Obama’s Divine Rainbow

Just when you think the left’s passionate idolatry of Barack Obama might be waning a bit after six years in office, along comes a photo posted recently on the White House official Twitter account to remind you of the President’s divinity. The image appears to show the Messiah-in-Chief shooting a rainbow out of his palm, as only God or perhaps an LGBT Spiderman can do.

After clinching the “framework” of a nuclear deal with our enemy the Iranian regime in which the President made doormat Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill, Obama traveled to Kingston, Jamaica recently to speak to impressionable young fans, lecture the leaders of Caribbean countries about fighting global warming global cooling climate change bad weather, and tour a museum dedicated to fellow marijuana enthusiast Bob Marley.

At his departure at the end of the week, a gorgeous rainbow happened to be arcing overhead as Obama climbed the stairway to Air Force One. White House official photographer Paul Souza captured, or manipulated, a shot of the rainbow seemingly emanating from the President’s hand as he waved goodbye at the plane’s door. Souza posted the pic on Twitter with this accompanying affirmation from Obama: “With hard work and hope, change is always within our reach.” But the subtext was, “And as a sign of my power, mortals, behold as I call forth rainbows.”

In Biblical terms, the rainbow is a symbol of God’s postdiluvian promise to humankind that He will never again destroy the earth by water. But apparently Obama’s PR people have decided to rebrand the rainbow now as a symbol of The One’s divinity and of his promise to Jamaica that, like General MacArthur or Jesus, he shall return. He’ll come back someday to bask in more sunny Third World adoration, hit the island’s finest golf courses, and, if he has time, entertain the masses with a spray of shooting stars from his fingertips.

(Speaking of fingertips: another interpretation is that the photo was intended to suggest not that the President himself is godlike, but that God produced the rainbow to touch Obama as a sign of His favor, much like Michelangelo’s God stretches out his finger to bestow the spark of life on Adam in the Renaissance artist’s “Creation of Adam.” Either way, the implication is that Obama is no mere mortal.)

Reactions from the leftist media were predictably awe-struck. The gay online magazine Out declared that “it’s impossible not to read into the [photo] a continuation of President Obama’s increasingly aggressive drive for LGBT rights and equality.” “Now This Is One Hell of a Rainbow Photo,” Mother Jones approved. “White House photographer Pete Souza caught this incredible shot of President Obama departing Jamaica. Beautiful. Massive,” gushed the radical feminist site Jezebel.

The photo is reminiscent of the deifying propaganda we’ve been subjected to ever since Obama’s first election, when he was supernaturally expected to “slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. Remember when schoolchildren across the country were coached to sing his praises like good little totalitarian youth? When the media relentlessly promoted images of his haloed head? When Newsweek entitled a cover story about him “The Second Coming”? And when celebrities like Jamie Foxx and Sting referred to Obama as our Savior?

This new pic from his Jamaican jaunt is in the same vein of those disturbing depictions of Obama as a demigod. It’s worthy of the degree of leader-worship normally reserved for Pharoahic despots. When the boy tyrant Kim Jong Un sees it, his architecturally-shorn head is going to explode from envy.

The photo reeks of such adoration that people heaped mockery upon it on social media. “Holy propaganda, Batman. This would make any third-world dictator proud,” read one response on Twitter. “Gotta reach that 'my little pony' demographic,” smirked another tweet, referring to the Hasbro toy company’s Rainbow Ponies franchise. A third tweet: “Messiah Much there Dear Leader? #Vomit.” Much more hilarious scorn can be found here below the reverential photo on the White House Twitter feed.

In response to conservative accusations of idolatry, some progressives no doubt will try to claim that Souza’s snapshot was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted commentary on Obama as a beacon of hope. They will brush off criticism of the photo as conservative humorlessness.

But nowhere in Souza’s or in the White House’s comments is there any indication that the picture is intended as anything less than blatant hagiography, designed not only to flatter Obama the Sun King himself, but also to send a thrill up the collective leg of the masses of low-info voters who still cling to his hope and promises despite mounting evidence of his destructive agenda. On Pete Souza’s Instagram page, for example, reverential viewer reactions to his photo ranged from the gag-inducing (“YES HE CAN!”) to the drug-addled (“God...makes no mistakes...Obama came to shine a light on the beautiful”).

The progressive vision is a totalitarian fantasy world of peace (through disarmament and capitulation), equality (through enforced social engineering and the redistribution of wealth), and collective genuflection to big government. And no totalitarian vision is complete without a semi- or fully divine Dear Leader to whom all love is directed and all submission required. It is an ideal that demands the denial of reality, of history, and of human nature, as well as the worship of a false idol – but none of that is an issue for progressives.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 4/22/15)