A Manchurian Candidate’s State of the Union
Why do people who nominally like Obama side with his enemies?
This posting has three attachments. Together, they illustrate the patently irrational nature of the cognitive dissonance now shaping the political debate. In Attachment 1, an Obama apologist (who will remain unnamed) recently distributed an email praising Obama’s “achievements.” He ends by posing a question as if the answer were self evident, given these achievements: Why do so many people who nominally like Obama side with Republicans who hate him? The apologist’s email was triggered by Professor Michael Brenner’s analysis of Obama’s State of the Union Address (Attachment 3). Although Brenner does not use the term, his subject is that Obama’s address reflected the dissonance at the center of contemporary political discourse. In Attachment 2, my friend Mike Lofgren responds directly to the question raised in the critique of Brenner’s essay. Taken together, Lofgren and Brenner effectively answer the apologist’s question — but until so-called progressives come to grips with the elemental nature of President Obama’s Manchurian Candidate-cy, silly questions like that in Attachment 1 will merely serve to lubricate the looting operation. Read full post.
