re: #18 Killgore Trout

Update on the Obama/brainwashing thread: Students Thrilled By Obama’s Visit: “This Is The Best Day Of My Life…In School” (PHOTOS)

Well, gee. This is nice in the sense that our President is inspiring to young people, as should be the case and it’s nice that it is for the moment, but as a general principle, adulation of political figures as people is distasteful.

Obama is a nice sensible smart guy, and he’s a huge relief to have in office after years of Bush, but please, do we have to love him? It doesn’t matter if we support what the guy stands for (a bit of a moving target in Obama’s case anyway) or not — politicians should be regarded with a healthy skepticism. Now, I don’t mean all the insanity that comes at Obama over his birth certificate all that hateful garbage, which is way beyond the skepticism I mean and based in hatred and small-minded fear.

It’s cute to see these kids now and then, but why continually dwell on it as if it were an aww shucks moment? All of this adulation is why slack-jawed Beck-watching morons who don’t know what the word fascism means are suddenly using the term. I believe fear and hatred are behind most of the ad hominem and other attacks on Obama, but I think what is behind the love is naivete and hope, rather than a rigorous hopeful skepticism which is, I think, the bulwark of democratic society.