According to the 2008 exit polls, Barack Obama won 78% to 21% among Jewish voters. Now, in the second year of Obama’s presidency, only 42% of voters would re-elect him, while the plurality (46%) would consider voting for someone else.
I don't believe it.
As in, I do not think it is accurate.
There is no Obamamania like the American Jewish Obamamania. The Reform Judaism movement practically was a division of Obama for America.
Thousand of years of undeserved self-imposed guilt trips culminated in the Mother of All Guilt Trips, also known as the 2008 election.
Oh, how the Jewish community kvelled when Obama won. The Mother of All Kvells.
I never could explain it in any rational terms. If was as if electing someone who worshiped in Jeremiah Wright's church and hung out with anti-Israel academics would ... well, like I said, I never could explain it in rational terms.
Anyone with a knowledge of pathological psychology who can tell me the term to describe someone who falls in love with someone who doesn't love them back?
"Glutton for punishment" comes to mind, but there must be a more precise term.
Maybe things are changing. Maybe the way Obama pissed all over Bibi Netanyahu was the wake up call. Maybe the Jewish community simply is falling into line with national averages, the well-known "return to sanity" phenomenon.
Maybe. But I'll need a lot more proof than one poll.
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A lot more proof is needed, indeed.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I'm not buying it.
ReplyDeleteStockholm syndrome rings a bell. In philosophy it might fall under the corpus of self reference problems, in this case, self deception.
ReplyDeleteuntil my neighbors turn on the First Moron, i'm not buying it.....
ReplyDeleteI think its akin to tay sachs which causes death by muscle degeneration. Here it would be a gentic disease that destroys the brain muscle first. Or maybe some type of paranoid schizophrenia, that instead of seeing enemies everywhere, you think your enemies are your friends. Thankfully I have been spared that particular gene.
ReplyDeleteDelusional Disorder, according to DSM-IV.
ReplyDeleteCould it be, perhaps, that many of the Jewish community consider themselves socialists? I have many friends who are Jewish, and they seem to think socialism is "wonderful." They, as a group, would like Obama, if they are socialists first, since he is following that path (and his history shows he has been doing that all his life).
ReplyDeleteIt truly baffles me. A bit OT, but related: it's kinda like the "great philosopher" of bioethics or "applied ethics" Peter Singer, a highly intelligent man of Jewish descent. Now at Princeton, he believes that it's okay to kill babies after they are born because they have not "developed" enough to have a "capacity to feel pain and pleasure." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer on his ethics). Ironically, his family fled Austria during the Holocaust years, losing grandparents to the Nazi Holocaust. Yet he follows the same eugenic paths.....just baffling. (By the way, he is a "secular Humanist" and does not practice his religion of heritage.)
Stacey may be right - Delusional Disorder. Or Denialism Disorder.
The explanation is in Jamie Glazov's book, "United in Hate," which applies the insights of Eric Hoffer, author of "The True Believer," to our current world situation.
ReplyDeleteI also think George Orwell's "Animal Farm" applies -- in this case, it looks to me like the majority of Jews for Obama are like the idealistic animals in the barn being exploited by the more-equal animals in the house.
Also, I think Jews are in a dilemma comparable to the one faced by gays and lesbians, where fiscal conservatism serves our interests much better than anything the Democrats have ever advocated but they can't embrace it because of the purges and purity pledges that emanate from social conservatives.
Social conservatives have so thoroughly made themselves the face and voice of conservatism and deluded people into believing they had to embrace both fiscal and social conservatism to be a member of the conservative movement, that it looks to me like there may be quite a lot of Jews who feel like they would be renouncing their religion by becoming conservative, especially if they have had bad experiences with evangelical Christians who were trying to convert them.
For one thing, I think you have to separate the different types of Jews. Orthodox Jews - those who adhere to the strict faith of Judaism - overwhelmingly are conservative. From my own personal perspective, I know many, many orthodox Jews (myself included) and out of all of them, only two or three are voting Democrat.
ReplyDeleteBut Reform Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat. And why? I have two theories:
1. Because of their own lack of connection to G-d, they have a void tat must be filled. Since they will not turn to deeper adherence to Jewish law (that would keep them from assimilating, and they - by nature - must assimilate), they instead turn to the church of liberalism. It doesn't contradict with their understanding of Judaism, because in their view, it's not religious.
2. Often, liberal Jews will tell you that they are the way they are because the Torah dictates Tikkun Olam (repairing the world). In their view, this means that they must care for everyone. However, because liberalism is based on "feelings", they do not see the damage their actions cause down the line.
As far as Obama's attacks on Israel, because they are so convinced that they know best (as well as he does), they can not accept that Obama's policies could ever hurt Israel. Like their predecessors in Germany, they are wrong.
It's only one generation from "Never Again" to "Please Sir, May I Have Another."
"Reform" Jews bring self-hate to an entirely new level. At a temple near me, you see nothing but "Obama 08" bumper stickers on their cars - the ones they park a block away from temple so they look like obedient Jews. Hysterical.
ReplyDeleteMy parents were immigrants and had to escape the Nazis coming from one direction and the Russians from another. They hid under watermelons on a truck and were snuck across the border. My mother was not a Jew and was excommunicated - thus explaining her lifelong hatred for religion. But my father, for his whole life, preached to us about how to "blend in". Could this be another explanation? He never wanted to make a scene and avoided confrontation like the plague! It has taken a lifetime to even start to be comfortable even stating my views on-line! (and that's pretty much anonymous!) In retrospect, maybe this is what contributed to Jewish slavery under pharoah. Blending in and "Let's get along" usually doesn't work!
ReplyDelete