A New Religion

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A New Religion

By posting this, it might seem I am just doing anti-Obama snark. But my concern is a lot deeper.

Where did this kid get the idea to do what he did?

I say it's in the reverence with which Obama is discussed in his surroundings. Adults worship him indirectly in their attitudes.

That is how religions get the masses to sign up, even new religions. It's all in getting the young indoctrinated.

Enjoy the one-minute show, if it doesn't turn your stomach.

http://youtu.be/-YI4813_v-E

Michael

[caroljane]

Whaddya mean new? We Anglicans have been praying for the Head of our country for 400 years.

Obviously that child is just a throwback to pre- Revolutionary times.

[caroljane]

I seem to remember a lot of Christians praying fervently for the election of Bush, Palin, etc. Maybe including Glenn Beck.

[BaalChatzaf]

Heathen Idolatry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Blasphemy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Nazis had a prayer to/for Adolph Hitler that did not sound too different from this blasphemy

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Kyle Jacob Biodrowski]

Oh dear...

It's a prayer to Barack Obama, not a prayer for Barack Obama. I would have been more comfortable had it been the latter.

Okay, I'm grabbing a gun, ammunition, a few copies of People magazine, four large tubs of maple syrup, Carol, the Kay-nay-dee-en flag, Barack Obama, and my internet connection and I'm heading to the bunker.

[caroljane]

Kyle Jacob Biodroski, you put that gun down RIGHT NOW or it is no maple syrup for you and you are grounded until Henry VIII tells me to let you out!

[caroljane]

Serious post.

I did not watch the video. By description it is blasphemous and do not doubt that at all.

What it made me think of was the human instinct to worship, to have heroes. That is the fount of all religion and philosophy, all enquiry into what is virtuous and heroic.

This child just evinces that, and if his god is a false god, as they all are, that does not in any way refute that _{humans need to worship, to feel awe, to feel part of something greater than themselves.}

[PDS]

When I was this kid's age I prayed to become a champion motorcycle driver.

The video is less than 60 seconds. Very hard to take seriously in any fashion.

How is this any different than the pictures of JFK (right next to the Pope, of course) that I have heard one would have found in Catholic households in the 60's, or me and my dumb prayers, the would-be motorcycle champ?

I just think it a stretch to believe this is anything meaningful.

[caroljane]

Really Michael, was this worth posting?

I have close relatives who pray for parking spaces and dresses to go on sale, and get messages from l the Lord on regular bases, including instructions for me. They are lovely sincere people.

What is the point here?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What is the point here?

Carol,

Example of the effects of propaganda and the Overton window.

Michael

[caroljane]

Oh for heavensake Michael, I looked up Overrverton Window, There was nothing new or enlightening there at all.

[jts]

His Messiahship is a @#$%^& liar. He has no more respect for truth than an alley cat has for marriage. He is crookeder than a dog's hind leg and lower than a snake's belly and he deserves a kick in the ass so hard that he has to clear his throat to fart. He was supposed to be bird cage liner but somehow the plan was changed.

Shakespeare would say:

What trash is Rome Washington,

What rubbish and what offal, when it serves

For the base matter to illuminate

So vile a thing as Caesar! Obama!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Oh for heavensake Michael, I looked up Overrverton Window, There was nothing new or enlightening there at all.

Carol,

Of course there is.

Suppose you wanted to implant a Progressive vision of the world in a culture. The first thing you have to get rid of is not only religion, but the very concept of sacred. One of the best ways to do that is not to refute it, because people who are religious or who hold certain things so important they are sacred to them will simply dismiss you, but, instead, to shift the discussion so that certain taboo things of before become proper topics of conjecture.

For instance, a child praying to a man. The point is not to say the child is brainwashed, but, "Isn't that so darling?" It's to move the public attitude away from the idea of blasphemy--or sacred-level seriousness for those not religious. It's to cheapen the very concept of sacred.

And you get some secondary mileage out of it by accustoming people to deify their fearless leaders. When the technocrat dictator commissions finally do take over, people will subconsciously perceive them as a different class than they are. A better class. A wiser class. A class that is suited for ruling others.

Not to mention that leader worship is a standard characteristic of dictatorships. One after another. Take your pick. It's flat out creepy, but that's beside my point here.

You can only weaken the sense of sacred in a free society by using an Overton window structure. In other words, in propaganda terms, a win is not convincing anyone like in mass hysteria. A win is moving the window one more notch toward the desired goal. It will reach a tipping point later.

That's what the kid praying to Obama does, since the video promises to go viral. Just move the window a bit.

You should study the Overton window structure. It's quite useful. People often use it without ever using that word.

A good example--one that worked and is loaded with techniques for moving the window--is After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. And I doubt either of those two authors heard of Professor Overton.

Michael

[caroljane]

Michael,

I think you are overthinking and overanalyzing things.

"There is nothing new under the sun" and spins will not make anything newer, or more impactful, than circumstances allow.

[BaalChatzaf]

I was semi amused by the little boy praying to and for his Secular Saint Obama. Then I thought to myself, have I ever seen anything like this before? Answer yes:

When I was a little boy, my Grandma (may she rest in peace) showed me a portrait of FDR she keep on the wall of the foyer. My Grandma kept a kosher house and the Sabbath. The portrait was flanked by two low wattage electric bulbs and decorated round about by ferns and flowers. It was a shrine. And my Grandma would say to me That is President Roosevelt (FDR). He is so good to the Jews. He is so good for the Jews. Jewish people by the millions considered him as something just an inch or two short of being the Moisheach (the Messiah). The esteem in which many Jews held FDR bordered on heathen idolatry. Amazing!

Many years later I learned how that "friend of the Jews" FDR refused to let the Ship St. Louis with is mostly Jewish passenger roster dock in the United States and have refuge. The Ship was also refused refuge in Cuba and had to go back to Europe. Virtually all of its passengers were put to death by the Nazis in due course. FDR and Churchill also refused to bomb the railway lines leading to the death camps, such as A\uswitz, and Treblinka and Belsen Buchanwald. Some "friends" they were.

So if grown up Jewish men and women could be sucked in a fooled by FDR, I am in no position to criticized a little boy who clearly does not know any better.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

This seems to be a real problem for Glenn Beck but \I do not see why it should bother atheists.

[caroljane]

Baal,

Eighty years ago today occurred the worst riot in Toronto history. At a baseball game between a Jewish team and a Christian team, a pro-Nazi group raised a swatstika, and mayhem ensued. Miraculously, no one was killed. The police who responded were entirely unable to contain the violence.

Today there was a game there in memoriam, between a Jewish team and a nondenominational team, at the Christie Pits on the exact spot where the blood was shed. One of the spectators who was there in 1933, age 7, is still alive and was an honoured guest.

Thank God and Yahweh,; for lifelong learning.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think you are overthinking and overanalyzing things.

Carol,

That's an opinion, I suppose.

Michael

[caroljane]

I think you are overthinking and overanalyzing things.

Carol,

That's an opinion, I suppose.

Michael

Yes, it is an opinion. And it is one I hold not through the various kalaedioscopes of the masters of spin and pr, but through the evidence of my own senses and mind, however the repetitive geniuses of persuasion have tried to manipulate them.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

You might be surprised how little "the evidence of your own senses and mind" can have in your opinions.

Take some of the tests at Harvard's Implicit, for example.

You might even find you're partially a racist against blacks and don't even know it. Malcolm Gladwell, who is part black, discovered this for himself.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

You can change that stuff by will, but it's a hard slog. The rose-colored glasses of Progressivism is more mask than filter. And it's never pretty when a Progressive first faces that with "the evidence of his own senses and mind."

Michael

[Samson Corwell]

My guess? Hero worship. Some people's minds just go down the path of worship. Shit, I mean young teenage girls do it all the time with pop stars.

[PDS]

I was semi amused by the little boy praying to and for his Secular Saint Obama. Then I thought to myself, have I ever seen anything like this before? Answer yes:

When I was a little boy, my Grandma (may she rest in peace) showed me a portrait of FDR she keep on the wall of the foyer. My Grandma kept a kosher house and the Sabbath. The portrait was flanked by two low wattage electric bulbs and decorated round about by ferns and flowers. It was a shrine. And my Grandma would say to me That is President Roosevelt (FDR). He is so good to the Jews. He is so good for the Jews. Jewish people by the millions considered him as something just an inch or two short of being the Moisheach (the Messiah). The esteem in which many Jews held FDR bordered on heathen idolatry. Amazing!

Many years later I learned how that "friend of the Jews" FDR refused to let the Ship St. Louis with is mostly Jewish passenger roster dock in the United States and have refuge. The Ship was also refused refuge in Cuba and had to go back to Europe. Virtually all of its passengers were put to death by the Nazis in due course. FDR and Churchill also refused to bomb the railway lines leading to the death camps, such as A\uswitz, and Treblinka and Belsen Buchanwald. Some "friends" they were.

So if grown up Jewish men and women could be sucked in a fooled by FDR, I am in no position to criticized a little boy who clearly does not know any better.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Well said, Ba'al. Well said.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's Rush talking about what happened to a rodeo clown who dared to satirize Obama during a Missouri State Fair.

Rush thinks this episode is similar to the Muslim violence over the Mohammad cartoons a few years ago. I agree with him.

Dismiss it all you want, but this "New Religion," i.e., worship of the Fearless Leader in America, is serious business, whether it's a cute little boy praying to Obama or it's the Thought Nazis trashing the career for life of a friggen' rodeo clown.

If unchecked, this crap will get worse.

Progressives aren't supposed to be religious, they're supposed to be atheists, but, once in power, they act like fanatical religious zealots of the fundamentalist sort.

Michael

[caroljane]

It is outrageous that this guy should lose his job, indefensibly wrong.

But as to seriousness, I can't connect the dots the way you do. It is a cultural idiocy and little more.

My son used to have a Trudeau mask that scared the holy hell out of his younger brother, to the point where he would scream in terror whenever he threatened just to put it on.

Luckily we were not fired as parents.

[PDS]

"First they came for the rodeo clowns,

And I didn't speak out because I wasn't a rodeo clown."

With that off my chest, I have always felt that rodeo clowns generally get a bad rap. Indeed, they are far too often used as "fall" guys in situations like this.

And what they fall into is squishy, and doesn't smell very good. :laugh: