Shrinkwrapped looks at Obama as an intellectual. That Obama regards himself as such, and has convinced others, is astonishing.

…In the past the over-valuing of words compared to actions could be understood to exist within certain reasonably clear constraints. 

The intellectuals have been the gate keepers of news and memory. An intellectual could explain almost anything to fit his ideology and sanitize any excesses that the ideology facilitated.  Thus, for example, The New York Times’s Walter Duranty could win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism for his laudatory series on Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s, while neglecting to mention the millions of deaths Stalin was responsible for by his engineered famine or offer a critical view of Stalin’s show trials.  History was not only written by the victors but they could rely upon the useful idiots of the MSM to control the present news as well.

The world has changed but Barack Obama, emerging as he does from the hallways of academic excellence, sees the world through the eyes of an intellectual and apparently has ingested an unhealthy mix of intellectual arrogance and the over-valuation of language that is part of the academic culture.  This may well sabotage his campaign; in the event he is elected President, it bodes poorly for his administration.

When Barack Obama expressly contradicts himself within minutes of making a comment, there are several possible explanations for his facility with the language:

1) It is possible, perhaps likely, that Obama simply does not believe it is wise or necessary for him to admit an error.  This is an accusation that has been made about President Bush on a regular basis, and has contributed to the tribulations of the Bush Presidency.

2) Obama may well be able to convince himself, probably post facto, that his words mean just what he wants them to mean, a la Humpty Dumpty, and therefore doesn’t consider the contradictions to be significant.

3) He may believe that he still lives in a world dominated by the MSM, that they will continue to cover for him as they have done since the beginning of his campaign, and that  there is no need for him to maintain any consistency or explain any contradictions. 

4)  In the worst case scenario, he may well be an opportunistic sociopath who lies because he thinks he can get away with it.

I suspect that his behavior represents a combination of these possibilities, plus some other possibilities I am probably neglecting.  Since an intellectual educated in a post-modernist university starts from the premise that reality is constructed by those who have power, he assumes that his words, mellifluous and powerful, are enough to determine reality. 

This would fit with Obama’s history; after all his most common vote while a State Senator was “present” suggesting that taking responsibility for actions was considered a liability rather than an asset. 

Now that the seat of greatest power lies within reach he is already behaving as if he has attained his goal.  He acts as if once President, his descriptions of reality would trump reality.  This is also in line with the world of George Lakoff who is very influential within the Democratic party for his theory that the problem of liberalism lies in the words and framing of their arguments rather than in the content of their ideas.

Read it all.