"I'm feeling those good vibrations"

Hard upon discovering the WaPo editorial I just blogged-up, about Obama re-alligning his foreign policy positions to something amazingly Bush flavored, I read this by Mark Morford, in the SF Chron. The juxtapose is just too too delicious...

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans [We are just puddles of misery] and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit. [Click away? No way brother, you are making my day.]

Ready? It goes likes this: Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway. [Chariots of the Gods? Remember that one?]

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. [Chicago politics seems to bring that out in people.]

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence [Intuitively. Not one of them can make a principled argument for any of this.] - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord. [So Mark, shall we put some money on it? My $100 says it's gonna be "vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores" all the way down.]

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious [meaning having a creed that can actually be pinned down], mind you, but deeply spiritual [meaning indistinguishable from nihilism] ) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies [Ooops] or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. [How about the soul of the Democrat Party? As a kind of, you know, "test case?" Do we see peace? Philosophy? Sweetness and light? Anybody evolvin' there?]

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. [Poor poor Frodo, crawling across Mordor.] And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history. [So you would think—Obama is 46 years old—that Mr Morford would now be pointing to some actual "lightwork" that Mr Obama has actually accomplished. If a person is, like, radiant, and he's been involved in public life for a couple of decades, SOMETHING ought to have happened. Right? Hmm? Something, uh, luminous? I'm sitting here, just waiting to be impressed. Mark?]

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? [Maybe because we are narcissists who value feel-good emotions over actual facts?] Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him. [He was killed by a Communist "Progressive," who hated it when he got tough on St. Fidel. Ooops, sorry, that's too literal. Stupid of me. I'm SO "not attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things."]

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land [smokin' ruins as far as the eye can see] and embarrassed the country [Euro elites and Middle East tyrants, PLEASE forgive us for being Americans] and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp [Speak for yourself, pulpy pal] and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp,[?] we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. [Coulda fooled me] I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history. [Hey Morford, want to put another C-note on what the history books end up saying?]

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better. [That's too intrinsic for me to even comment on. But Mark, would you care to set a few specific benchmarks, so we can eventually come to some judgement on all this?]

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? [Yep] I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself. Not this time.

I am evolving! It's a new way of being on the planet!

[By the way, I have nothing against: "...The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture..." It's real, it just happens to be discoverable in the Church founded by Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. And not in "swirling vibrational energies." Rather it's about giving up self-love, and taking up ones cross, and following.]