It's been noted recently that whenever Obama denounces one of the ghoulish reptiles with whom he's been perfectly comfortable in the past keeping company -- Wright, Ayers, Rezko, et al. -- he always does so in intensely personal rhetoric. These people "disappoint" him. They aren't the "people I used to know." They've let him down. Etc. He can never simply say, "This person has done wrong" or "This person is objectively offensive."
I suspect what's going on here is that he's employing a kind of Straussian device -- a rhetorical technique in which one says something that is interpreted one way by the uninformed and quite another way by a special audience of people who are uniquely suited to understand its meaning. (Think of it this way: I am delivering a message to a spy to let him know that a planned operation has been called off. I pass by him on the street, nod, and say, "Looks like rain." The ignorant hear the exoteric meaning -- a casual chat between acquaintances. The spy hears the real message.)
What I propose is that Obama speaks this way to subtly advertise the fact that he is a relativist -- or at least to appeal to relativists. He cannot of course openly come out and say that he doesn't believe in objective truths because the majority of people would be disgusted by that. So instead he speaks in personal terms because, hey, if truth is subjective, then only an individual's perception is what matters -- in this case his own perception. So it's not that Rezko is an unethical slimeball; it's that he doesn't conform to Obama's notions of rhetoric, and Obama disapproves of that on the basis of a subjective value judgment.
I suspect the message gets through, which is why all the people who pointedly defended Wright are now pointedly defending Obama's trashing of him. They grasp the relativism there. He's speaking their language and they like it. The ignorant hear "This guy is OFFENSIVE to me" and applaud. The enlightened hear "This guy is offensive TO ME" and applaud.
This of course conforms perfectly to his background as a college radical and his Third World upbringing by radical Marxist atheists, since relativism is almost universally a phenomenon of the far left.
I suspect what's going on here is that he's employing a kind of Straussian device -- a rhetorical technique in which one says something that is interpreted one way by the uninformed and quite another way by a special audience of people who are uniquely suited to understand its meaning. (Think of it this way: I am delivering a message to a spy to let him know that a planned operation has been called off. I pass by him on the street, nod, and say, "Looks like rain." The ignorant hear the exoteric meaning -- a casual chat between acquaintances. The spy hears the real message.)
What I propose is that Obama speaks this way to subtly advertise the fact that he is a relativist -- or at least to appeal to relativists. He cannot of course openly come out and say that he doesn't believe in objective truths because the majority of people would be disgusted by that. So instead he speaks in personal terms because, hey, if truth is subjective, then only an individual's perception is what matters -- in this case his own perception. So it's not that Rezko is an unethical slimeball; it's that he doesn't conform to Obama's notions of rhetoric, and Obama disapproves of that on the basis of a subjective value judgment.
I suspect the message gets through, which is why all the people who pointedly defended Wright are now pointedly defending Obama's trashing of him. They grasp the relativism there. He's speaking their language and they like it. The ignorant hear "This guy is OFFENSIVE to me" and applaud. The enlightened hear "This guy is offensive TO ME" and applaud.
This of course conforms perfectly to his background as a college radical and his Third World upbringing by radical Marxist atheists, since relativism is almost universally a phenomenon of the far left.
