GodSmacked!

by Dennis Green

Some call it a “GodSpell” and other wags use the language of drugs and paraphernalia, and simply say, “He was GodSmacked!” The other day I saw a man on television who had that look, and it was frightening, awesome, even terrifying.

President Obama, elected to bring about change, has been GodSmacked. No one who isn’t walking this moment in his shoes can quite comprehend, let alone appreciate, what the man has undergone. Our saying, from Ordinary Reality, about a “wakeup call” is woefully inadequate to describe what this man has come up against.

To begin with, he is, I’m convinced, a man of God, very sincere in his religious faith and beliefs. I’ve seen him rocking out, singing old spirituals with the look on his face that is ecstatic. Only someone who knows what it’s like to be enfolded in the arms of the Lord gets that look.

And moreover, I believe that he was sincere in his promise, and his desire, to bring change to the way this country is governed. From the use of torture and rendition to the pointless invasion of Iraq, I believe he sincerely wanted to effect radical change in the way we as a nation do things — not merely reversing policies put in place by the previous administration, but rethinking government altogether.

GodSmacked. Early on, he was persuaded by guys like Generals Petreus and MacCrystal that some sort of success is possible in Afghanistan, and even that the Surge is working in Iraq. Not why we are there in the first place, or what makes all those American dead not merely more wasted young lives — but simply that something less ignoble than total defeat and overnight withdrawal is possible.

Next, he was advised by Rahm Emmanuel to fold his campaign apparatus and grass roots organization into the Democratic National Committee, which effectively removed any independent threat from that forceful movement to the established order. So when Obama’s team began cutting deals with Big Insurance and Big Pharma, there was no effective voice of protest left to howl.

Except on the other side. The Tea Partiers and Town Hall hecklers and the Fox News GOP. Emmanuel’s failure to anticipate this conservative backlash is typical of the insider policy wonk who just doesn’t see it coming, so enamored is he of his own perspective. Total opposition from the GOP in Congress, and even from moderate and conservative Democrats then effectively neutered any majority advantage all that campaigning might have gained.

But I suspect that the biggest wallop Obama has received, and from cosmic sources, is the sort of reality therapy very few human beings ever know — how much more powerful history and the Zeitgeist are than one mere American president. All he needs now to be truly Lincolnesque is a Civil War.

And the way things are going — with Dick Cheney proclaiming a new Confederacy and Rush Limbaugh threatening secession — Obama may just get that Civil War.

©2010 Dennis Green