I tend to still be intrigued by what motivates those supporters of Obama who express their fealty in tones and terms that intimate or explicitly identify as adulation, adoration, worship - love. It's always been my impression that there's no real thing of substance operating here, nothing thoughtful and well considered, no great philosophical bonding, but rather that it's simply indicative of a feeling that the act of believing in him confers on the believers about themselves. It reminds me of the liberal obsession with gay marriage.
By all rights gay marriage should be a minor, marginal issue, relegated far down the list of issues the country needs to address and not on the list at all of issues the country desperately needs to address - but that's not gonna happen because liberals and their media cohorts are obsessed with it - the question that bothers is why? Gay couples who want to marry in a 'traditional' sense - some for eminently practical reasons, some for overtly political ones, some for no sane reason whatsoever - represent a pretty small demographic - hell, they probably represent a pretty small subset within their own relatively small subset of simply being gay aside from any reckless inclination to commit marriage - and yet for liberals you'd think there's no way the country can move another step forward until this perceived grievous injustice is undone. So why the obsession? It has to be that for a liberal an enthusiastic endorsing of gay marriage is a way of confirming to themselves that they are indeed enlightened and wonderfully sensitive people - and that the reviled uber right opposes the idea with such venom only serves to fortify this sense of having risen above the small and mundane.
Possibly a tenuous if not utterly specious connection to draw - point is it seems to me liberals tend to believe what they believe in order to confirm a feeling, generally about themselves, rather than to explicate a thought - and yet they act as if motivated wholly by some higher reasoning.
[this irrational, untethered from reality nature of Obama's support is troubling - democracy works because the losing side has faith that the rule of law guarantees them redress in a timely and predictable fashion - but if a 'bad result' is seen as existential in nature, ie the losing side believes the nation may not survive the result - and there also pertains the perception that the electoral process has been detached from the rule of law, ie untethered from reality by the irrational - then democracy will stop working and frustrated people will act out. If a leader, viewed by a near majority as incompetent, gets reelected when objective realities seem to suggest he does not deserve it, and this happens at a time when the country and world in general are afflicted by problems that excite existential fears and concern - then democracy will for some and possibly many seem to have at that point failed. What happens then is impossible to predict - possibly, after some gnashing of teeth and no doubt a several hundred point drop in the DOW, people just go about there business and wait for the midterms - but if the perception takes hold that the system is broken and the country is at risk because of it, and I think there's a possibility that could happen, then you could certainly see upheaval - maybe muted, maybe not. Romney also factors in here - if he runs a good campaign and clearly demonstrates his fitness for the job and yet still loses to an incumbent who by any objective measurement has failed miserably - then that would definitely agitate things]
