Obama Cares

One rhetorical technique used by journalists and other professional speakers is to hold the pretense of being in dialogue with presidents and other sacred figures.

They behave like characters in ancient Greek dramas having an open dialogue with the gods about moral issues. How they perceive the god to feel, or what his true thoughts are on a subject, versus what he has actually said, is a matter for intense discussion and rumination. That a president takes the role played by the gods in the ancient dramas is only sometimes remarked upon, usually by comedians, and sometimes by critics.

When events turn out differently than what was initially expected, sinners take the blame — usually republicans, conservatives, foreigners, bankers, and other typical scapegoats who bear differing levels of real responsibility for the failure of the proposed policy.

Modern playwrights will often try to set ancient plays in modern dress, sometimes updating the language to modern idiom, in a bid to help contemporary audiences connect with an alien past. Although the president is presumably a man like any other, there are numerous myths about presidents that place them on similar levels to the divinely-elected emperors and kings of the past.

For example, the many myths around nuclear weapons, established by movies, television, and propaganda, portray presidents as having the capacity to annihilate the world, as God does, at the press of a button. Millions of people today believe that presidents must work together to avert climate-caused disaster, which is much more superstitious than even medieval people were about the powers of their kings on earth.

Rather than begging the gods to avert pestilence, we turn to the president and his men to avert disaster — but when practical measures, such as quarantines, are suggested, even the most purportedly rational of people will refuse on moral principle to implement them. Instead, we are told to have faith in the mystical powers of intention to curb disease, and potentially the development of as-of-yet-uninvented-and-untested potions to be mass-distributed at the behest of the god-president.

The people remain fascinated by prophets and magic, and it seems the more rationalism is imposed, the more widespread and occulted the beliefs become, even from the minds of the people that hold those occult beliefs.