Reply #119: Thanks for a reasonable and careful

[tomg]

reply. Normally I am pretty glued to DU ( and DailyKos, though less so), but, as I said, the past few days I've been away. I think one of the things was the sheer level of venom between the camps, and this seemed to be one more instance.

I will check out the posts as you mention, but - even with that said - it could be argued that some of my behaviour and idolization of some political figures in the 60s, the same kind of "we are the troops who will save the world," and the Manichean-like us vs. them thinking could be construed as indicative of a personality that was clearly open and ready for a cult replete with a messianic figure. And obviously, I am not suggesting that any of the people I was ready to go to the barricades for were of that ilk. However, if the Weather Underground was not cultish, I don't know what was. But even more so, figures from Lyndon LaRouche to Guru Maharaji ( which is where Rene Davis wound up for awhile) were pretty abundant, particularly after the end of the war movement when there was a lot of frustrated, Utopianist energy that had virtually nowhere to go. The war was over but the world was, in too many ways, the same.

I have noticed that a lot of hard-core Obama followers have a single-mindedness in the need to convince me that Hillary supporters do not, but I was ( and still am, to an extent) chalking it up to style, age, energy levels. Still, it seems that right now we are at a moment that is dicey ( and not simply in the sense of getting the current crew of psychotics out of power).

I would not say that - from what I have seen, generally - that there is a cult or at this point the makings of a cult. I do not believe that on Obama's part there is attempt to do that - he is a little too busy. There could very well be a fairly high proportion of young, idealistic, highly energized individuals bent of making a change, who see things in terms of "the enlightened" and "the minions of darkness," and the moment being now, and Obama is the one. And probably a lot of these folks are in the trenches for him and in his organization. While that is not a cult, it could easily have a higher proportion of people who are, quite frankly, looking for a Messiah of sorts. I would be as or more concerned that, as with every charismatic figure ( and I am not even really saying he is a one)should Obama get the nod under those conditions, then there are such unreasonably high expectations on the part of the followers who worked for him ( I don't mean the average vote - I mean the diehards), that he will have to fail - the "hey, you've been in office 24 hours. Why isn't it all better yet" thing.

I don't know. I really am in the middle, and I'll support whoever gets the nod. Again, though, thanks for the post. It is the sort of thing I am actually very interested in ( ever since I read Weber about 40 years ago) so I will really think about it.