Perhaps the single most illuminating indicator of character is the selection of one’s associations. Obama’s have been consistent and clarifying. For twenty years Obama has been a member of Reverend Wright’s church, holding in high regard this dispenser of racist America hating black liberation calumny. Never mind that the Reverend lives in a multimillion dollar home in a gated white community. We may reasonably conclude that the Reverend has been quite rational in spewing his irrational arguments.

Obama has been involved with Tony Rezko. He has been an intimate friend and disciple of terrorist William Ayers and his wife. Obama has been intimately associated with and benefited from his association with ACORN, a group that is under investigation for massive criminal voter fraud. He has been close with terrorist-supporting Rashid Khalidi and Khalid Al-Mansour. The list goes on and on.

Michelle Obama gives us insight into Barack Obama’s personality and values. Michelle views the United States as mean. She views its people as unhappy and struggling. Yet, she has had  the blessings of a middle class childhood, a hard-working father who get her and her siblings through school and who sufficiently motivated them to get into what pass for the finest colleges and universities in the United States. Even so, she is ungrateful. Until her husband ran for president, Michelle had never in her adult life been proud of the country that has made possible for her so much wealth and achievement and security.

Michelle whines about having to pay for ballet lessons when the family has had an annual gross income of several millions of dollars. She demeans ‘corporate America,’ whatever that is, even though she has made a fortune working for it. She is the unhappiest multimillionaire I’ve ever read about!

Equally illuminating of Obama’s character is the array of people and organizations that see in him a kindred spirit and a collegial world view, , whether or not he officially or formally works with them or is associated with them.  Among those of dubious international stature who perceive Obama as ‘understanding’ them or more likely to be more ‘fair’ with them are Hamas, the terror organization in Gaza and the West Bank of the Palestinian territories; the Iranian mullahs, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the Council for American Islamic Relations, an un-indicted co-conspirator in one or more terrorism trials in the United States.

Given Obama’s intimacy and high comfort level with and his allure to those associated with mass murderers, including murderers of Americans, generally, and of Jews, specifically, I search for a persuasive rational explanation for why, if polls are to be believed, about seventy-five percent of American Jewish voters will vote for Obama?

I am perplexed and dismayed. It may be that Jews continue to want to prove that they are not racists. It may be that many Jews are simply intimidated into voting for Obama. Some have told me that they don’t want to be viewed as racists. How sad. It may be that Jews are always looking for the victims, real or imagined, to support, to show the world their unalloyed decency and morality, always needing to prove that they are ‘good.’. It may be that they are irreparably guilt ridden about their relative success in this great nation. Maybe they just want to be liked and want to avoid confrontation. Whatever.

At the annual AIPAC conference in Washington D. C. a few months Obama committed to an undivided Jerusalem. That commitment lasted less than twenty-four hours. Then an undivided Jerusalem became a final status issue about which, Obama conveniently said, it would be inappropriate for him to commit. Jews in the United States do not and should not think of themselves only as Jews, of course, but this cart-full of anti-Jewish alliances and pronouncements should at least be a significant factor in allocating their support.

For the Jew, then, what can Obama offer that can overcome these negatives? How will Obama’s ideology, the subservience of hard work, discipline, frugality, forbearance, education, investment and sacrifice to socialist neighborly redistribution advance the values traditionally held by Jews that allowed them to prosper?

Some have argued that Jews, by and large, believe in big government—and thus, believe in Democrats—based on the notion that it was the government that allowed them to flourish in the United States as they have never done so in any other nation at any other time in history.

Consistent with that belief, many Jews see themselves as secular, whatever that means. So, Israel is not high on their values priorities. Fine, but regrettably, these liberal Jews fail to grasp that it is the Christians and their values and the institutions the Christians created and fought and died for that have allowed Jews to attain such success in this country. Obama jeopardizes these values.

Some people, including big time celebrity pundits and hosts, including some for whom I have great respect, say continuously, “We don’t know who Barack Obama is.” Nonsense! We know exactly who he is.

There is nothing that we don’t know about Obama that needs to be known in order to know his values and his character. There is nothing we do not already know that prevents us from reasonably predicting his future acts should he become president. Nothing. It is all known. We know him. We know his character.

But Obama, the oily silver tongued rhetorician, is persuading people to vote for him not by reason and debate but by an appeal to emotion based on a gestalt of resentment, entitlement and, by and large, an ignorance of economics, political history and human nature. As Garver lamentably concludes in comparing the ethical content of the competing methods of persuasion, “The sophistic race to the bottom seems to beat the Aristotelian race to the top every time.”

It is intriguing to analyze some of Obama’s audiences. It is human nature that the greater the fear in the audience, the more invested they are in delusion. The greater the anger and resentment,, the more receptive the audience is to hollow phrases that attempt to justify their anger and resentment and to channel it into support for the speaker. Yet, the more the speaker is gifted in deceit, and the higher the stakes of the subject, the greater the challenge that arises for the audience.

            I recall the event where Obama was talking to a crowd at a school, I believe. I little seven-year-old girl asked why he wanted to be president. This should not be a terribly challenging question for a Harvard trained lawyer who has been running for office for over a year.

Yet, Obama couldn’t answer the question. Stuttering like a dull needle playing an old scratched phonograph record… he says,  “duh, uh” and then goes into default mode and trashes his own country…I want it to be great like it once was.. we’re not as good as we can be…I’m going to make us great again! He berates his country to a seven-year-old!

            But the audience, instead of shifting uncomfortably in their chairs or fighting the urge to leave, gives him a standing ovation. For what? Obama doesn’t even explain how he will do all these things. One issue that comes to my mind is, , literally and metaphorically, what kind of people stand for this?

That’s why he can get away with such silliness as extolling his commitment to change, and to ordinary vanilla pre-21^st century change but change you can believe in!

Ask an Obama supporter what change he has in mind and they’ll say ‘I don’t know’ and then they’ll mutter something about being fair and you ask how he will make things more fair and they’ll say ‘I don’t know’ and you ask how getting out of Iraq will make the US safer—or for that matter, any part of the world safer—and they say ‘I don’t know.’

Ask where the trillion dollars for new spending will come from and they say ‘I don’t know’ and you ask why we should care what Syria and Iran think of us, since they want us dead no matter we stand for, and they say ‘I don’t know.’ But they’re so happy about change and even though they don’t know what the change is going to be they can believe in it and they feel the change is already here and they’re changed, which in itself is a change and its just wonderful.

            The audience has a duty to know that Khrushchev thumped Kennedy in his first talks, and that Truman was responsible for the Berlin airlift, not world unity, and that higher taxes lead to less revenue for the government and to less employment. Obama’s rhetoric is mere flattery, not a heralding of truth. The challenge for the American voter is to elevate their reason over their emotions and desires for idealistic fantasy solutions.

Obama understands and implements with ruthless focus that power in a democracy is not derived from truth or virtue or honor or public prosperity. It is derived from numbers. No more. No less. Power in a democracy can, thus, be accrued by purely sophistic methods. The art of persuasion, as Obama knows, as did Gorgias, is to present irrationality in a rational way; to speak in the seductive language of fairness and equality and being ‘neighborly’ and not being selfish. It is easier, of course, and more satisfying, to argue for fairness than to argue how fairness doesn’t apply. He knows that immorality and destructive social policies must be wrapped in a moral cerecloth.

Triumph of the Sophists

By

Michael G. Sabbeth, Esq.

Part 1

            I was preparing for one of my lectures on the ethics of rhetoric to continuing legal education audiences. Sections of Plato’s “Gorgias,” his dialogue on the morality of persuasion, Aristotle’s Rhetoric and some other resources were piled on my desk like Turkish rugs. Rhetoric, ethical or otherwise, I have learned, is not only a tool for persuasion but is also a window that reveals the character of the speaker. The persuasive success of rhetoric also reveals much about the audience that is targeted and that accepts the message.

            During the better part of the past year, my thinking has been pervaded by Obama’s rhetoric. Revisiting these works, I saw they had a poignant and searing relevancy in the Obama candidacy. Given my confessed biases and values, I am appalled yet intrigued by Obama’s facile syrupy ability to lie. His denials of the depth of his knowledge of and of his friendships with the likes of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi are easily demonstrated as untrue.

Obama’s representation that he “reached out to Senator Lugar…to help lock down loose nuclear weapons” is false. In fact, his trivial amendment to the Nunn-Lugar legislation dealt with conventional weapons.

            I have also pondered his numerous deceitful assertions, many of which have a anti-US default setting. ‘We can’t drill our way out of this energy crisis’ is a dishonest dodge. His tax ‘cuts for 95% of Americans’ is a deception, when almost 45% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax. His admonition to inflate tires as the equivalent of new oil exploration shows an insulting licentious contempt for the truth.

Obama’s narcissistic  speech in Berlin attributed success for undercutting Soviet domination to those that, in fact, did nothing in the cause of freedom. The world did not unite to achieve freedom. The world cowered and hid. There was no unity in the world. What was accomplished was accomplished by the United States military.

By refusing to acknowledge the unique role of the United States amid a sea of gelatinous nations, Obama rhetorically trashed our country and, by implication, President Truman, who, triumphing over foreign and domestic opposition, displayed the courage and character and conviction to implement the airlifts. Usually leftist U S presidents wait until they leave office before defaming our country. Obama’s Berlin address is a version of his Head Start Program. He demeaned our country before taking office.

Another example of Obama’s antagonism toward his own country is seen in his willingness to defer to the judgment of “the rest of the world” how we should set our thermostats and what cars we should drive. Such thinking, if implemented into policies, will undermine the self interest and independence of our country by duplicitous countries that ignore such self-restraint, many of which survive in large measure because of US power.

            I marvel at the irony of Obama, posturing and preening as a post racial, supra racial, candidate, drenching his campaign in the images of race and with rhetoric of race. He has besmirched his white grandmother. He has cynically infused race into every facet of his public persona—by the way, did you notice I’m black.. I’m not like the guys on your money. His beneficial incestuous relationship with white-hating America hating Jew hating Reverend Wright is unambiguously racist. Obama’s intimations, and those of his handlers, that she he lose the election, it will be because of race. That assertion is itself racist. His pompous but vapid sermon on race trumpeted race unnecessarily. All but a few white don’t care about race. The evidence suggests that this is not the case with blacks.

            I am in awe of Obama’s smooth silky demagoguery that goes un-rebutted, indeed, unacknowledged, in the mass media. He manufactures attacks on his patriotism when none are made. He instructs people to deal with those not inclined to vote for him by ‘confronting them…. get in their face.’ Presenting himself as a unifier, ironically, he facilely exploits the rhetoric of intimidation; the rhetoric of the thug and the jackboot. This is thoroughly anti American. His glib ignoble advocating that this nation needs to be freed from the restraints of the Constitution is thoroughly totalitarian. The media yawns, as do his audiences.

            His values are soothingly presented in the lofty rhetoric of fairness and equality. But they are the values of totalitarian socialism; the siren song musings of ‘spreading the wealth’ as ‘just being neighborly.’ He asserts that it is patriotic to pay higher taxes and selfish to want to keep much or at least some of what you earn. His rhetoric is devious, for it is not neighborly when the government extorts through taxation and the threat of prison money from those that have it so it may be distributed Obama sees fit to those that he says do not have enough. This is not fairness. It is armed robbery. Never mind that Obama’s wealth has not been shared.

            Then there Obama’s libertine usage of totally meaningless rhetoric; ‘hope,” ‘change,’ ‘we’re the one’s we’ve been waiting for’ (translation: you peasants have been waiting for me), restore out standing in the eyes of the world, 20^th century thinking, among others. ‘Yes we can!’ Can what?

What is to be hoped and how will this hope be achieved? Fred Siegel referenced Ralph Waldo Emerson writing in the 1840s about what he called “the politics of hope.” But, Siegle stated, “America’s founding fathers were a famously hard-headed lot. They understood that government had to be structured to remedy the “defects of better motives.”

And what about ‘change,’ which he repeats so often you’d think he’s doing product testing at a diaper factory. Change from what to what? That’s a legitimate question, yes? Don’t ask it, you racist!

Moreover, in what part of the world, precisely, has the US lost standing in the eyes of people that have any moral claim to judge us? Shall we begin with Germany, where it is already becoming acceptable rhetoric to refer to the 9/11 attack on the United States as an ‘accident?’ Or France, which is being sundered by Islamists into territories where France, as a practical matter, no longer has sovereignty and dozens of cars and buildings are torched nightly and Jews are beaten in the streets?

Or Britain (I cannot bring myself to write the word ‘Great’ before ‘Britain’ any more) which won’t even fly its flag in many locations for fear of offending Muslims? Or Denmark, where native women are raped in extraordinary numbers by mid Eastern men, then to be told by their government that such assaults are the price to be paid for living in a multi cultural nation?

They should judge us!

Obama’s rhetoric denigrating what he unctuously referred to as 20^th century thinking is perplexing, not only in terms of its vacuity but in terms of its shallowness and immorality. Is he demeaning the thinking that defeated the Nazis and the Communists? The thinking that gave us The Great Society? The Voting Rights Act? Affirmative Action? The Civil Rights Movement? That eliminated ‘black’ and ‘white’ water fountains? Is he disparaging the thinking that led to the greatest number of rights and the highest increase in the standard of living of any nation in history? Is her referring to the thinking that gave us more racial equality, more prosperity, more entertainment, more leisure and more security than any nation in history? Is this the thinking Obama demeans?

            Yet, there is much about Obama’s rhetorical skills that I admire. The Republicans seek to brand Obama as a socialist. The Republicans are correct, but to little avail. Few people can define ‘socialist.´ Nevertheless, Obama takes the charge, head on, and in exemplary rhetorical flourishs, reverses the thrust by acknowledging the accusation and then mocking it by saying “should I be called a communist for sharing my toys in kindergarten?” This is admirably clever and illustrates rhetorical skill.

It’s rubbish, of course, but it is effective.

            Pondering Obama’s words and pronouncements while I re-read some of the giants of moral philosophy and rhetoric, it hits me—Boom!, as NFL sports announcer John Madden often says, a flash of insight that clarifies the stunning yet irrational success of the Obama candidacy.

I begin with Plato, a dead male, white or otherwise, I don’t know, whose 2500 year old writings are as prescient as any today. Plato’s dialogue begins with Socrates and Gorgias and Polus kibitzing in the house of f Callicles. Gorgias was a Sophist, a person skilled in discourse for the purpose of persuasion. Sophistry valued in the skill of persuasion not only reason but emotion, bias and prejudice. Logic, truth and reason played merely supporting roles, if any role at all.

Polus introduces Gorgias, describing him as versed in the art of rhetoric, which he claims is the most noble art. Gorgias elaborates. His art deals exclusively with discourse and allows folks to achieve ‘the best of human things’…..so much so that it gives ‘men freedom in their own persons and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states.’

“What is there greater,” Gorgias asks, “than the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political meeting? If  you have the power of uttering this word, Gorgias enthuses, you will have the physician your slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude.”

The ethical aspect of rhetoric is addressed in the dialogue when Gorgias, somewhat defensively, says that persuasion is also about the just and unjust. Socrates pounces like a lion on a gazelle, getting Gorgias to admit the difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge is based on truth; a belief may be true or false. Moreover, having a belief is the result of being persuaded, making the point that people can be persuaded to believe things that are false and unjust.

Gorgias concedes that persuasion gives only belief, not knowledge and that persuasion, by itself, gives no instruction on the just and  the unjust. Only belief about the just and unjust, not knowledge about them, is offered by the rhetorician.

Indeed, Gorgias concedes that knowledge and ‘the just’ can be irritants and inconveniences in the persuasion process. He gleefully brags that through rhetoric he has persuaded patients to do for him what they would not do for the physician. Gorgias makes the larger point: regarding any profession, the rhetorician can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them, and on any subject.

Rhetoric, Socrates points out, gains the ear of the multitude ‘not by instruction but by persuasion. He concludes, therefore, that the greatest persuasion will be done with the ignorant. As with the rhetorician persuading the sick patient more effectively than the physician, Socrates stingingly points out that in such a case, the ignorant is persuading the ignorant.

Socrates then astutely concludes that the rhetorician will not be very persuasive with those that have knowledge.

Socrates begins his refutation of the Gorgias and the Sophists as if using a scalpel. The rhetorician need not know the truth about things. His challenge isto discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who actually have the knowledge.And, the Sophist need not rely on or even employ reason or truth to be persuasive.             Socrates then rejects the proposition that rhetoric is an art. Rather, he calls it ‘flattery,’ the achievement of a ‘bold and ready wit’ not constrained by truth or virtue.

He calls rhetoric “the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics” and deems it thoroughly ignoble, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. Having no regard for men's highest interests, rhetoric is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary.

Seems to me the species hasn’t changed during the last two and a half millennia.

The art of politics is attending on the soul, and virtuous politics derives from virtuous legislative behavior and the pursuit of justice. Socrates makes a particularly prescient point that has practical application: if the body presided over itself without guidance from the soul, there would be Chaos.

            Plato gives us a good model for understanding rhetoric and persuasion. He emphasizes that people’s beliefs are the result of persuasion but that, nevertheless, their beliefs may be right or wrong, moral or immoral, just or unjust, logical or illogical. Having a belief in no manner relates to knowing the truth.

Plato, through Socrates, also asserts that the ignorant are the most easily persuaded. Building on the notion of who is easily persuaded, Jacques Ellul, in his epic tome, Propaganda¸ eitherdisagrees with Socrates or agrees and then enlarges the class of those that are easily persuaded.

Ellul asserts those most susceptible to propaganda are the educated elites and those who view themselves as immune to propaganda. I think Ellul is on to something—think of our college/university professors and the so-called elites in the mass media—although these classes of people may well be also the most ignorant as a consequence of a willfully imposed ideological blindness.

Nevertheless, while Socrates concludes that rhetoric is an ignoble form of flattery, he does not extract from Gorgias the technique of persuasion. Gorgias claims he can persuade a person who is ill better than his physician but he does not tell us how he would do it. We can see that Gorgias is thoroughly immoral at worst and amoral at best.

Gorgias knows nothing of medicine but he would influence the patient’s choice of care. He places no value on the content of the argument—whether he is right or wrong—and he is indifferent to or willing to advocate a speaker of unethical character. His paramount value is power, not justice or good or virtue. Gorgias places on the shoulders of others the tasks of teaching virtue and justice to the listener.

Aristotle fills in where Socrates left off. He tries to explain with admirable rigor how people are persuaded. Aristotle creates three classifications of variables that influence persuasion: ethos, which is the character of the speaker; pathos, the nature of the audience and logos, the content or the logic of the argument.

One of Aristotle’s major contributions to the study of rhetoric is his identification of the causal relationship between the speaker’s character and his ability to persuade. Another contribution is Aristotle’s emphasis that rhetoric, if it is to be effective, must integrate or assess the nature of the audience the speaker intends to persuade.

Eugene Garver wrote a brilliant book titled For the Sake of Argument; in which, among other superb treatments, he analyzes and compares Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric with that of the Sophists, of which Gorgias was a preeminent practitioner. He points out that Aristotle argued that a man’s character was revealed through his ethos, his reasoning, and his logic, his logos, this is, his fidelity to truth.

Garver identifies three central themes of Aristotle’s rhetoric:1. That the heart of persuasion is reasoning; 2. That ethos, character, is the most authoritative source of belief; and 3. That ethos derives its authority from reasoning. Thus, Garver interprets Aristotle to say that reasoning transmitted through character as an authoritative source of belief is the core component of persuasion. Note that Gorgias dismisses character as a variable for persuasion.

Garver also interprets Aristotle to say that reason not only is the core of persuasion and character but also that it should be the core of persuasion and character. “Speech,” Aristotle wrote in his Politics, “is for making clear what is beneficial or harmful; and hence also what is just and unjust.   …   And it is community in these that make a household and a state.”

Lots of folks, intelligently or otherwise, link sincerity with character—as if an immoral belief somehow gains moral character if it is sincerely believed. This linkage gives rise to the sardonic quip sometimes heard at legal conferences on trial skills: Sincerity is the key to being effective with a jury. Once you learn to fake that, you can get away with anything!

“Barack Obama can fake sincerity,” writes Robert Tracinski in his article, Obama Offers a Beautifully Packaged Lie, “and that, more than the words of a speech or the pageantry that precedes it, is the key to his power as a speaker.”

One conclusion, then, of Aristotelian rhetoric is that a commitment to rationality commits us to trust in and to be persuaded by character. This leads to the conclusion that possessing a trustworthy and credible character enhances the skill of presenting a reasoned argument, or at least giving the appearance of presenting a reasoned argument.

Character is measured by several criteria, including reputation, past behavior, those you deem your friends and those you deem your enemies. Relating to rhetoric, character is determined by the facts you assert, the facts you ignore, the conclusions you reach based on your selected facts and the moral and intellectual consistency of those conclusions.

            Aristotle emphasizes that the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, the audience, is critical to persuasion. While he places character and virtue at the top of the speaker’s persuasive qualities, Aristotle does not, in Garver’s opinion, delve as deeply into the moral duties and character issues of the hearer, the audience.

For example, getting an audience to do what you want on the basis of their beliefs can be respectable and it certainly can be effective, but it also can be immoral. Aristotle does not ascribe virtue to the pathos, the state of belief, of the audience. Indeed, relying on the audience as the measure of success can corrupt the speaker (assuming the speaker is not already corrupted)—the speaker doesn’t change the audience; the audience changes the speaker.

Aristotle implies the audience has moral duties. As we see in the Founding Father’s notion of the virtue of the informed citizen, the audience has a duty of due diligence, to inquire, become informed, to ask questions, to understand, to interpret and to  analyze the topics presented by the speaker. Otherwise, the audience can easily be manipulated by a speaker of inferior character and knowledge.

            Aristotle, of course, realized that character alone does not lead to persuasion. In fact, he acknowledged that an audience may be influenced by factors wholly removed from the speaker’s character, such as emotion and symbols and bias. Thus, the importance of virtue and noble character influencing the soul.

            It seems in the real world Aristotelian rhetoric cannot refute—consistently be more effective—than that of the sophists, and vice versa. However, Garver argues that we can make an ethical as opposed to an empirical choice between these incommensurable alternatives. Garver concludes that it is possible to defeat the sophists and uphold rationality on ethical grounds.

Socrates forces us to choose between aiming at truth and aiming at victory as the highest good. Thus, according to Aristotle and the concept of ethos, Aristotle’s rhetoric is ethically superior because it can have ethical relations between the speaker and the audience. Yet, the harsh brutal reality is that Aristotle’s ethics may cause the speaker to lose.

I’ll give you an example. Two nights ago I saw a fifteen second interview of a woman explaining why she was voting for Obama. She said she won’t have to worry about her mortgage, about her healthcare. Her position, from Aristotle’s point of view, is that the woman is entirely rational. Her support for Obama is the result of reason: she helps Obama and Obama gives her stuff. Her position—that is,  her being persuaded to vote for Obama—however, , can be judged on the basis of ethics.

The Aristotelian likely would argue that her position is unethical. It subverts the soul’s obligation to promote justice—she’s hoping—I guess this is what hope means in the real world—that others will pay for her mortgage and healthcare and, no doubt, a raft of other things. Although it is clearly rational to be unethical, it is still unethical.

However, from the Sophist’s point of view, one that would be advanced by Gorgias, ethical concerns are irrelevant. It’s all “You go girl!” Gorgias is of the Al Davis, owner of the Los Angeles Raiders, school of persuasion: “Just win, baby!”

            The Sophist’s view of persuasion, and thus the use and morality of rhetoric, is strikingly different from Aristotle’s. The Sophists, says Garver, debunk any distinction between internal and external factors: such as the distinction between reason that should influence our practical decisions and emotions that should not.

Aristotle’s rhetoric, based on the centrality of reason, thus competes with the claims of the Sophists’ rhetoric, that assert that images, icons, emotions, and style trump everything. For them, reasoning is rationalization, a slave to passions, a cover for the biases and prejudices that will determine what someone thinks is ‘right.’ Reasoning becomes a way to finesse prejudice, to package it in more attractive tinsel.

People who value reason and moral character, thus, will tend to believe that the audience will be influenced by reason and that the audience believes it is consenting rationally to one appeal over another. The Sophists assert that this is nonsense.

Part 2

I review some of Obama’s statements and ideological pronouncements in the context of the speaker and the audience. I ponder why Obama so freely and indiscriminately says things that are so clearly wrong and so easily refuted—the history of the Berlin airlift; John F. Kennedy triumphing over Khrushchev; the tire inflating idiocy, we need to talk to our enemies, when in fact we’ve been talking continuously with them, that inflation-adjusted median income during the Bush administration was "down $2,000 since 2001” when in fact it was up, and it increased again last year.

All these can easily be demonstrated as false. Why say them?

Several possible answers arise: that Obama just isn’t very smart; that his staff and advisors are inept or that he really believes that what he says is true.  They are possible explanations but I find them unpersuasive. Obama is smart enough to know better.

We know that people tend to act in ways that have given them success in the past. Thus, I conclude that Obama has a high comfort level with his cavalier indifference to truth and history because he has never needed to be otherwise to advance his career. His audience never demanded precision on these matters. Obama operated on a level where truth was not a high priority.

If you goal is to get the masses rocking and rolling by screaming about racism and the patriotic duty of a small group of Americans to willingly embrace the confiscation of most of their earned income, then the truth about tax policy consequences and economics become an inconvenience. Why bother with reason? Emotion, Gorgias trumpets, is the better way to persuade. Moreover, counting on a fawning unethical media to cover for him, Obama can ignore the audacity of veracity.

Thus, in his carefully crafted mesmerizing brilliantly cadenced voice, Obama can avoid being held accountable for such inflammatory and deceitful words as those spoken to the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego on July 13, asserting that the nation’s immigration system “isn’t working” and that “communities are terrorized by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] immigration raids” and “nursing mothers are torn from their babies.”

Obama knew that he had an ideologically harmonious audience and a like-minded media that would absorb his words without concern about truth or character.  So much for the virtues of change!

The issue of race is particularly irksome to me, since race3 should be treated seriously and maturely and respectfully given the history of slavery in our country and the damage that history has done and can continue to do. It seems that more than 95% of blacks support Obama.

It is a stunning statistical improbability that such a percent of a particular group is in agreement with his positions on things that should matter, capital gains and estate taxes, energy development, his likely judicial appointments, the war in Iraq, the relationship between the United States and the United Nations and his attempted distinction between that war and the war in Afghanistan. It is quite amazing that 95% or so of blacks affirmatively adopt Obama’s values, such as his besmirching Middle America as people that cling to religion, the bible and guns. Is there another explanation for such a stunning percentage of support by blacks?

Who knows what to make of any particular poll or study, but one creative and insightful experiment was aired on the Howard Stern website, of all places. A reporter went to Harlem and interviewed people regarding this support for one candidate or another, except the reporter attributed to Obama Senator McCain’s platform. No problem. The respondents said they strongly supported Obama because of his commitment to win the war in Iraq, his anti-abortion stance and his astute selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Go figure!

Perhaps race does play a roll in such staggering black support of Obama.  Some advanced the argument that the dignity of blacks was on the line. It’s a matter of pride, some said. Maybe. I had great pride when Joe Lieberman was nominated to be the Democrat vice presidential candidate. That a Jew could achieve such stature made me extraordinarily proud to be an American, and, by the way, not for the first time.

But I’d never vote for Lieberman. Pride aside, I don’t like his policies. I don’t share his world views on most matters. That he was running with Kerry made such a vote beyond the pale. But I was proud.

As for blacks, why would their dignity ‘be on the line?’ No one is challenging their dignity. No one is saying they should not have pride that a black might rise to the highest office in the land. But pride and dignity seem to be quite selectively experienced. Where are black pride and dignity when conservative blacks run for office? I am at a loss to recall how black pride and dignity united to advance the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court.

Rather, it seemed the black race groups considered Clarence Thomas to be an execrable Uncle Tom. In addition to price and dignity, one or more other explanations for blacks’ unified support for Obama’s must exist.

What is his audience thinking? My guess is that the answer has something to do with the leftist agenda of identify politics and a dash of resentment thrown into the cauldron of redistribution and preferences.

My analysis is that black support for Obama cannot be justified by a rational assessment of how his politics will affect blacks. Obama’s rhetoric about indifference to lax borders and illegal immigration will further deprive blacks of jobs. His anti free trade policies will hurt middle class and lower middle class blacks. His energy policies will lead to higher energy costs that will be devastating to blacks. Obama’s tax policies will sabotage the economy and any expectation for an imminent recovery, all of which will hurt blacks. Not only the rich will be affected.

Speaking of the rich, I understand why many if not all of the super rich blacks support Obama. They can afford the luxury of identity politics. They probably figure they can’t get hurt. Perhaps their money is safely—or so they hope—protected in layers of trusts and corporations that it can not easily be taken away. On balance, given their race preferences, perhaps they figure that  they make so much money another million or so taken away won’t hurt them. But for them to endorse policies that they know or should know will predictably deny economic advancement to their fellow blacks and undermine the standard of living of millions of blacks is ignoble.

Those who believe that they will soon be given more—and those pandering to them—are assuming that the rich will not stop acting as if they were rich or as rich. But what if the rich stop consuming and begin to reduce their earnings? They already pay 70-80% of all federal income taxes. If they reduce earning, their tax payments will decrease and the economy will dissipate like smoke from a campfire. Even if he is speaking only partially truthfully, Obama’s policies will subvert the blacks, no matter how much wealth he promises to steal from some and give to others. Do the math. There’s not enough money to pay for his fantasy world. Anyone who promises to rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul, of course, but if the number of Peters is drastically reduced, the Pauls are in serious trouble.