the cult of obama - martin luther king with a nuclear arsenal - is going to get real old real fast. the images hanging all over my college campus, for example, might as well be mao or saddam: they give you the whole cult-of-personality totalitarian flavor. the average american liberal would believe or do anything he says. the people with whom i watched the inaugural address - well, the women, anyway - were literally gasping and groaning in ecstasy: the exquisite agony of perfect submission. you know we wondered whether under bush/cheney we were heading toward a totalitarian regime. we better keep on wondering, especially as the power of the state doubles each month in the face of depression.

i particularly like the image on top, now reproduced in many forms: gazing vaguely upward at the limitless future: a conventional pose of the Beloved Leader. of course the shepard fairey image is utterly ubiquitous: explicitly throwing down some socialist realism traditionalism. when you start seeing them on billboards and on the sides of buildings, on banners and televised messages, start digging out the shelter in your back yard.