Lies of Obama: Credibility or Charisma?

[Guest guest]

I'm coming more and more to see Charisma as a trait of the deceptive and evil. I'll paraphrase a bit from a book called "The One Minute Philosopher" to make my point.

The book defines Character as:

The Moral Quality of a person.

While it says that Character may be good or bad, I am using it for lack of a better term in comparison to Charisma. Character is dominated by good moral habits and virtues, such as: justice, kindness, honesty, courage, temperance, mercy and wisdom.

It asks: Is this quality a matter of virtue or vice? Is the person responsible for this quality? If so it is character.

I will add to this that a person of character is genuine and solid. They say that they believe and mean it. Mostly, a person of character may try to persuade by logical debate, but they won't try to hoodwink someone with fancy speech full of empty platitudes.

Charisma is not covered in this book. However, my definition is:

Charisma: a trait, natural or cultivated, that allows the possessor to con and deceive people into trusting them regardless of their misgivings. The Charismatic does this not to help others, but to further their own agenda, power and/or wealth.

Charisma differs from Character because Charisma is a false front covering the true nature of the person while Character is the true nature of the person. A Charismatic will lie and abuse others to gain advantage, Character does not.

Simply put: Charisma is a veneer of style covering awful intentions. Character is substance that is open about itself because it has nothing to hide.

Decided lack of Character in American politics these days on the part of all parties.

Also from this book:

Progress = Becoming better. Progress is movement in a consistent direction that makes things better. It requires a standard of measure to determine if things are indeed getting better, staying the same or getting worse. Simplicity and comprehensive standards of measurement are essential.

Change = Becoming Different.

"Change does not necessarily imply movement in an consistent direction. There need not be any continual advance. Change can go forward or backwards or just lead to something different."

Some form of measurement is needed to track change, but it doesn't have to be a standard, such as comparing standard of living 10 years ago to today. The measure can even be changed at will, such as we saw in the novel "1984" where the measures were changed even on a daily basis. The measure may even be wholly fictional or so nebulous as to be useless save for propaganda.

Remember: the US voted for "Change" not "Progress." When inflation comes from all of this spending, will they lies to the people and say that they are better off because they have more dollars, ignoring the truth that it has been devalued to where it is worth a penny compared to its 2000 value?

My point though is that Charisma is the trait of the evil. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Moa, as well as serial killers like Bundy, cultists like Jim , and countless con men from Wall Street to the street corner all use it. To my mind being called Charismatic is a pejorative, a great insult because it questions one's integrity.

In a message dated 4/12/2009 12:46:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Lies of Obama: Credibility or Charisma? Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make dinner for $10 or less.

[Guest guest]

http://www.politonomist.com/lies-of-obama-credibility-or-charisma-001686/

Lies of Obama: Credibility or Charisma?

March 12th, 2009 at 4:56 pm - by Ana Danijela

Barack Obama has not lived up to his promises — claims of change and credibility

were seemingly just shows of charisma and ego. From claims of restoring

confidence in government to discussion of balanced budgets, accountability and

general reform; it seems clear only now that none of this is likely to occur.

Obama's rhetoric is where he shines: outspoken, charismatic and confident, his

speech glows with believability, trust and rapport — an attribute of little real

value, but one that is keeping the masses cool headed while being deceived and

lied to about the true achievements of the new `great leader.'

Examining the budget, we find nothing but talking points and buzzwords, little

real effort to address the credibility or chaos of the modern day republic. We

see no real analysis of where funds are needed and where they are not, no new

responsibility in terms of spending our federal funds, and no attempt to truly

restore financial discipline from the government. Running on an air of

" responsibility " at both the personal and public levels, and covering the budget

with the line " A New Era of Responsibility, " there's a lot of rhetoric, and

CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE buzzwords, but little in the way of substance. Finally,

to keep on the peoples' good side: taxes will not cover the spending — yet again

— not that it really matters, at least economically.

A ballooning $700 billion deficit (roughly 5 per cent of the GDP and 6 per cent

of the total debt), a contracting economy and general economic waste should

raise the question: where is our responsibility. Small, manageable government

advocates, even those that many write-off as " crazy " or " insane, " due to their

extreme beliefs — such as Ron — see almost no press time. Even during the

elections the amount of press time paid to the libertarian advocate for the

Republican party was higher than ever — yet still only a tiny fraction of the

total time, even compared to the extent of his support.

What a " responsible " Obama would be doing — even still could, and should be

doing — is sitting down and conducting a solid analysis of where money is

deserved. Not where it has historically been allocated; not where there are

people dependent on it now; not where people feel they're entitled to it for no

rhyme or reason; but where it is deserved. He should then publish a public

report, outlining where, and why — with sound economic principals and reasoning,

the state should be intervening. This analysis should consider important factors

such as long-term incentive reductions seen by taxation, government reallocation

and the securing of economic rents for private entities — then this should be

opened up to wide-scale public debate; perhaps the Internet is a good forum for

this, some innovative form of adequately moderated crowdsourcing may be the

solution at this point.

It would also be respectable and responsible for Obama and his economic advisers

to stop pretending there are no other schools of economic thought on the matter.

It's obvious that most citizens don't understand economics and have no desire

to: factors are too deep for many, too complicated for some, and simply

uninteresting for most. People don't want to talk numbers: they want to talk

food, consumption and wages. This makes it wholly unfair to talk about `economic

truths' and `educate' the public on how providing stimulus will fix all the

problems. Economists all over greatly disagree about the causes, effects and

solutions in a recession and the solutions we're employing today contradict with

about half of them; if what economists call " long run aggregate supply " has

shifted backwards — that is, there's less capital, labour or technology

available in the market — rather than simply aggregate demand (the demand for

the product being supplied across the whole economy) shrinking " temporarily, "

even using the more common neoclassical economic models we're going to find

ourselves in a bigger mess by throwing money at the problem: not a smaller one.

Forget using the more heterodox models; the results from these models are all

over the place — some potentially credible, some not.

A responsible President would acknowledge the problems and changes that need to

be made as America's population ages — problems with social programs in general,

and those connected to the elderly specifically. Problems with the new health

care plans, and more so problems with the existing public pension plans.

Problems that are likely to arise as firms cannot find enough good productive

labour, or cannot afford to spend the money to keep productivity high enough to

pay for the pensions they've agreed to. The current modifications to Social

Security and other programs are not enough and most economists see this.

A responsible President would go ahead and address long-lasting leftovers in

legislation which are still in effect today — no one would be starving without

farm subsidies, in fact, the whole market would work a lot better. Everyone

would be better off without rent subsidies and limitations — and economists

by-and-large all know this, but it's a hyper-politicized issue, associated with

people who cannot afford to live where they're living; but really, to be

economically sound, they should move to a production center that they produce

among the class that can afford.

Incentives and support for people to stay in areas with little to no business

should be replaced with technological support and innovation or nothing at all —

economists across the spectrum would agree that wasting labour in areas where

they're hard on employment, to the extent they need to rely on government

handouts, is the same as having unemployed labour to some extent. A huge

negative effect on the economy.

The President should be using his skilled rhetoric and charisma to educate the

masses on these important issues — no doubt his economic advisers, at least to

some extent, have explained these things to he and his decision making cohorts;

whether they've done so adequately is a matter of controversy, but if

reasonableness and fiscal responsibility is the goal: these are the solutions.

Furthermore, the Geithner-Bernanke economic duo seen as of late is making a

fatal fault in accountable government. Rather than listening to the people or

the political establishment, they, over-and-over again publish the same

recommendations, propose the same solutions — with minor, irrelevant changes —

to problems which the educated and knowledgeable few refute. Eventually, with

enough changes and encouragements (in the case of the original TARP bailout;

added tax breaks to convert some Republicans needed to make the bill pass) and

enough propaganda these bills, recommendations, and so-called solutions

eventually pass; despite the rejection in the first place.

We see this again and again with projects like the toxic bank idea. Few

economists seem to really support the concept of a toxic bank — redistributing

`bad' assets from few to all just sounds like a way of reburdening the problem —

a problem the scale of which has not been entirely understood. These bad assets

(like say, AIG), the government says, are worth more than people are willing to

pay for them and thus, good investments: how this is the case, no one really

knows. This idea has been killed time and time again by both politicians and the

loudmouthed minority, yet it keeps coming back in modified form, just waiting

for someone to accept it as a reasonable solution: perhaps repeat exposure

increases believability — and without this solution many, if not most, of those

involved in the subprime and CDO fiascoes would be found insolvent very quickly:

an issue no one wants to have to deal with.

Where ever you fall along the spectrum, unless it's that of simply " big unruly

government, " you'll agree: there's no " responsibility " yet.