Obama's arguments here remind me of Noam Chomsky's thoughts on sports:
Sports keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports [as opposed to political and social issues].
So much chatter to distract us from the important issues of the day.
For Noam Chomsky, like other radical leftists, the idea that the working class is deceived and distracted is part of an anti-cognitive-dissonance package to explain why the supposedly-oppressed masses fail to share his political opinions.
Obama isn't nearly as extreme as Chomsky politically, but come from the same sort of intellectual heritage.
Thus the corollary: when the Revolution comes, the workers will need to be lead by those who are intellectually capable of leading them, and academic Marxists will take their rightful place in the cosmos as rulers of all they surv... first among equals.
This has basically been the totalitarian promise for a couple of centuries now.
Except that the promise is also a lie, for the academic Marxists get slaughtered when a real gangster like Stalin uses the instrumentality they've created against them.
A fitting end, too bad so many innocents have to die or suffer in the process.
Sports keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports [as opposed to political and social issues].
So much chatter to distract us from the important issues of the day.