Karl Rove’s Six Degrees of Obama Separation

Karl Rove has taken to advising Barack Obama. What do you make of that? Of course the Machiavellian Prince’s counsel was not sought, but that just makes the whole thing that much more interesting.

Only fools read politics at face value. Certainly, the Republicans main premise of the last decade and more has been: You can fool enough of the people enough of the time. And despite the ‘stolen elections’ conspiracy-buffs, it’s worked so far for the Bush clique. Indeed, Karl Rove believes they just have to get cleverer (read, more diabolically cunning) in their hoodwinking.

We’re about to find out if Abraham Lincoln’s truism that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time” still applies to the American people. The HillBill campaign resorted to asking rhetorical questions about the Rove gambit when they said, “Just asking: Why is Karl Rove giving Senator Obama advice on how to win? Could it be that Rove thinks it will be easier for Republicans to run against the unknown gentleman from Illinois?”

Let’s see, that would mean that Rove & Co. is actually trying to help Obama get the nomination. If you believe that, I have some land in Death Valley I’m selling over the Net.

Here’s part of Rove’s friendly six-part advice to Obama: “Stop acting like a vitamindeficient Adlai Stevenson.” Just asking: Is that a devious reminder of Obama’s African ancestry?

Karl Rove knows full well that the Republicans have a much better chance of beating the polarizer Hillary than the potential uniter Obama. So Rove sneakily plays the gender card, hoping to rally support by refusing to even call Hillary by name. He initially refers only to ‘her’ in his “Memo to Obama: win Iowa or lose the race,” invoking formless fears of the witch and bitch. “If you win Iowa [you will] keep her from building an overwhelming sense of invincibility and inevitability” [italics mine]. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e00c2e4c-a141-11dc-9f34-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Maybe Karl found Jesus after working for the devil for so long (and I’m not referring to our Alfred E. Newman president). I don’t think so. He’s yet to spill the beans by writing a guaranteed bestseller, and join the long line of former loyalists pouncing on the shrinking Bush Administration.

Maintaining a healthy skepticism about political motivations and metaphysical wiliness doesn’t mean one has to fall into the Russian mind-set of seeing a conspiracy around every corner. Even so, there’s a lot of murky territory to explore here, especially when Karl says things like, “Hillary comes across as cold, distant and conspiracy-minded, more like Richard Nixon than her sunny, charming husband.” Just asking: Could the hemorrhoidal Republicans be itching for a chance to run against the Clintons again?

A lot of women, and men, have bought the line that Hillary is running as her own woman. But she’s really running as a Clinton on the Clinton legacy. Electing her will be a validation of Bill, and Bill needs lots of validating.

It’s unclear whether Hillary was Bill’s partner in the Oval Office and enabler in bed, or the other way around. Either way, the Repubs will have a field day with her candidacy if she gets the nomination, and Rove is slithering up to the starting line.

Though Hillary is hardly the hardscrabble ‘go girl’ candidate she and her supporters claim, Obama isn’t above playing the gender card. He’s enlisted the originator of the ‘go girl’ movement in America, Oprah Winfrey, to hit the campaign trail with him this weekend in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Does that represent the “politics of hope,” or the politics of pandering?

Seriously folks, we’ve got to look a little deeper here. There is no doubt that Karl Rove, or “The Architect” as George Junior calls him, is at the psychological core of metaphysical ‘dark forces’ in this country. But just what does that mean?

There are malignant currents in consciousness of which we know little, but fear much. As a philosopher, part of my ‘job’ is to help reverse that equation, by understanding and communicating the ways of evil more, so that decent people fear and ignore them less.

Obviously some people, such as the head spider Karl Rove, spin much bigger and stickier webs than others. Nonetheless, evil does not originate within the lone individual, but has its source in collective human consciousness.

Darkness and evil are a psychological phenomenon, not a theological one. Unaddressed in the individual and society, they inevitably increase, and produce people who don’t give a damn because they are too weak to feel the pain. Then, as exemplified by George Bush, they “cannot think properly,” as Nelson Mandela put it.

On the surface, America glitters and shines like the thousands of malls of Christmas. Just below the surface however, cultural conditions have become hellish. Ordinary citizens, not recognizing their country anymore, and not comprehending what has happened and is happening, look for something to blame.

‘It must be those damn illegal aliens,’ millions think in unison, and a convenient scapegoat is found. The Republicans stoked fears and spread darkness over the last seven years like no party in the history of this country. Now they are milking nativist reactions for all they can.

An Obama presidency—the election of a person of color—would be a break with the darkness and fear gripping America. That’s why Republicans, guided by “The Architect” Karl Rove, worry about a Barack Obama nomination the most.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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