Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! …Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.

Heath Ledger as The Joker, Dark Knight (2008).

Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Ezra Klein, at the beginning of the year (H/T: Is Barack Obama The Messiah?).

I wept.

“Anonymous,” commenting on Ezra’s post.

The Joker’s right. People really don’t care that much about the goal of a plan, or whether the consequences that follow naturally from a plan are in harmony with the stated goal of the plan — just so long as there is one.

I keep hearing, from time to time, this thing that Obama calls us back to our higher selves, that he is a more evolved being, summoning us to the next higher plane of evolution. Question: How many species in the animal kingdom are built around just one instance of the species occupying the hub of a communications network, Obama-style, while the lowly underlings abandon whatever passes for rational thought and slavishly perform whatever tasks they’re called to perform by this hub-overlord? Drones, that take solace in the fact that there’s a plan…never mind what it’s supposed to do, just so long as there is one. I can think of quite a few such species that aren’t very evolved at all. Ants. Bees. Wasps. A little higher up on the tree, there are pilot whales. Lemmings. That’s about it, I think. The Borg-like behavior tops out at the lemming species.

Unless one accepts that the Obama supporter is more evolved than the lemming.

I wonder how evolved the electorate is, as a whole. How prevalent is this voter who doesn’t care what the plan is supposed to do, so long as there’s a plan. This human bug. Maybe that’s a minority; a paper tiger. Who knows, maybe McCain could wrap this whole thing up right now by going after the “dammit, I want to know what my next President is going to DO and he won’t get my vote until he tells me” vote.

The Chosen One has eased off somewhat on all the Messiah nonsense since January, when Klein wrote his piece. Somewhat. A little. But measurably; somewhere, there must be some polling data that told Him that would be a smart thing to do. Perhaps, even in 2008, you can’t lead our nation without at least making a show of spelling out what your plan is, as opposed to repeating over and over again that you have one and that it involves “change.”

But perhaps you can. Obama’s talked somewhat about pulling our troops out of Iraq, and offering a tax cut to everyone except Joe The Plumber…other than that, if he’s elected, he will be perhaps the most commitment-free President since — well, ever. It will be quite bizarre. He could do just about anything, and nobody would be able to say any of it is directly contradictory to any campaign-trail promise, anywhere. And forget about ever criticizing him about anything. That would be racist.

H/T to blogger friend Rick for the graphic.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

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