October 20, 2017

"The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions, classes, make them mine, me theirs. Taken separately, they’re unacceptable and untenable."

Wrote Barack Obama to his girlfriend Alexandra McNear, in one of the excerpts from letters, dated 1982 to 1984, that were released from the collection at Emory University, reported at WaPo.
“I must admit large dollops of envy for both groups, my American friends consuming their life in the comfortable mainstream, the foreign friends in the international business world,” Obama writes McNear in one letter. “Caught without a class, a structure, or a tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me.”...

“I don’t distinguish between struggling with the world and struggling with myself... I enter a pact with other people, other forces in the world, that their problems are mine and mine are theirs... The minute others imprint my senses, they become me and I must deal with them or else close part of myself off and make myself and the world smaller, lukewarm.”
Speaking of lack of warmth, his attitude toward McNear was, as WaPo puts it, "cooling." As Obama put it:
“I am not so naive as to believe that a distinct line exists between romantic love and the more quotidian, but perhaps finer bonds of friendship... but I can feel the progression from one to the other (in my mind).”
Poor McNear! McFar.

I went looking for a picture of Alexandra McNear and found this Daily Mail piece from 2012: "First picture of Barack Obama's first serious girlfriend... and how she went on to marry a Serbian boxer who is now one of New York's most famous bartenders":
A friend of Miss McNear [said]: "Alex is so embarrassed about this coming out right now. She has a family and is a grown up, for her to be called somebody's 'girlfriend' is really making her cringe. It was all in the past but her family still tease her about it. I know her sisters say they would have liked to have been in the White House, but ce la vie [sic]. To think she could have been First Lady, and she married a boxer instead. You couldn't make it up."
IN THE COMMENTS: MathMom said:
"The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions, classes, make them mine, me theirs..."

I had to stop reading there. My heart began to pound, my hands began to sweat, I felt dizzy and disoriented...I was reading about intentional cultural appropriation, and that by a revered statesman! Our former president!

I'm getting the vapours...must take to my fainting couch. Words fail me.
And sykes.1 said:
What Obama was unconsciously pointing out is that multiculturalism is not a goal. It, like anarchy, is a tool to break down the existing society. The goal is a totalitarian socialist dictatorship. Socialism insists that all individuals are literally identical, and it adopts policies to make sure that they are identical. These policies are, of course, brutal. There can be no White or black persons, no Jews or Christians, no Hispanics, etc. Socialist man is a single, homogeneous thing.

45 comments:

Chuck said...

It has always been such a relief; to be able to say that I never once voted for Obama.

sparrow said...

She's probably better off

rhhardin said...

Boxers or briefs.

buwaya said...

This is a love letter?

Goodness, what a cold fish.

And all about his personal issues too.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Lots of "me me me" in there.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

It's not you, it's me.

Lyssa said...

This seems weird and intrusive to me. As part of a historical record, long after everyone involved is dead, sure. But can you imagine having communications with your early girl/boyfriends made public in your lifetime? I certainly cannot!

sykes.1 said...

What Obama was unconsciously pointing out is that multiculturalism is not a goal. It, like anarchy, is a tool to break down the existing society. The goal is a totalitarian socialist dictatorship. Socialism insists that all individuals are literally identical, and it adopts policies to make sure that they are identical. These policies are, of course, brutal. There can be no White or black persons, no Jews or Christians, no Hispanics, etc. Socialist man is a single, homogeneous thing.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

And she couldn't have been a first lady, for reasons that are skin-deep. You know it, I know it.

wendybar said...

She's white. He had to drop her so that he could connect with blacks. http://freebeacon.com/politics/new-biography-obama-dumped-white-girlfriend-race-political-liability/

rehajm said...

She's white. He had to drop her so that he could connect with blacks.

I was wondering if he would have garnered the same support of black voters so critical to his election victories.

MathMom said...

"The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions, classes, make them mine, me theirs..."

I had to stop reading there. My heart began to pound, my hands began to sweat, I felt dizzy and disoriented...I was reading about intentional cultural appropriation, and that by a revered statesman! Our former president!

I'm getting the vapours...must take to my fainting couch. Words fail me.

BudBrown said...

How in the heck does Emory end up with the letters? I liked the photo from the second
link where Obama and his granddad are so manspreading on the park bench his
grandmother's about to plop on the ground.

Bob Boyd said...

Is she blurry like that in real life or is that just how Obama remembers her?

Laslo Spatula said...

That letter feels thick with the expectation of people reading it in the future.

I am Laslo.

BudBrown said...

His dad died in 1982.

tcrosse said...

Laslo nails it. He was writing for Posterity. Lucky us.

John Nowak said...

One of the nicest things about my life of obscure mediocrity is that nobody in the world aside from friends gives a damn about my divorce.

rehajm said...

I imagine that's just the way to have to talk if you're dating leftie women.

Bob Boyd said...

Sounds like Obama and McNear were in love with the same guy.

buwaya said...

If he were writing for posterity then he would have taken care not to seem such a prat.

Or, well, maybe. A prat would write like that for posterity.

glenn said...

Worth noting that people fell fo his bullshit all the way to two terms in the White House.

Freeman Hunt said...

Is that a love letter?

If so, oh, Mr. Casaubon!

Freeman Hunt said...

"This seems weird and intrusive to me. As part of a historical record, long after everyone involved is dead, sure. But can you imagine having communications with your early girl/boyfriends made public in your lifetime? I certainly cannot!"

Agreed. These things should be for other, future people to read. No one blushes in the grave.

Yancey Ward said...

Pretentiousness squared or cubed is the best description of such letters.

I don't get how the recipient is now distressed and embarrassed these are coming out- did she not give them to Emory in the first place? Surely she is responsible for their ultimate release, right? If she isn't the source, then where did they come from?

Titus said...

She was hot and he was hot and still hot.

I love those letters-so fab and smart.

Bill said...

Juvenilia are usually embarrassing.

rcocean said...

There's a big huge Obama Biography i checked out of he library. I was going to read it all, honest. But after a couple hundred pages, i started skimming, and then couldn't even skim through to the ending.

Anyway, Obama has to be the most boring, "average" person ever to be POTUS. All the guy did was go to school, be a community organizer, serve without any real distinction for 8 years in the State Legislature and be a US Senator for 2 years.

He seems smarter than George Bush, so there's that.

Sebastian said...

Ladies! When a guy writes to you like that, run!

Voters! When a guy writes like that, run!

tcrosse said...

We can be grateful that he didn't write Poetry.

Edmund said...

@rcocean wrote He seems smarter than George Bush, so there's that.

Obama is certainly better at delivering a speech and is glib when not challenged.

However, a friend of mine served on a state panel when GWB was governor of Texas and said he was very different in small groups. He was well prepared for meetings, asked pointed and perceptive questions, and was very personable. He certainly read a lot of books when he was president, about two per week, mostly non-fiction. Can't tell how much Obama read. He seems to have watched SportsCenter quite a bit, though.

Smartest president in recent times was probably Bill Clinton.

readering said...

Violating his copyright?

bgates said...

"The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions, classes, make them mine, me theirs..."

I had to stop reading there


Agreed. The only way are?

bgates said...

my American friends consuming their life

Obama was responsible for so much disagreement - between black people and white people, Democrats and Republicans, subjects and verbs....

And - who consumes his own life? Who talks like that?

William said...

He's a good writer, and he knows how to maintain the melody line. Kind of cool the way he remarks upon the blurring of the line between romance and friendship. He knows that it's only a role he playing, but he writes good lines for himself and takes the trouble to arrange for proper lighting.

The Godfather said...

If that letter had been published in 2008, Hillary might have picked up enough women voters to get the nomination.

readering said...

Dreams from my Father not my cup of tea, although I forced myself to finish it. But that style worked for a lot of people.

MathMom said...

William -

He's a good writer...

???? Any examples?

Underground, by Barack Obama.

Pop, by Barack Obama, age 19.

I believe he wrote both of these poems, and not much else. Pop, IMHO, is the story of his sexual abuse by Frank Marshall Davis. When I read it, my skin crawls, and I feel pity for him.

He needed unconditional love, good parenting, and, failing these things, good counseling. He got none of these. Instead, he got to be president, and spent eight years spreading his pathology throughout the world.

john burger said...

Blogger Assrat said...

One of the nicest things about my life of obscure mediocrity is that nobody in the world aside from friends gives a damn about my divorce.

That was funny. Well done. Well done, indeed.

jvb

tcrosse said...

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
-William Strunk

Rick said...

She would never have been first lady. With a white wife alienating him from political blacks Obama never would have won the primary.

Jim at said...

Gawd, what a self-absorbed prick.

No wonder we never hear from any of Obama's friends from years gone by.
He doesn't have any.

Jim at said...

"But that style worked for a lot of people."

Yeah. Rubes.

Mark said...

So, Obama has always been a tedious, pretentious bore.

SukieTawdry said...

We can be grateful that he didn't write Poetry.

Oh, but he did:

Pop

Underground