This essay by Greenfield explores modern culture in which how one feels about a brand [Obama] at point of purchase, [voting], out weighs merit, experience, honesty, performance, and character.

The Authenticity of Fake
Daniel Greenfield
January 19, 2013

"Last week featured the shocking revelation that two athletes had lied to the whole country for years in order to become rich and famous. This is the same thing that politicians do except without the exercise regimen.
. . .
Moral theater is an odd event in a country which has mostly given up on morals. In the absence of any notion of right and wrong, the only truly punishable offenses involve hurting people's feelings.
. . .
Shallowness is actually a winning media strategy. The truly shallow have nothing to hide because they have nothing. They voluntarily turn their life into public consumption. Most of the rest just manufacture a fake reality that seems real only because generations that grew up on television have brains that are trained to confuse natural lighting, low resolution footage and shaky cameras with sincerity.
. . .
Obama is truly fake. He is authentically unreal. There is absolutely nothing to him. If you take away all the work that was done to make him famous, there would be nothing there. And that is exactly why he is the perfect avatar for the media age.
. . .
In the old dinosaur era, fraud . . . was a failure of character. It couldn't be forgiven because character was believed to be at the core of performance. A flaw in character was a flaw in everything that made competition great. But the modern society no longer believes that. It has traded in the rock of character for the shifting sand of feelings. Everyone has them and everyone exchanges them. Fake is forgivable if the feelings are thought to be relativistically real.

Competition is no longer performance based, it's feelings based. It's why Obama won in 2012. In 2008, his qualifications didn't matter. In 2012, his performance didn't.
. . .
America is being run by a Made in Indonesia leader whose performance is as bad as any of the Made in Indonesia, Pakistan or China crap you'll find in Wal-Mart. And it doesn't matter because he's a brand. The savvier younger and urban voters don't care what he's made of, they care how he makes them feel. They may lose their job the next day and their prospects for paying off their college loans may be missing, but if it makes them feel good at the point of polling, then that's what matters.
. . .
In a culture where character no longer matters, competition loses all meaning. A lie is no longer a lie, it is not wrong in and of itself. A failure no longer matters if it makes people feel good. And the idea of leadership no longer exists, only the imitation of it. The faint media echo of the values of what was once a great civilization singing itself to sleep.
"

Remainder of essay and good comments at:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/01/...ty-of-fake.html

Interesting comment by Leo:

Zitat

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It is not important who votes - it is important who gets to count the votes.

It is not important what is real and what is fake - it is important who gets to decide what is real and what is fake.

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It truly is a bizarro world we live in now.

I just love this guy. He is the best blogger - or whatever you call it - out there. What insight.

Quote: truthkeeper wrote in post #4

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I just love this guy. He is the best blogger - or whatever you call it - out there. What insight.

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These comments are absolutely awesome!

Especially this one....

America is being run by a Made in Indonesia leader whose performance is as bad as any of the Made in Indonesia, Pakistan or China crap you'll find in Wal-Mart. And it doesn't matter because he's a brand. The savvier younger and urban voters don't care what he's made of, they care how he makes them feel. They may lose their job the next day and their prospects for paying off their college loans may be missing, but if it makes them feel good at the point of polling, then that's what matters

Quote: truthkeeper wrote in post #4

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I just love this guy. He is the best blogger - or whatever you call it - out there. What insight.

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