Sometimes people will bring up Obama out of the blue, out of context, when there is no natural link to the Presidential race in the conversation. I get the impression at those times that the people involved are trying to find any excuse to mention their newest obsession - Obama. I've seen that behavior before, though more often from people who try to bring up Jesus in a conversation when there doesn't seem to be any appropriate natural link to that religion in the conversation rather than politics.

I believe a certain important, material portion of Senator Obama's supporters are supporting him based on a cult of personality effect. And, as a Jew whose grandparents escaped the holocaust which was a result of another cult of personality, that part of Obama's support scares me.

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Paul Krugman, hardly a rightist, is the one that first brought the allegation to wider attention when he wrote his article in the New York Times entitled Hate Springs Eternal. He said:

"[M]ost of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. [b]I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.[/b] We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again."

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If it were an isolated claim then there wouldn't be a lot to talk about. But many sources have expressed some alarm at the issue, independently of Krugman.

For example, politico wrote an article titled Messianic rhetoric infuses Obama rallies. They wrote:

"Obama's wife, Michelle, opened the rally with a description of her husband that could, at moments, have been a description of Jesus Christ.

"We need a leader who's going to touch our souls. Who's going to make us feel differently about one another. Who's going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us," she said, echoing biblical passages.

Winfrey also touched on Christian themes that had not been highlighted in Iowa.

"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she began, adding that she was "stepping out of my pew" - television – to engage in politics.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth."

Winfrey also recalled a story from "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," a 1974 film based on Ernest Gaines' 1971 novel.

In Winfrey's telling, the protagonist – an old woman who had survived slavery and the Civil War – would ask every child, "Are you the one? Are you the one?"

"I do believe I do today we have the answer to Miss Pittman's question – it's a question that the entire nation is asking – is he the one?" Winfrey said. "South Carolina – I do believe he's the one."

According to one academic discussion of the book by Christopher Mulvey, a professor at University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, the passage continues to ask whether the child is the one who will "carry part of our cross," a "messianic figure.""

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ABC's Jake Trapper wrote a similar article titled And Obama Wept:

"Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand...Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she's "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters. On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work.""

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. “

The always interesting James Wolcott writes that "(p)erhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can't picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don't look to politics for transcendence and self-certification."

Then there's MSNBC's Chris Matthews who tells Felix Gillette in the New York Observer, “I’ve been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.""

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Rich Lowry, at National Review, writes in his article titled Obama the Messianic:

"This isn’t merely overpromising. It’s a creepy inflation of a political figure into a secular version of the Second Coming...Obama plays into this messianism because it’s what gives his candidacy its unique appeal. Otherwise, he has a collection of pedestrian Democratic positions. It’s the promise to redeem our politics, “to create a kingdom right here on earth” — as he put it at a church event in South Carolina a few weeks ago — that accentuates his status as a different kind of candidate.

The American left might be overwhelmingly secular, but it still has religious impulses, which tend to be channeled into their leaders. Democrats want to revere their candidates. This has at least been the case since John F. Kennedy, the martyred president who embodied all that would have been good and true about America if it hadn’t taken a catastrophic wrong turn with his death. Obama offers Democrats the opportunity to fall in love all over again."

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Slate’s Timothy Noah has even started to keep track of these sort of things the "Obama Messiah Watch."

And I could go on and on with reporters from both sides of the spectrum, from the field, starting to notice an Obama Cult of Personality building around his campaign.

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Actual comparison, by religious people, of Obama and Jesus seems to be going on as well.

The Rev. Earlmont Williams, (Jamaican Gleaner March 1, 2008) wrote:

The similarities between Obamian hope and biblical hope are extraordinary

Obamian hope moves beyond the past and seeks to proactively conceptualise and create the future...Biblical hope is similar. Like Obamian hope, it speaks to the matter of the future being pulled into the present in the Kingdom of God. In a real sense, the Kingdom of God respects but moves beyond the past and, in the present, it realises the future, in a preliminary sense. Biblical hope also, in a sense, propels the one in whom it is found toward the future consummation of this kingdom. Like Obamian hope, biblical hope knows that the present is just a platform on which the future is being built and experienced. This is powerful...Fundamentally, the similarities between Obamian hope and biblical hope are extraordinary, striking and intriguing. Like biblical hope, Obamian hope inspires the United States of America and the world.

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But sometimes pictures speak louder than words. There is an interesting website called ObamaMessiah. It starts with this quote:

"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Barack Obama Lebanon, New Hampshire.
January 7, 2008.

The site is worth checking out. They have numerous videos of Obama worship. Stevie Wonder for example has drunk the cool aid, encouraging people to chant Obama's name all day as they go about their lives. Videos of little children talking about how Obama is hope. Super creepy mental programming stuff.

Here are some images from them.

















There have also been several reports of people fainting at Obama rallies, and not from the heat.

And now, perhaps the scariest of them all, in one of Obama's newest cult worship videos, they are chanting his name in a hypnotic rhythm in the background:

We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am

That is creepy. And scarier even than that, I've read and heard of some more liberal folks look to that video as a hopefully uplifting thing, missing entirely that it's not about policy but worship of personality. And even creepier than that, a couple of those liberals I am referring to are former Evangelicals who left that type of religion but not that mindset, and who I think may be more susceptible to that sort of programming.

Now I am not saying this sort of cult of personality is representative of all Obama supporters. Indeed, you can find numerous posts at DemocraticUnderground.com from folks who are equally creeped out by this cult of personality gathering around Obama, even from some of Obama's supporters.

But, the part it does represent creeps me out. Don't worship people - that way lies Very Bad Things. If you find yourself thinking about Obama as the guy you support, as opposed to his policies, then it's time to reevaluate where your head is at. If you find yourself listening more to his stump speeches about change than reading his policy positions listing exactly what he means by change, it's time to reevaluate where your head is at.

Obama himself does not represent a generic ideal - that's messianic thinking. He's just a politician running for office. He has some good ideas and some bad ideas, some good parts and bad parts. If you cannot think of any bad ideas or bad parts of him, you've gone too far (everyone has bad parts, particularly all politicians), and it's time to take a hard look at why you actually support Obama.

On the other hand if you still think of him as just a politician with good and bad, who on-balance supports more positions you support than the other options for President, then you're not the kind of person I am concerned about.