But let’s compare the similarities. First up, the rabid, “you’re a fool if you don’t give this man all your money” tone of the early true believers:Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate.They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.
— JournoList founder and Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein, at the start of 2008.
Jerry Reisman, who met him at the Glen Oaks Country Club in Westbury, New York, said: “He moved in some of the best social circles in New York. He worked the best country clubs. He was utterly charming. He was a master at meeting people and creating this aura. People looked at him as a superhero.“People didn’t want to know what he was doing. If it’s too good to be true, it isn’t true. But people didn’t care. They were greedy.”Smug, too. Jeffrey Gural, chairman of real estate firm Newmark Knight Frank told the New York Times that he was teased by his friends after Madoff refused to let his family invest in the fund because he would not put up a minimum of $20 million. He said: “They thought Bernie Madoff was a genius, and that anyone who didn’t give him their money was a fool.”The revelation that they were the fools has left Madoff investors devastated.
— “Bernard Madoff: how did he get away with it for so long?”, the London Telegraph, December 20th, 2008.
Those who were swindled no doubt feel nostalgia for the good times they initially enjoyed. Not to mention, that initial rush of smug superiority that came from being “in the know,” unlike the ignorant naifs outside of their social circle:
Via: PJ MediaMeade pointed me to that just now, and it made me laugh (and cringe). I knew I’d already talked about an Obama nostalgia movement — here, 3 days ago — but I see I was talking about it as far back as October 2011.
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