Fate and Faith of the Cult of Personality

Now that the Obama administration has achieved the passage of its much ballyhooed stimulus package, all that remains to do is witness the fallout from the socialistic ordinance/ordnance. The package promises to bailout those who purchased houses without sufficient income or cash to cover the monthly payments; in other words, people who never should have been allowed within sight of any mortgage-related agreement. The legislation contains other goodies to satisfy those with a hankering for income-redistribution.

What could Obama do that would destroy or even diminish the euphoria among his throngs of worshipers? These are not simply people who voted for him or actively supported his campaign. These are the dervishes that chant his name and slogans at the slightest provocation as one would expect from members of a religious cult. Sporting buttons featuring Obama's face on their lapels, they evangelize the message of "Change" with myopic zeal but no precise definition of how and what that term includes. These types ostentatiously display portraits of him created in the socialist-realist style whether on clothing or on artwork. These images and the fierce pride in their display eerily resembles the obsession of iconography in totalitarian regimes. This mania recalls such practices as the mandatory hanging of a photograph of Saddam Hussein in a prominent area of every Iraqi home during the Ba'athist regime, the substitution of any traditional greeting for "Heil Hitler in Nazi Germany or the universal attribution of any positive event in the Soviet Union to the existence of "Comrade Stalin".

Two obvious perils of this obsession exist. First, the increased usurping of more economic and social freedom will be ignored by his sycophants or labeled as some sort of politically incorrect "ism", thus summarily dismissed. Secondly, when increased seizure of financial control and personal liberty inevitably leads to sufficient suffering to awaken his devotees to the harsh reality, the glaring light of what their messiah has wrought will induce psychological breakdowns or disillusionment with any semblance of freedom or government which result in the pursuit of reckless extremes of anarchy or totalitarianism. These results will reveal the danger of merely pursuing change when intelligent improvement is needed.