One of the ways that Nature says, “Don’t touch”…

is when somebody looks you right dead in the eye and tells you a big fat well-swilled lie so brazenly and obviously a lie that you find yourself thinking, “Nobody could tell a lie *that* big! I must be mistaking his meaning or something. It must be my fault. Nobody could deliberately lie so nakedly.” Really big liars count on that. They count on the fact that you will go on extending them charity because you just can’t believe anybody would tell such a huge lie about something so obviously false.

So, for instance, a few years ago you had guys like uber-neocon Richard Perle flatly denying that there was any such thing as neoconservatism or a neocon foreign policy–a lie so huge it just takes the breath away.

Along the same lines, you had Bush looking us in the eye and saying “We do not torture”, along with a cadre of apologists for Bush explaining in my very comboxes that this statement could be construed as true (despite the trail of dead bodies left in the wake this Thing That Isn’t Torture) if “in Bush’s mind, something doesn’t meet the definition of ‘torture'”. Strangely, these same people were stunningly silent about Bill Clinton’s definitions of “sex” ten years ago and more or less went along with the standard definitions of what “is” is.

Now, we have a new regime in place–a regime which is testing out its own look-you-dead-in-the-eye-and-lie techniques via its new set of willing accomplices in the media. The most absurd lie which I have encountered is summed up in the words I ran into over at Commonweal a few months ago: “This ‘Lefties think Obama is the messiah!’ meme is really getting old. The only people fooled by it are the ones spouting it — just as the only people who call Obama “The One” are people who think they’re being satirical.”

As I pointed out at the time: The Obamamessiah longings and agitprop of the Lefty media has been abundantly documented and only laziness, stupidity or dishonesty could account for the dumb notion that conservatives just invented it out of whole cloth. For those who want to bother, here is a nifty list o’quotes from the invaluable Obamamessiah site:

“No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don’t expect, like Jesus being born in a manger.”
–Lawrence Carter
“Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama.”
— Dinesh Sharma
“We just like to say his name. We are considering taking it as a mantra.”
— Chicago] Sun-Times
“A Lightworker — An Attuned Being with Powerful Luminosity and High-Vibration Integrity who will actually help usher in a New Way of Being”
— Mark Morford
“What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history”
— Jesse Jackson, Jr.
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
— Barack Obama
“Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?”
— Daily Kos
“He communicates God-like energy…”
— Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)
“Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul”
— Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times
“I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”
— Halle Berry
“A quantum leap in American consciousness”
— Deepak Chopra”He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century.”
— Gary Hart
“Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”
— Eve Konstantine
“This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament.” “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often. No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event.”
— Chris Matthews
“[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.”
— Toni Morrison
“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.”
— Ezra Klein
“Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.”
— Gerald Campbell
“We’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth.”
— Oprah Winfrey
“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan.”
— Bill Rush

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But now, as if to ratchet things up even more, we have some wacky Dane denying that he is exalting Obama as a Messianic figure:

For some time now, comparisons between [Jesus and Obama] have been a tool of cynical opinion that quickly became fatigued of the rapture that Obama instilled prior to and after the presidential election last year.

Translation: conservatives and Christians are just making crap up. Nobody really is investing Obama with their messianic hopes.

Yet in the very same column, he then looks you right in the eye and declares:

The idea was naturally that the comparison between Jesus and Obama – which is something that the critics developed themselves – would be comical, blasphemous, or both.

If such a comparison were to be made, it would, of course, inevitably be to Obama’s advantage.

Today, his historic Health Reform is being passed through the American Senate – a welfare policy breakthrough that several of his predecessors have been unable to manage.

Despite all the compromises, it has finally been possible to ensure something so fundamental, as the right of every American not to be financially shipwrecked when their health fails them. Add to that the biggest ever financial support package in America’s history, a major disarmament agreement and the quickest-ever re-establishment of American reputation.

On the other hand, we have Jesus’ miracles that everyone still remembers, but which only benefitted a few. At the same time, we have the wonderful parables about his life and deeds that we know from the New Testament, but which have been interpreted so differently over the past 2000 years that it is impossible to give an unequivocal result of his work.

Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus – if we have to play that absurd Christmas game. But it is probably more meaningful to insist that with today’s domestic triumph, that he has already assured himself a place in the history books – a space he has good chances of expanding considerably in coming years.

Without, however, ever attaining the heavens….

The main thing to know about secular messianists–whether they be lying End to Evil Types like Perle or lying Danes who pretend they aren’t indulging in fantasies of salvation through Obama–is that they lie. My mommy taught me to avoid liars. I love my mommy and do what she taught me.