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Home » The selling of Kamala: Part II – the Obamas help create the narrative at the DNC

The selling of Kamala: Part II – the Obamas help create the narrative at the DNC

The New Neo Posted on by

[You can find Part I of “The Selling of Kamala” here.]

At the DNC they’re trying to perform an amazing sleight of hand that’s supposed to get people to believe that two plus two equals five. Virtually every sentient being in the US is aware that Kamala Harris has been the vice president for the last three and a half years – that is, for the duration of the entire Biden administration so far – and so it takes some doing to divorce her from responsibility for those years. But the Democrats know it’s necessary for them to perform this piece of revisionist history.

Enter the master Democrat magician: Barack Obama. He said many things last night at the convention. But among them was this:

“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” [Obama] said. “America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.

When Obama refers to years of “bluster and bumbling and chaos,” we on the right might immediately perceive that as an excellent description of the Biden administration’s record, particularly on the economy and the Afghanistan withdrawal. But the right is not Obama’s target audience. He isn’t trying to conjure up that image except as a description of the Trump years for his base, although he’s probably also trying to appeal to the independent voters who see Trump as a problem and have bought much of the MSM/Democrat description of him.

But even more striking to my mind is Obama’s use of metaphors of narrative, of both movies and books. A sequel. A new chapter. A new story. It’s a reliance on what author Milan Kundera called “imagology” in his book Immortality [emphasis mine]:

For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.

The Democrats are banking on the fact that for the majority of Americans imagology will be stronger than reality. The actual story of the moment is not a “story” at all, it’s the reality of what Americans are experiencing: inflation, wars, crime, homelessness, unchecked illegal immigration, mental illness, addiction. And another reality is that Democrats have been in power for nearly four years, and the number two person who’s been in power during that time has been none other than Kamala Harris. To pretend otherwise is definitely to create a story – a fiction. But the Democrats are counting on voters wanting that story to be true, and desiring so very much for the story to be true that they believe it rather than their own lying eyes.

This emphasis on stories and narratives – and empty vague rhetoric – was one of the first things I ever noticed about Obama. And whenever things got rough during his presidency, pundits and politicians who supported him would talk about how the Democrats just hadn’t gotten their narrative out to the public properly. All failures were treated as failures to communicate rather than actual failures in the real world.

I’m in awe of how sickeningly brilliant and transparently emotional the current Democrat approach to Kamala Harris’ candidacy and record is. There’s no pretense of talking to the whole country; the goal is to super-energize the Democrats’ base and pull in a certain percentage of the middle (we’ll leave aside for now the question of whether fraud will be involved as well). The idea is not just to regard the Trump years as a strange yet temporary halt to the progress the Democrats have made; it is also to forget the reality (as opposed to the revisionist narrative) of the Biden years, even though Kamala Harris is practically an incumbent who is deeply connected to the Biden administration.

It’s almost a form of hypnosis, a willed amnesia.

Reading about it is enough to remind me of the deep duplicity of the Obama years, as well as what was to me the inexplicable worship of the man. As of this moment, I see that I’ve written 1,722 posts on Obama and this will be the 1,723rd. And yet his influence on this country and the world has been so large that the high number of posts doesn’t seem excessive. Reading about his speech reminds me how he managed to make so many people believe that his sonorous voice and the slogans of hope and change would lead to something wonderful, a quasi-spiritual awakening and finally – finally! – the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

And now they’re singing that old song, eight years later, in order to elect a person incredibly ill-suited to convey the magic, a magic I never could perceive but which I know affected many people so deeply that they must be nostalgic for it.

Or maybe, reading between the lines, the Democrat listeners understand that Kamala Harris will only be the figurehead, much like royalty in Britain, and that the real power will remain in the Obamas. And if so, that’s perfectly fine with most Democrats.

Comments

The selling of Kamala: Part II – the Obamas help create the narrative at the DNC — 53 Comments

  1. Imagology is a new word for me. It reminded me of the word demagoguery which is equally appropriate.

  2. The Obamas really scare me. They are smart, educated, immoral, and their inherent evil remains unmuted.
    And of course, one cannot say anything critical of them because they are *black*.

  3. Other than the announcement forthcoming this Friday, I see no leaks from the Bobby Jr camp yet. Given that the MSM is overtly ignoring him, no surprise.

    They probably have wet blanket articles loaded in anticipation of a possible endorsement.

  4. evil yes, credentialed certainly, as to the other aspects I dont grasp,

    yes they played these games 16 years ago, when he was a blank slate

  6. Nobody knows for sure, but my suspicion is that Obama is merely a slick front-man for the Éminence Grise, as was Biden and as will be Kamala.

  9. This

    But even more striking to my mind is Obama’s use of metaphors of narrative, of both movies and books. A sequel. A new chapter. A new story.

    Immediately made me think of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html

    Which contains this

    Like Obama, Rhodes is a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics but is often quite personal. He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts and motivations supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign-policy narratives, at a time when the killer wave of social media has washed away the sand castles of the traditional press. His ability to navigate and shape this new environment makes him a more effective and powerful extension of the president’s will than any number of policy advisers or diplomats or spies. His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.

  13. To be sure the “I want to believe” segment of Democrats will continue to believe because Obama, the master hypnotist, told them so.

    However, back in Reality Land, a lot of Americans have been hurt and noticed it, by the Democrat policies on the economy and the border, not to mention all the nice middle-class businesses destroyed by Fauci’s COVID policies, that it’s going to be a tougher sell this time around.

    Who are you gonna believe — Obama or your lyin’ pocketbook?

    Here’s a Fox reporter who has been interviewing voters at black barbershops:

    “Lawrence Jones talks to voters in Chicago barbershops: ‘A 50-50 race'”
    https://www.foxnews.com/video/6360755799112

    These blacks are split down the middle in 2024 in a Democrat stronghold. Their gripes — inflation and the border.

  14. “This emphasis on stories and narratives” is also a feature of that vulgarization of French Post-Modernism that is the modern Post-Marxist Left. There are no truths; there are only regnant discourses.

    And it’s also why everyone who is outside of the linguistic framework of the modern Left (including not only conservatives, but even orthodox Marxists) see Post-Modernism as the epistemology & praxis of lying.

  15. The Greeks learned that democracies ALWAYS end in blood and flame. We’re about to rediscover that truism.

  16. Re: Imagology / Reframing

    I doubt many Dem strategists have read Kundera, much less been influenced by him, but in the 2000s the George Lakoff’s “Reframing” as in his book, “Don’t Think of an Elephant” took the lib/prog/activist world by storm.

    –George Lakoff, “Reframing: Words to Reclaim — The right wing has worked for decades to alter the meanings of concepts that define our way of life. “ (2006)
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reframing-words-to-reclai_b_32389

    Note that according to Lakoff it was the Right which first started changing the meaning of words like family values and patriotism.

    Of course, control of images, narratives and frames has going on for centuries in less conscious forms.

  17. The Obamas really are sickly evil. Note how Michelle went on a rant about the terrible wealthy people while wearing a $4000 outfit and forgetting about their numerous estates. Meanwhile the crowd ate it up.

    All of our problems for the last 16 years can be laid to them. And we are looking at a potential 8 more. Harris will just be another puppet.

  18. huxley, if that 50/50 split among black males holds up, Democrats are cooked in November.

  19. Giving the devils their due …

    The Obamas were damn good, even Michelle, though especially Barack. They made the rest of the DNC speakers look like kids running for student government.

    And how does Barack keep his rail-thin figure?

  20. Lakoff’s objection is that people see him for who he is and not the way he wishes to be seen.
    ==
    It takes a hell of a lot of brass for Michelle Obama, whose prosperity owes absolutely nothing to skill or entrepreneurship, to calling out others in this vein.

  21. Huxley

    The evil one sometimes appears as an angel of light. The Obama’s personify this.

  22. Kundera’s use of “imagology” isn’t the standard one. Apparently, it refers to the study of national images and identities in literature, and there is even a Journal of Imagology. There’s a certain sense in his use of the word, though. People who have ideologies are outnumbered by people who have some tribal mythology — our side good, their side bad. The mythology is created by politicians, the media, and public relations flacks — the imagemakers. So, an imagology in place of an ideology. Jacques Ellul’s book on Propaganda might tell have more to say on the topic.

  24. “imagology is stronger than reality”

    No. When all is said and done, nothing is stronger than reality. We all exist within reality and any narrative contrary to reality is ultimately unsustainable. Imagology can for a time hold reality at bay. Yet all that does is make far more painful the eventual confrontation with a reality that can no longer be avoided. This applies to even the most wealthy and powerful. We all die and the longer we live, the more reality confronts us with our aging geriatrics.

  25. Richard Cook:

    I imagine you are aware that Saul Alinsky dedicated his seminal book on New Left organizing thus:
    _________________________

    […to] the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

    –Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals” (1971)
    _________________________

    Hillary Clinton wrote her 1969 senior thesis on Alinsky. “‘There Is Only the Fight . . . ‘: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” Public access to her thesis was prevented until 2001.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_senior_thesis

    Here’s Breitbart’s analysis of Obama’s relationship to Alinsky.

    –Andrew Breitbart, “The Vetting, Part I: Barack’s Love Song To Alinsky”
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2012/03/04/obama-alinsky-love-song/

  26. Geoffrey Britain:

    I think Kundera was quite aware that, in the long run, reality is stronger. His point was that so many people today are insulated from reality to a certain extent and are so subject to propaganda denying reality that for them, for a while at least (and it can last a lifetime), imagology overrides reality.

    Some people also are able to stick with imagology in the face of a reality so powerful that one would think that they would not be able to hold onto their unrealistic belief system. But there are examples in the USSR of true believers who were executed in purges and yet clung to their pro-Communist beliefs. I myself knew Communists who even after the fall of the USSR never lost faith.

  28. It’s one thing to believe in a falsehood far too complex to understand without a lot of study. It’s another to stand in that convention and believe the dems when they tell you that 2+2=7. And to resolve to act on it.

  30. “It takes a hell of a lot of brass for Michelle Obama, whose prosperity owes absolutely nothing to skill or entrepreneurship, to calling out others in this vein.” – Art D.

    Just so. And with many of the other Democrat grandees that proclaim the USA is full of systemic racism, discrimination, lack of “choice” and unfairness. The whole party is rife with hypocrisy, mythology, and double standards.

    I watched a bit of the convention tonight, and just could not stomach it!

  33. Too many whites have been conditioned to give mental “Affirmative Action” points to blacks. So these whites vote against their own interests.
    Related to “The Suicide of the West.”

    ================================================

    Since Saul Alinsky gave a dedication (or acknowledgement) to Satan in the first pages of Rules for Radicals, does it follow that Alinsky was a believing Jew?

  34. There’ve been several mentions of Saul Alinsky in this thread. A quote from him that’s lesser known is the following:

    “The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn’t necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion.”

    I’d call that “cynical but accurate.” My own formulation of Alinsky’s idea in that quote is this: The people you’re trying to help aren’t any better than the people you’re working against, and if you interchanged them, you’d wind up with the same struggle on your hands.

  35. The Obamas are to the USA as Stalin was to the USSR. Whenever a problem cropped up in Soviet society, the typical reaction was, “Wait until Stalin finds out!” Of course, not only was Stalin already aware of the problem, but in most cases, he had been the cause of it.

  37. Neo, don’t forget the most important thing Obama had going for him: an unpopular war in Iraq was going on. Anyonenot named Hillary would have won that election. Then he bailed out theelites thathave been fundinghim and Michelleever since.

  38. True and he pulled out of iraq and we got islamic state which was zarquawis gang with a new boss and they struck in paris and malbeek in cologne and in America

  39. Kamala is a cackling simpleton and everyone knows it, which is why she can say all sorts of goofy things and no one thinks twice about it. Put another way, she will not actually be making any decisions once in the White House, because she will be answering to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Susan Rice, and the Obamas. I think I’ve already made this point earlier, but what I’d like to know is who Pelosi, Schumer, et al answer to.

  40. Barky I am sure thinks his years were the golden age, dragging us into the Marxism. Certainly Sundowner has been a destruction period but Barky is thinking Harris will get us back on the Cultural Marxism road.

  41. Sgt+Joe:
    They answer to themselves, just like the Politburo did under Stalin.
    They are guided by Satan, but answer to themselves, portending the death of the once-United States.

  42. …does it follow that Alinsky was a believing Jew?

    –Dax

    Saul Alinsky was born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Chicago and was raised in a traditional Jewish household. As an adult Alinsky was not particularly religious nor did he actively practice Judaism.

    He was, however, a committed Old Left leftist, a survivor of what he called “the Joe McCarthy apocalypse.” He wrote “Rules for Radicals” in the Sixties for the young members of the New Left who wanted social change, but were not necessarily conversant with dialectical materialism and Marx. For many of the young, the Old Left seemed hopelessly out of touch,

    Alinsky was writing as an Old Leftist trying to pass the torch to the New Left along with the benefits of his insights and experiences. He was writing for the young. “Rules” is an accessible, often humorous, book.
    _______________________

    What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. “The Prince” was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. “Rules for Radicals” is written for the Hanve-Nots on how to to take it away.

    –Saul Alinsky (1971)
    _______________________

    Recall that “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones had come out in 1968 and Jagger had sung “Just call me Lucifer.”

    So, no, I don’t believe Alinsky was arguing for Lucifer (nor was Jagger), so much as tweaking the Old and joking with the Young.

  43. I think the jury has come in on that score, he is Lucifer’s messenger, the middle class stands as the bulwark against the Revolution, faith in a higher power, love of one’s nation, all those things must be ground down to make the New Man,

    there must be one objectional thing in the bourgeouisie or the new rich, that demands the system be torn down, so the Godfather sequel focuses on some of the goings on in the Casinos, which might have been a little lurid, but such is life,

    a recent Magical realist series by Chloe Gong focuses on early 20th century China, particularly Hong Kong, a Romeo and Juliet tale, with Russian emigres and Chinese nationals, but the impression is very clear who are the evil doers, the Green Gang, the KMT, and who are the nobles, the Mao gang,

    Jagger who was remarkably self aware for a LSE graduate, understood the symbols of Lucifer, he cited, the strife the blood, the savagery of this fallen world,

    which is ironic considering what happened with Altamont and Give Me Shelter, as i’m made to understand,

  45. of course even in that description Alinsky lies, the Prince is as much about the power of the borgias over the other families, like the Forzas, as it is over the common people, yes alinsky was probably more social democracy then Leninist but I couldn’t vouch for that,

    the latest iteration of Cobra, the dramatic series which aspired to be Trollope for this generation, leans heavily on the virtue of a group like Extinction Rebellion, although the
    leadership will be revealed as corrupt, Carlyles Sutherland is the Tory standin, who seems to have suffered two calamities, first the Carrington event, then a natural disaster and cyber attack the man seems to be cursed,a stock Arab princess, has defected over to the group, of course one of thedemonstrations go horribly awry

    it does highlight the mindset that is operative at the BBC with their bete noire,
    and their pet causes, like the skydragon hustle,

  46. Of course as a professional liar Alinsky was lying about Machiavelli. Or else he’d have to be charged with a simpleton’s stupidity. Of the two, I’d reckon Alinsky would cop to lying. But there you go.

  47. I myself knew Communists who even after the fall of the USSR never lost faith.

    I remember at the time thinking how wonderful it was that the Soviet Union collapsed, instead of being defeated militarily or something. This, I thought, would so thoroughly discredit communism that maybe the world could truly move on from it. Wow was I wrong.

  48. Of course as a professional liar Alinsky was lying about Machiavelli.

    sdferr:

    How so?

    As I read “The Prince” it seemed very much about enabling The Prince to hold on to power.

  49. Machiavelli is doing many things with his works of course, yet foremost and too often unseen (because Machiavelli doesn’t intend it to be seen unless one simply must see it and goes at it willingly and arduously to winkle it out) is making the world over to accommodate the powers of Machiavelli! and those (very few) like him.

    In brief, he creates the modern world, practically from scratch. It’s an awesome project, an amazing thing indeed. One requiring deep collaboration over long periods of time, time far beyond Machiavelli’s own limited years. He can’t even know his collaborators, apart from some intimations of their probable characteristics (needfully of course akin to his own).

    We, on the other hand, have the benefit of hindsight; we can find them as they beaver away. Good (Ha!) fellows like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and the rest who follow. But it’s a long argument ill-suited to be captured here in blog comments.

    I can point to work on it though, fairly accessible even. Heck, I’ll go pull a link: here’s Allan Bloom (part I, part II should be featured adjacent to it) — https://youtu.be/HgDRS9f7z2I?si=Jxit1k7Rd_IoscVM

    Then there’s Leo Strauss’ book “Thoughts On Machiavelli”; and following him, Harvey Mansfield’s works on Machiavelli (translations and commentaries). Mansfield also has been captured on videos to be found on YouTube, if you search.

  50. sdferr:

    OK. So Machiavelli and other such advisors are empowering themselves as well as enabling Princes to hold power.

    This seems a long way from establishing your accusation that Alinsky was lying about Machiavelli.

  53. The kings already knew how to hold power with the knout the truncheon the sword the borgias were a blood thirsty lot like a bratva
    boss

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