Politics and appearances

"In his (Obama's) world," wrote The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, "everything is political and everything is about appearances."

Right, "everything is political and everything is about appearances": it is political, because everything, even what is most intimate, once it is expressed doesn't stay any longer hidden in oneself, but comes out in the open and becomes public; it is about appearances, because there is something thus made to appear.

I often heard people distinguish between outer and inner beauty. Wrong, I retorted each time, beauty is always outer. By whatever criteria we judge what is beautiful, there must be signs of it. So I can call a person beautiful, not because of fair features or a stunning body, but because of the loving-kindness that shows. It is not a question of outer or inner, but of what it is required from us to detect the signs of beauty.

The trouble with appearances is that they can be feigned. So they might not show what they seem to show. We can know though which is the case, by the consistency of the signs people give of themselves in all circumstances.

Many false prophets will come after me – said Jesus, in roughly these words – but you shall know them by their effects.

A man was elected as POTUS who acted as prophet of a renewed America, capable of uniting her again after the promises of her origin.

This was the appearance. What reality did people detect in his actions that made them vote against his party in the last three significant elections, for New Jersey and Virginia's governorship and for a new senator of Massachusetts?

HP