It’s difficult to understand how a president with the most failure-ridden foreign and domestic policy in modern history still stands to win some 47 percent of the American vote, according to the latest polls. But the answer is simple. Since 2007, Barack Obama has been building a cult of personality reminiscent of fascist leaders. That doesn’t mean he’s a fascist; it doesn’t mean that he’s Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin. But his semiotics and iconography are far more suited for a fascist country than a vibrant republic.
Yesterday, the Obama campaign tweeted about a brand new set of products on its website: “A poster to say there are no red states or blue states, only the United States.” Only the poster wasn’t of our flag. It was of a United States dominated by the Obama symbol:
The poster was labeled, “OUR STRIPES: FLAG PRINT.” Those are not our stripes. Those are Obama’s stripes. And we are all his subjects.
This, of course, was not the first time that the Obama campaign had expressed the view that the United States are truly the Obama States. Back in May, Obama’s campaign tweeted out this delightful picture, with the exact same slogan: “There are no red or blue states, just the United States”:
And back in March, the Lake County, Florida Democratic Party headquarters began flying this flag:
Noticing a pattern here?
Suffice it to say that Ronald Reagan never hijacked the American flag for his own iconography. Nor did George W. Bush. Nor, for that matter, did Bill Clinton. Only Barack Obama has utilized the visual methodologies of fascism to forward his campaign.
The same day that the Obama campaign decided to unleash their newest Obama flag, Jessica Alba, one of Obama’s Hollywood acolytes, issued a letter to Obama’s campaign followers urging them to pledge allegiance to Obama. Obama posted this picture on his website:
This is creepy.
This is the imagery that permeated the Democratic National Convention. Virtually the only shirts plainly visible were plastered with Obama’s image. Passersby stopped to take pictures with an enormous sand idol of Barack Obama:
(Of course, that wasn’t the first time we’d seen Obama statues; non-Obama campaign employees have been building them for years:)
Even the very symbol of the DNC was an ode to an America under Obama:
The American people, united in red, underneath the Big Blue O. No Democratic donkey. No pictures of past presidents. Nothing but O.
Obama’s been doing this since 2007, when his followers, including Rolling Stone magazine, tried to portray him as a Jesus-like figure come to rescue America from perdition. But as president, you would imagine he’d tone it town.
You’d be wrong.
The Obama campaign is not about America. It is about America under Obama. That’s why Obama dismisses meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appear on David Letterman – the Dear Leader’s priorities are the nation’s priorities. That’s why Obama is the first to leap onstage after Osama Bin Laden is killed, but waits for Hillary Clinton to take the hit after America’s Libyan ambassador is killed – Hillary isn’t just taking one for the team, she’s taking one for the One. And that’s why Obama’s support base never seems to drop beneath 40 percent. Fifty years ago, Americans would have laughed at Obama’s imagistically dictatorial pretensions. Today, many Americans buy into it, convinced that they can’t succeed on their own, and that only together, united by Obama, can America move forward.