Jan

How Obama should? play the race card

By kalka

Andrew Samuels, a Jungian psychoanalyst and professor, and a politically intellectual bigwig in some circles (per Wikipedia) has a provocative video post on his website (www.andrewsamuels.com ‘Is Barack Obama a good-enough leader). This was posted in June 2009 so my apologies if this stuff was posted or discussed here before.

Samuels tells us he is not at all surprised by the recent disappointment in Obama and his failure to maintain the wave of messianic approval that American voters seemingly handed him last year. Samuels accurately points out that the “fall” of Obama was inevitable given the lofty, manic-like ideals he inspired. Mania is generally followed by depression, a high followed by a low. Samuels wonders how it is that the intellectual elite of Obama supporters failed to realize this.

Obama himself realized the impossibility of achieving his fantastical agenda. Samuels notes that Obama has not adopted the sort of radical economic policies that apparently his true supporters had wanted. I guess what seems ‘radical’ to his opponents is not nearly what the true liberals were hoping to accomplish (a scary thought!). Samuels then suggests Obama take to heart and expand on what the Brazilian president concluded about the economic downfall-that it was caused by people with “white skin and blue eyes”. Samuels suggests Obama, with his ‘Kenyan background’, is in the perfect position to point out the shortcomings and destructive results of ‘western cultures and values’. And that Obama should use his racial background and history to create a more ‘empathic’ stance toward ‘non-white countries’, rather than naively think he can be the president of all peoples and cultures, or “be the true father of the nation”. So Obama’s message of unity and creation of a universal world order was faulty and sophomoric from the start? Samuels apparently believes Obama can better cement his place in history by embracing racial separation, division, and use this to promote an agenda that will benefit those apparently bamboozled by the ‘White culture’ all these years. So much for hope, change, peace, love, unity, and equality. Let the racial wars begin!

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