban rube weaned on bigoted rhetoric in a black-power church,
yes, few predicted it. And I think he’s surprised in a way himself; it’s a real
triumph of Media Matters over mind.) What is this fault? It’s called solipsism.

And the following apocryphal
saying completes the picture, "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds
discuss events, small minds discuss people." Along with his solipsism, it
explains why Obama likes to discuss his favorite person: himself.

This also relates to something
Martin gives Obama credit for: a “preternatural calm in the spotlight.” This
reflects a man who truly believes in himself. The problem is that he believes
in only himself. And we should all pray that when this faith is shattered – as
it will be – the American dream won’t be collateral damage.

                  © 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved