Is Ayers admitting he wrote “Dreams From My Father?”
The short answer is: no, he’s making a joke.
Jack Cashill, whose book Deconstructing Obama has come out recently, believes that the joke (or, as he puts it, the final “retreat into irony”) hides the preceeding truthful admission:
With his final comment, the Ayers-friendly audience laughed in relief. The media will laugh nervously upon seeing the video as well. The White House will not.
Watch the clip yourself and see what you think of Ayers’ affect:
I think that at the very least the clip is interesting. Ayers is a highly intelligent and wily guy who likes to put things over on all of us. His statement about his legal status in an interview with David Horowitz in the early 80s, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird””America is a great country,” says a lot about his attitude towards guilt, innocence, admission of guilt and innocence, and joking.
Does his admission in the clip mean he really wrote Obama’s memoir? Of course not. But his behavior is certainly ambiguous. Note that the questioner does not bring up the topic of the questioned authorship—Ayers does, and we know the best defense is a good offense. Note also how quick Ayers is to praise Dreams—before the man finishes asking his question. And note how eager Ayers is to differentiate the supposedly excellent Dreams from Obama’s later hack work, The Audacity of Hope. Is he trying to disavow any connection with the latter?
Ayers’ delivery is deadpan. He smiles only at the end, after the audience has finally gotten that it’s a joke and laughed. Earlier, you can hear the original questioner’s surprised, “You wrote that?” in response to Ayers’ “joke,” which he doesn’t seem to get is a joke. That’s because Ayers’ deadpan demeanor is very convincing; he seems completely serious. Is that because he is, or is he just a comedian with great delivery?
And is Ayers’ smile at the end just a mockery of the silliness of those who would believe he wrote Obama’s book? Or a mockery of those who think he did not?
Billy Boy is covered both ways. Either side of the author/did not author divide can consider themselves justified by what he said. Who is most damaged by such speculations? President Obama.
My guess is that Billy Boy said what he said in order to send a message to Obama. He is not pleased with certain policy decisions of the POTUS, and his bringing up the issue is a way of informing the POTUS of his dissatisfaction.
If so, this brings up a question, which we have seen in different forms: why should a retired professor’s opinion be of such importance to the POTUS? Or is Ayers simply deluding himself here about the POTUS taking such a message seriously? Anyone who was a co-author of Prairie Firehas already shown he is quite capable of having delusions of grandeur.
Gringo: that seems to be Cashill’s opinion as well—that Ayers is sending a message of dissatisfaction to Obama.
I was convinced by Cashill’s book, as I was convinced by his previous articles on the subject. I think the case is about as hard to make as the one Kurtz made in arguing Obama is and always has been a socialist. That is, not very hard.
Above you have a post on dancing ballet, and the point being made against Portman is that it is well-nigh impossible to leapfrog from a non-dancer to someone who can do with expertise what a ballet dancer does in a snap. Cashill’s argument is most convincing on that one argument – Obama was never a writer. Never, and when he did write, it wasn’t just bad, it was atrocious. I’ve been writing incessantly since I was 18 and I’m not sure I could write a memoir with the grace that characterizes a lot of the prose in Dreams. The idea that Obama could do it simply surpasses belief. To paraphrase George Clooney’s character at the end of From Dusk Till Dawn: “I may be an idiot, but I’m not a fu**ing idiot.”
I think Obama feels secure because there is some postmodern style line-blurring on the meaning of the Author. Obama provided the blueprint and probably rough drafts for some or even a lot of the material; Ayers polished it up, in all likelihood, and added nuggets here and there. A postmodernist would feel that there is no “truth” of the matter as to “Who Wrote Dreams?”
In other words, by such contortions I think Obama actually believes he wrote the book, since that is the reality constructed by the narrative and its marketing. Ayers is smarter than that.
But I would bet that Ayers would never, will never, confirm what any sensate person could see is the fact of the matter. No one will. This is one of the creepiest things about the Obama presidency – the complete, lockstep blackout on who this man really is and what he has really done. No one betrays him, in contrast to the million opportunists on the conservative side who came out and slimed Bush. Even David Stockman did it to Reagan. Hell, even his SON did it to him.
Won’t happen to Obama. I have a nauseating feeling that the American public will never know the truth about this guy, or at least key elements of it – grades, convictions, why he went to Pakistan and what he did there, how he got the job at HLR, and who wrote his books. We can make reasoned inductions about such things, thanks to Kurtz and Cashill, but we will likely never get the black-letter proof.
That in turn is a big part of why the American people electing him so crushed my optimism. I can see electing a guy who is left-wing, a snake oil salesman, and so on – but not all of that AND someone who is in all essentials a complete blank, a void, a vacuum. To me, that means we were effectively manipulated by the media with respect to things I never thought we could be swindled about, and what can happen once can happen again.
Thinking about it all just sickens me. I’m sure some other commenters here know what I mean when I say that I felt like I got kicked in the head by a horse the night Obama won the election. Another dimension. Twilight zone. Orwellian nightmare. Kafkaesque craziness. Words can’t capture it.
Ayers smirk brings it all back.
I agree that Ayers is sending a message to Obama, but it might be personal as well as policy. Obama has distanced himself from his old pals, and Ayers might not like it. He might harbor the delusion that he “made” Obama and now he’s being ignored. Wright had the same problem. Kind of like Dustin Hoffman in “Wag the Dog” not getting credit as a producer.
Kolnai has a very good point about those who are keeping Obama’s secrets, but I think there’s a limit. Knowing what kind of guy he is, perhaps his personal/political friends are just waiting for him to leave office. Journalists who know the facts are probably keeping them close because the current “narrative” is good for us in their view. All of the above might be waiting for the opportune moment to include the facts in a book.
Consider, for a moment, the icy hand that must have gripped Buraq’s heart when Ayers said that, and the tsunami of relief when Ayers walked it back. Oh, to have been a fly on the White House wall! I can just picture Buraq lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers…
I take Ayers’s authorship of Dreams as my working hypothesis. Here’s a highly literate, erudite wordsmith who’s mobbed up with the purported author, who is himself hopelessly inarticulate, is linguistically impoverished compared to most college students, had had to return a previous book advance for failure to perform, and has never published anything of established provenance (e.g., a scholarly article).
Yet somehow a man who stumbled over such recondite vocabulary entries as “corpsman” waxed lyrical in writing?
No sale.
He’s got 2 (two) earrings in. That’s more telling than what he says.
kolnai: I agree that there’s something about Ayers’ facial expression that is almost insufferably smug, as well as a seriousness about his revolutionary mission that is quite chilling. I would be interested in hearing more of his remarks on the occasion of the above tape.
That said, there is one thing that Obama wrote that shows some literary talent. It’s the poem “Pop.” It’s actually not bad at all as a poem; has some literary merit, whatever one thinks of the psychology of it. It’s the only thing that makes me think Obama might have written Dreams after all. And there’s almost no doubt that Obama wrote “Pop.”
I saw this on another site that took it as a straight admission when anyone with a scintilla of perspicacity can tell it isn’t.
I’m not familiar with Ayers writing, but I’ve listened to Obama and if _Dreams_ is coherent, he didn’t write it.
neo: I’ve read “Pop” and I have problems with accepting he wrote it all by himself.
First of all, Obama wrote “Why Organize?” in 1988 – this horrendous piece of fifth-grade scribbling was written when Obama was twenty-seven.
“Pop,” ostensibly, was written in 1980 – when he was only nineteen.
Second, what classes was he taking? I wrote some competent poetry as an undergrad when it was edited and chopped up and made competent by my literature professor. Who was his roommate? Where is Obama’s other poetry? (we do have one specimen, which Cashill reproduces, and it’s abysmally bad).
All I can say is it’s a competent poem, but nothing else I’ve seen, with the exception of Dreams, would I take as a sign that he could write like that. It depends on what one accepts. If one thinks Dreams was co-written, then that would lead one to think that Obama has no problem taking credit for things he was not solely responsible for. If one thinks Dreams is mostly his, then his sole authorship and polishing of Pop is believable. If one is agnostic, then one can take it either way.
Moreover, to believe he wrote out of the depths of his brilliant post-adolescent soul a poem like that, and then eight years later wrote an essay that would get a C (at best) in Freshman Comp, is hard to swallow.
I try to not be too biased, but this is one area where my starting point is against believing Obama did anything artistic or literary on his own. He is such a bumbling speaker, such a bad writer in so many other places, and such an infrequent one as well, that I begin with skepticism when I see something “pop” up and confirm his sui generis literary gifts.
But I might be too biased. I’ll admit it.
According to Cashill, the authorship of “Pop” is very much in questions:
“Finally, there is the question of authorship. . . A more likely muse is Davis himself. A correspondent, who has helped before with the literary analysis of Obama’s work, reviewed Davis’s 47th Street Poems and Livin’ the Blues memoir and concluded that “Pop” has “the same cadence and style as many of [ Davis’s] poems.”
. . . Obama’s willingness to take full credit for something he could not himself write.”
http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/just_who.htm
I have never written for publication; but, I have written a pretty fair body of papers, training manuals, reports, etc. I find writing to be hard work. Seems as though most people who write professionally, also describe it as work that requires discipline. The Obama I observe just does not seem to be into that kind of lonely, grinding work. Nor, judging by his attempts to speak without TOTUS, do words flow easily for him.
If I recall correctly, his first attempts at the book were unacceptable. He was seriously tardy on deadlines and in a bit of trouble with the publisher; then suddenly, and miraculously, it sprang from his brow.
Didn’t buy the book; don’t buy the story. I think I will check at my local library. If I don’t find it shelved under fiction, I will challenge the librarians. I will wear my Palin ball cap, which I usually do, and which they studiously ignore anyway.
sociopathic duping delight…
look to the fact that the lie was not needed… but would serve to increase the outcome… that is, a ghost writer is not bad in and of itself… its the huge construction aroudn it for ulterior motives that makes it so… same with the birth cert… and other things…
its the desire to maintain a planned constructed image even if the maintenance of such is harmful in and of itself when the lack of that maintenance would not ahve mattered.
a person protecting an image that didnt need protection.. but once it was, then we start thinking…
you see a pile of dog poop, and you walk buy..
you never think to check it..
you see a pile of poop, and 3 police cars, hazmat suits, and people treating it very carefully, you regard it differently.
the point is that to defend a nothing is to let us know its not a nothing..
Sir Golfsalot’s a multi-tasking, 3-d chess-playing genius who can write erudite tomes on his Crackberry while hitting the links. He is simply awesomeness topped with lots of awesome sauce.
And if you don’t agree with me, you’re a racist bibliophobe.
He didn’t write Pop. He didn’t write either of his books. He doesn’t have the intellect or the curious nature required to be a writer. I suspect he’s not much of a reader, either. No one, with any intellectual curious nature could have been so completely uninterested in the details of his stimulus or especially his Obamacare bills.
He’s the type to continue using teleprompters for simple talks where he merely regurgitates the same talking points he’s used for months. He’s not a real intellectual. He’s merely posing.
…agree that there’s something about Ayers’ facial expression that is almost insufferably smug…
Agreed. Have you seen that mugshot of him from back in the day, with his head insouciantly cocked to the side and a sardonic expression on his face?
Any Chicago cop who saw that look and didn’t beat him senseless should be beatified.
stan: but IMHO “Pop” is almost unquestionably written by Obama. It appeared in a literary magazine under his name as an undergraduate at Occidental. I believe he was about 18 at the time. Do you really think he was employing ghostwriters even then? What’s more, the subject is intensely personal and very much in line with experiences that happened to him as a child and young teenager. I would say the likelihood that he wrote that is extremely high.
curtis: Despite what Cashill says about Davis having possibly written the poem, I don’t think so. The reason I say that is that it is presents a seriously creepy portrait of Davis, that has the ring (at least to me) of an authentic reaction by a child (Obama) whose boundaries have been seriously violated. Sometimes an emotional experience like that can coax poetry out of someone, in an effort at catharsis.
Kolnai, from what I have read, I would agree that if Ayers was involved, it was in polishing up and/or adding to what Obama had already written.
In his book Radical in Chief, Stanley Kurtz points out that there are a number os pseudonyms used in In some instances, I can see how using pseudonyms would spare embarrassment, such as the name of someone involved in a childhood fight, or in an instance like this: “I had sex with XX in a McDonalds’ bathroom.”
But in most of the case where he uses pseudonyms- why bother? There are pseudonyms used in his Chicago organizing days. Why?
That to me sounds like the touch of a Bill Ayers. Ayers spent a decade underground, and was practiced in the use of false identities, of not leaving tracks. The use of pseudonyms made it that much more difficult for people to check up on Obama’s story. Just as pseudonyms are useful in preventing authorities checking up on someone on the run, such as Bill and Bernadine in their terrorist days.
Correction:
In his book Radical in Chief, Stanley Kurtz points out that there are a number of pseudonyms used in Dreams From My Father. In some instances, I can see how using pseudonyms would spare embarrassment, such as the name of someone involved in a childhood fight, or in an instance like this: “I had sex with XX in a McDonalds’ bathroom.”
“As a 19-year-old, Barack Obama had two of his poems published in the spring 1981 edition of Occidental College’s literary magazine, Feast.”
No way, Jose, did Barack write “Pop.” The whole thing is a metaphor for pedophile sex. Even the title. One can see Davis enjoying the role reversal. Especially in his older age. El Creepo.
It is absolutely likely that Barack would use a poem he lifted from Frank Marshall Davis. Why not? And possible. Davis died in 1987.
Curtis: read what I added to my comment above.
Of course, it’s possible. I just think it strains credulity that Obama would be having Davis write a poem for him as a teenager at Occidental, especially a poem that is seriously creepy about Davis. I just don’t buy it at all.
I’m not an Obama fan, as anyone reading this blog knows. But this particular charge just doesn’t make sense to me.
Neo, there is some possibility of an “other” Obama who did indeed write the poem. A very hidden personality but I think it more likely Obama knew of the poetic ability of Davis and conned his help.
Curtis: also, the poem was published in the Occidental literary mag in the late 70s. Davis was still very much alive.
Does it matter who wrote Obama’s books? Even if Obama was not the author and it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt would the MSM care? Would the MSM cover such a story? Would the legions of Obama worshippers care? Its Obama’s association with people like Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Pfleger, etc. that matters because that is what formed his socialist ideology and fuels his narcissistic personality. Ayers, etc. (and the MSM) are what psychologists term ‘enablers’.
An apt comparison is child molestation. Child molesters enable child molesters. Most child molesters were molested children and go on to abuse others once they achieve ‘power’. The fact that a child molester was molested as a child does not mitigate the harm they cause nor excuse their crimes. In the end I don’t care why someone molests a child, I want them locked away forever. In the end I don’t care who wrote Obama’s books, I want him out of the oval office come January 20, 2012.
kolnai: I understand what you’re saying. It’s certainly possible Obama had help.
But for whatever reason, I don’t think so—and one of the reasons is, why bother? It’s just an undergrad literary magazine at a small college.
However, I think Cashill makes at least a decent case that Ayers wrote Dreams, and the motive for Obama to get someone to write it would have been a lot stronger. There was a lot of money he stood to lose at the time, and a certain amount of prestige. I just don’t think we’ll ever know the truth.
The poem was published in the late 70’s?
I haven’t found a source for that. But it would seem that a younger Obama has even less a chance at producing the well polished and cohesive poem that “Pop” is. It’s not great poetry but it shows exactly the level of craftsmanship and darkness of Frank Marshall Davis. Plus, it has the lyric quality of a pre-rap song. That type of thing comes from a black man. Obama is no black man. Arab man, yep. White man, possibly. But black man? No. Remember the jokes about Obama learning how to walk “black.”
But I suppose Parker has a point as well–it really doesn’t matter. Or does it?
I think it does matter, for several reasons.
First, because his authorship was one of the few factors mitigating his paucity of achievement. If he loses authorship, he’s reduced to fatherhood as his sole accomplishment was not (I am willing to presume) rigged for him.
Second, the identity of the real author could lend a lot of credence to suspicions that Obama is the product of a Red farm system.
In this latter connection I note that Obama obtained a hefty subprime mortgage that he then paid off with royalties as they started to roll in. Either Obama is wildly irresponsible financially, or he knew he’d be coming into serious royalties. But how could he be confident of sales? Unless, of course, he knew the book was going to sell well, the way Hillary “knew” she’d successfully play the commodities market – once.
And like the situation where the play suddenly remembers the bishop that’s been trapped behind a pawn, suddenly everything hangs on whether or not that pawn (Ayers) is moved.
And, gliding into play, Mr. Trump-show-us-the-birth-ceritificate-meister!
Curtis – you are dead right when you note the proto-hip-hip rhythm of Pop. I thought the exact same thing when I read it: “Man, this is SLAM poetry.” And you are also right that this was just beginning to bubble up in a serious way from black culture.
neo – “Why bother?” – believe me, lots of people in college think it’s a really big deal. Whittaker Chambers published under pseudonyms at his undergrad lit. mag at Columbia. People who write poetry at age 19 always think stuff like that matters.
I’m not saying I know who wrote it, or that Obama didn’t write it for the most part – but the craft, the rhythm, the “oily” and the “amber,” no way that came from him. All of my poetry-writing friends in college got help from their professors AND THEN published in the school magazine.
Sure, we’ll never know the truth, so in that bleak sense it doesn’t matter. But for me to believe Obama wrote Pop I would, like Curtis, have to believe that he could in effect write a decent hip-hop song. And I just can’t believe that – I’d literally have to sit down and watch Obama write it to believe it.
I don’t think I’m being improperly skeptical about it. Obama is so underwhelming as a speaker, and so oafish and arrhythmic whenever he’s ex tempore, and everything we know for a fact comes from him literarily (except Pop and Dreams) is charitably called incompetent, verbose, pompous, and shallow – given all of that I think the skepticism is proper.
Obama has not been a resourceful wunderkind from day one. He has been stage-managed from day one, more of a puppet borne aloft on the fantasies, ambitions, dreams, and projections of others than an independent self-moving mover. Everything suggests he would have the vanity to believe that at age 19 publishing a polished poem in an undergrad magazine is a Big Deal, especially if people fawn and feed the hungry hungry ego.
I think this does go to a difference in perspective about the man himself. My considered view is that he is a complete fraud (for example, I don’t believe he knows what’s in the Constitution beyond a few key clauses, even though “He Taught Constitutional Law!”), and a psychotherapist would have nightmares if ever confronted with the degree of his simultaneous vacuity and narcissism, probably bordering on sociopathy.
Call it what one will – there’s no there there.
Obama is so underwhelming as a speaker, and so oafish and arrhythmic whenever he’s ex tempore, and everything we know for a fact comes from him literarily (except Pop and Dreams) is charitably called incompetent, verbose, pompous, and shallow – given all of that I think the skepticism is proper.
I’ve characterized Obama’s extemporaneous verbal expression as the “linguistic equivalent of orthopedic shoes.” Clumsy, clunky, and graceless, but charitably characterized as “utilitarian.” On his good days.
Why does it matter? Kolani’s last line tells us why. The book was part of the meager “there” that people thought was there. Given that he has steadfastly hidden his academic records; and that his legislative record is now widely known, there is precious little left. If it were proven that he did not write the book, this line would slam you in the face: “Call it what one will-there is no there there.”
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a good number of the intellectuals who worshiped at the shrine in ’08 would slink away in ’12, if it were demonstrated conclusively that he lied about the book.
One more thing, lest it got lost in my animus: I don’t think having a poem touched up and polished by someone else in college is something to be raked over the coals for. Nor is it reprehensible to have a co-author or a ghostwriter.
For me it’s a political and a metaphysical question. Political, because of what OB said. Metaphysical, because when neo says sometimes profound experiences can drag poetry from even 19 year olds, I agree – but not that 19 year old. It’s not in his essence. He has no poetry to drag up.
So I’m not castigating him for (if Cashill is right) doing what he did; I’m castigating him and his goons, from his inner circle spanning out to the media, for building up a Potemkin progressive hallucination and foisting it off on us as hard fact.
I won’t be their Henry Wallace.
Oh my! Occam’s last entry was posted while I was typing mine. I just love it. Orthopedic shoes. Priceless.
RickZ, you nailed me. Occasional gun clinger as well.
When I see Ayers, I see the following:
You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stayed not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.–John 8:44
I recently read the account of the Hungarian doctor who performed work for Mengele at Auschwitz. What struck me as never before was the degree of deception involved, the amount of work keeping the lid on it. And I thought of the connection between lying and murder. Killing truth, sooner or later, leads to killing people.
From Artfldgr:
“you see a pile of dog poop, and you walk buy..
you never think to check it..
you see a pile of poop, and 3 police cars, hazmat suits, and people treating it very carefully, you regard it differently.
the point is that to defend a nothing is to let us know its not a nothing..”
What hippies can teach us:
Look like dogshit, smell like dogshit, taste like dogshit… good thing we no step in it.” –Cheech and Chong.
He wrote it. He’s just jerking everyone around, admitting it this brazenly and knowing that the press and the chattering classes will leap to cover his every sin.
He’s a sadist, among other things. Total waste of skin.
Profiles in Courage. Alleged author, and Pulitzer-prize winner, Jack Kennedy. Actual author, Ted Sorenson.
Autobiography of Malcolm X. Alleged author, Malcolm Little. Actual author, Alex Haley.
Roots. Actual author, Alex Haley. Alleged Haley family history, but largely fabricated, as we later found out.
This is the latest in a long line of ghostwritten BS.
“. . . IMHO “Pop” is almost unquestionably written by Obama. It appeared in a literary magazine under his name as an undergraduate at Occidental. ”
With respect, Neo, I’d offer this caveat — literary magazine editors often edit the contributions of their favorite coddled classes. This guy, because he’s a smooth talker and an attractive fellow, has been getting away with murder, and getting handouts/legs up, his whole life.
Oldlfyer says, “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a good number of the intellectuals who worshiped at the shrine in ‘08 would slink away in ‘12, if it were demonstrated conclusively that he lied about the book.”
The majority of comments are of the opinion that its important to know if Obama or Obama and a ghost writer or Ayers alone actually wrote Dreams of My Father. I’m skeptical that if it was demonstrated conclusively that Ayers wrote the book it would change very many minds about Obama.
I certainly doubt it would make ‘intellectuals’ slink away, people who self-identify as ‘intellectual’ are not going to vote republican even if they learn Obama eats babies for breakfast. And more importantly, the typical man/woman on the street doesn’t care about Obama’s writing skills or lack thereof. They care about the economy and they care about security. They don’t care about poetry or Frank’s influence on young Barry.
IMO Obama will be defeated at the polls and leave office on 1/20/2013 only under these circumstances: the republicans in congress demonstrate they are serious about deficit/debt reduction; the republicans put together a credible and cohesive plan to stop DC from hampering economic recovery and communicate that plan effectively; and the republican POTUS/VP ticket is undeniably conservative about fiscal matters and treads lightly on social issues.
Disclaimer: A lot can happen between now and November, 2012.
Beverly: except that in the same issue of the same magazine at Occidental, another poem by Obama appeared, and it was positively dreadful. Really really bad. Why edit and improve one, and not the other?
I reproduce the other one here, in its entirety:
Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
Occam says, “In this latter connection I note that Obama obtained a hefty subprime mortgage…”
Tony Rezko sweetheart deal. (Una mano lava a la otra.)
neo – that’s the one. It’s as if he’s trying to imitate Pop; its rhythm, its staccato flow.
Sort of like when he speaks extemporaneously he sounds like he trips up trying to imitate his teleprompted orations.
Parker – I tend to agree with you that this issue wouldn’t sink Obama, and it certainly wouldn’t dent his standing among his serfs. He could shoot a puppy live on TV, thumping a Bible and screaming “The gays made me do,” and then speed off in a Hummer limo fist-bumping David Duke, and they wouldn’t give a flying lotus.
This discussion about Obama’s talent as a writer – or lackthereof – is obviously not going anywhere beyond these parts of the right blogosphere. Still and all, there is a truth of the matter, which neo is correct we will very likely never know. There’s good evidence that the truth is, per usual, near the opposite of what we’ve been told by the Obamanauts. That pisses me off, so I vent.
Be that as it may, what you say is good sense. I’m not bullish on Obama losing in 2012, but that’s another vent.
kolnai says, “Obama has not been a resourceful wunderkind from day one. He has been stage-managed from day one, more of a puppet borne aloft on the fantasies, ambitions, dreams, and projections of others than an independent self-moving mover.”
I agree. It started when his father abandoned him and his mother dragged him to Indonesia and then neglected him and finally dumped him on his grandmother’s (typical racist white woman) lap. From a very young age he’s been told that he is wonderful, brilliant, special, and handsome. He has been coddled and cooed over and his precious self-esteem has been stroked and stroked into a crippling ego masturbation addiction. He’s mesmerized by the mirror that tells him how fair he is and that mirror is simultaneously his audience and his prophet. Sort of like Son of Sam getting messages from his dog.
BUT the majority of the American people don’t care about any of that. They care about the economy, their retirement portfolios, the imploding debt crisis, and soccer mom security issues. These are the issues where he has to be relentlessly attacked. Not who did or did not write Dreams of My Father.
Ayers is showing why after the consolidation of the revolution, the people who made it are purged..
they made it, they can break it, so break them, once you make it.
does one keep scaffolding in place permanently?
of course they have the disease of the traitor.
an interesting condition that narcissism favors.
because it becomes a case of, if society don’t see my greatness, i will sell them out to some society that does see it. [so increasing narcissism, is increasing the pool or army in favor of the external – couple poverty, ideology, and you have a free army of people within your enemies borders who will sacrifice their lives for you for nothing]
and so that society tags them by pretending they are great, and using them as an army of termites to take their spite out on. this is why gay men were always focused on…
when things are the way they are, they are free to act / but when things change, they wont be free..
as the french revolutionary said..
when you are in charge, i protest and cry for my rights as that is your way.
but when I am in charge, i remove all your rights, because that is MY way
Kolonai and I both see that the problem is not in the object or the material, its in the metaphysical..
in its being used as a prop to construct a reality for the purpose of controlling the outcome of history. ie, not living normally, which is reactionary… but proactive, which is totalitarian.. and sociopaths, as they do the same thing to avoid effort, and achieve any end, claiming morals dont exist.
the kind of people who step up to the plate to have a place in a elite oligarchical aristocratic system, are RARELY normal… but are often sociopathic in that their audacious moves and brutality stuns the people into submission.
its LATER as some of their children who don’t have the disease but do have the power, that undo it.
which is why the communist system is pseudo lineage, to weed those out.. to remove men of conscience from the aristocracy.
he is the Boy from Brazil..
what if you dont start with key genetic material…
but if you mold the child..
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Vladimir Lenin
in the old days, the elite called this ‘grooming’
Artfldgr: and weeding people of conscience out accomplishes two goals at once–it eliminates them and the trouble they might cause, and it serves as a warning and discouragement to others who might think of acting the same way.