Is Obama an alien? ‘V’ and the age of hysteria

The appearance of “V,” a refried UFO show on ABC, suggests that President Barack Obama is a dangerous alien. What’s interesting is that this new series is by a major network that went unconscionably gaga over Obama last year.

Such reportage — the gushing, idolatrous positivism issued by Katie Couric and Charles Gibson in the 2008 race, a perfect, present-day equivalent of Aldous Huxley’s “feelies” — is viewed here as it is with Huxley: as totalitarian. Elizabeth Mitchell, Earth Mother incarnate from the “Lost” series, back from True North to form an underground, is definitely worth the watch. Maybe they are cruising under the censors as they do in “Lost,” like the 19^th-century Russians did, but the insurgents here very definitely view the federal government with its “sleeper cells” bringing “endless wars,” duplicitously “spreading hope,” pitching healthcare bribes to the clerks and proles and cultivating the blind devotion of the young in the Maoist and Leninist traditions as totalitarian. This could get interesting.

Before he died in 1961, the pioneering Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung predicted what might be called an age of hysteria ahead as we approached the millennial year 2000. As we know from ancient Egyptian history, he wrote in 1959, psychic changes like UFO sightings always appear at the end of one Platonic Month and at the beginning of another: “We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the springpoint enters Aquarius.”

Jung may have been right. Utopianism is a symptom or a byproduct of Jung’s prognostication. At worst, it is a possession, even a collective possession. It may be the curse of our age. The least among us Americans desire to “save the world,” — that is, to remake the others to be like us instead — a wish which Jung’s colleague Barbara Hannah called “just childish.”

Globalism is one aspect of utopianism. In this state of mind we are not individuals bonded to our own place and culture like the Swiss or the Quebecois. We are a horde detached from our earthly moorings, cursed to extroverted conquests of all kinds: military, religious, philosophical, material. And that’s why we dream of UFOs, said Jung. We seek an abstract god king to fill an empty place we left behind in our outward reach. It is the political theology of the horde. Clearly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sees her husband as a world god king — everything would just be great if Bill were just king of the world again — and Elvis did as well. For a time they were. But not now. That’s why nobody listens to Hillary anymore.

Obama has better sense and by any standard he — unlike Bill and Elvis — is anchored to reality by family, mother, grandparents, a sense of place and his own sense of balance. He, unlike Clinton and Elvis, doesn’t really believe he is a god king, although many of his followers do. He can make adjustments and I believe he will soon, particularly in that utopian voyage he inherited, the “last days” “war of Armageddon” in the Middle East.

I don’t see him wanting to be king as Ted Danson wants him to be or a world emperor as Sting does. But I started to get worried about his followers when a friend sent a clipping claiming an official announcement by the Obama administration disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life is imminent. President Obama will figure prominently, it said. The disclosure will follow upon a year of greater government openness on UFOs in accord with a policy secretly developed at the United Nations. President Obama will soon lead an unprecedented effort to promote global governance through the United Nations. What they’re talking about here, if I have this right, is actually intergalactic government with Obama as king — king of the universe.

But Obama did not create his delusionary horde, nor did Bill Clinton create his. Like the cultish V youth groups, they volunteered. Indeed, they threw themselves at Obama’s feet like Renfield to master Dracula. “V” suggests a return to earth, a return to ourselves, a return to individualism. A renewal of self-reliance, trust and friendship over ideology and idolatry. It could be an auspicious beginning. Possibly a creative awakening. Possibly a dangerous one. Has Hollywood discovered Jefferson?

Visit Mr. Quigley's website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.