Obama as Edward Said's Greater Son

A Bitter Disappointment

Edward Said must be turning in his grave.  His greater son, Barack Obama has turned out to be a colossal wreck.

Said was one of the leading edge academics who is said to have greatly influenced the young Barack Obama, whilst the latter was studying at Columbia. Said was the Orientalist who stared down the guns of Western imperialism in the Middle East (and elsewhere), and demanded that Oriental traditions and cultures be accepted on their own merits.

His most famous acolyte, Barack Obama is proving to be an inept student.  How disappointing.  What is clear to most by now is that Obama has been unable to shuffle off the besetting arrogance of the West when it comes to dealing with the Islamic world.
  Soon after his inauguration Obama delivered a startling speech in Cairo in which he proposed resetting the global chess board.  The pieces would be configured differently; the old rules would change.  The US would treat Islamic nations with respect, as equals, as partners.  A less prominent sub-text was also at play: Obama has always believed that if the US adopted a less arrogant, colonialist mien, not only would genuine partnerships be able to be forged with the Oriental world, but the grievances and anger in that region toward the West would dissipate.  Obama is a "peace in our time" kind of guy. 

At this point in Obama's presidential career, people with an acute ear claimed that Said could be heard clapping enthusiastically from the grave. Alack and alas.  Now Obama has fallen into a deep crevasse.  Like Said, he has naively (and arrogantly) assumed that when he scratched the skin of a disaffected, angry Oriental, underneath he would find the warm, beating heart of a closet Western liberal committed to the full range of  Western liberal values (human rights, a deep commitment to abortion, sexual libertinism, secularism, "peace in our time", pornography, trans-genderism, and so forth).

Moreover, Obama has arrogantly presumed to speak for Islam, as if he knew better than your average Oriental joe.  He has formed a narrative about Islam that sees the vast majority, if not the entirety of Islamic people, to be just like him.  These Islamic people hold a cluster of religious views which are nice really: they hark back to ancient traditions, customs and culture.  These views must be respected, pretty much as one would today respect sitting round drinking kava from the village cooking pot in Fiji.  Sort of the same way that Obama appears to acknowledge the Christian tradition--a cultural matrix which adds richness and colour to an otherwise drab utilitarian world.

In assuming that Islamic believers were basically like himself, Obama has fallen into the arrogant, imperialist trap so despised by Edward Said.  "Islamic people are just like us.  They really want to be like us.  They don't just acknowledge the West's secular humanitarianism, they aspire to be part of it. "

Granted there are many Islamic folk who are little more than nominal, cultural Muslims.  Granted there may be many Islamic folk who conform to the stereotype Obama has adopted.  Obama is a nominal Christian of convenience.  He will participate in Christian traditions only to the extent that he sees them underscoring and glorifying his "deeper" religious beliefs--which revolve around secular, Progressive humanitarianism.  Obama assumes that most Muslims are on his page when it comes to their religious traditions.

But when Islamic doctrines, beliefs, and historical traditions are taken seriously, what then?  Obama, from his lofty perch, presumes and proclaims that being committed to Islam will not mean a re-emergence of ancient Islamic doctrines like jihad or dhimmitude.  It is at this point that Obama's world view has divorced him from reality.  But then this, also, is nothing new.  Progressives have always tended to live in an idealistic abstracted world--not, let it be said, far from the madding crowd, but as the very same.

Edward Said would have been so disappointed that Obama has failed to shake off his Western cultural imperialism.  Meanwhile, there is hardly anyone on the left, Occidental or Oriental or otherwise, that remains comfortable with Barack.  He has truly been one of them, a genuine scion of the faith.  But it's not turning out as expected.  Progressives are beginning to suffer the derision of disappointed hopes.