The Lance Armstrong of American Politics: A Study in Biochemistry and the Madness of Crowds

In the summer of 1999 I was unemployed, unmarried, and a bit depressed, living in the Pacific Northwest. I decided to just roam, and I set off on a meandering journey all over and across the United States to visit the East coast, then drive all the way back again.  I know, crazy.  So what.  Gas cost a little more than a buck a gallon back then, and I had a small car and nothing else I particularly needed or wanted to do.

Throughout my trip I would catch the news on whatever radio stations I could, as I blasted along over the fruited plain.  Free as a bird.

It was July, and cycling’s grueling, three-week Tour de France race was underway in Europe, while I drove thousands of miles throughout the U.S.A and back.  Soon, I became caught up in the drama of radio news reports about some guy named Lance Armstrong, a young American cycling phenom who had, seemingly miraculously, not only beaten the previous sudden onset of testicular cancer–a malignant, hyper-aggressive cancer which had rapidly spread throughout his brain, lungs, and body (doctors had pronounced him as having very little chance to live)–but who now appeared to be more than recovered from it:  He was actually winning stages of the Tour de France, shocking and inspiring everyone with his unexpected, amazing return to the sport after having been completely written off by virtually everyone.

I could hear the twinge of excitement, something different and special in the voices of radio news announcers when they gave periodic updates on Armstrong’s progress during the Tour, while the days of my own road adventure ticked by.  In their voices, it was a sense of mild disbelief, mixed with cautious hope and desire to actually witness a miracle; something very unusual and amazing was happening across the ocean.  It looked like this once-doomed Lance Armstrong might actually win the Tour de France.

I became somewhat enthralled with Armstrong’s prospects.  Not only could I somewhat relate to having to cope with and recover from more or less grave, even life-threatening personal setbacks, I had also dabbled in competitive cycling a little bit myself when I’d participated in a couple of triathlons a decade before.  As the days went by, I found myself tuning in to whatever radio stations I could find more eagerly, but I didn’t have to work very hard to get news updates on the Tour–Armstrong’s compelling story and his stunning performance in the mountains of Europe caught on like prairie fire, and there was no shortage of urgent breaking announcements about what was happening, whatever state and county I happened to be rolling through.

By the time I made it back to Oregon, Lance Armstrong had rocked the world by winning his first Tour de France, and I had a new hero.

In the years that followed, Armstrong incredibly won an unprecedented seven successive Tours de France, and I enthusiastically followed his career.  I read his autobiographical book, It’s Not About the Bike, which described both his harrowing, heartbreaking battle with cancer, and his gritty, awe-inspiring return to competitive cycling (there’s one passage in the book that literally moved me to tears, the part where he’s on a training ride up a mountain in Georgia).  I attended a LiveStrong rally where he was present on the Ellipse adjacent to the White House in Washington, D.C., and I even wound up in a relationship with a woman based somewhat on our both being fans of Lance’s racing and his cancer research-fundraising organization.

When public allegations about Armstrong having systematically deceived & chemically cheated his way to his seemingly amazing victories surfaced, along with random accounts which made their way to my ears from acquaintances who’d encountered narcissistic arrogance and obnoxious behavior on his part in and around Austin, Texas, I went into full denial and defended my idol.  I accused his detractors and critics of simply being envious and/or opportunistic scandal-mongers without actual conclusive proof.

These days, years later, illusions have been shattered–mine included–since Armstrong finally, publicly admitted, after years of belligerent denials, to the elaborate deception of his cynically scientific and carefully orchestrated doping regimen, having been officially stripped of his laurels and proven to be the phony and the “asshole(the word an acquaintance of mine used for him)” many insisted all along that he was.

It has occurred to me just how many parallels exist between what turned out to be the audacious, brash, defiant, and colossal “feel-good” fraud of Lance Armstrong, and that of another world class con artist and political race-winning idol: Barack Hussein Obama.

Both were raised by divorced mothers, and both were later adopted by the second husbands of those mothers.  Both rocketed to the top of their respective fields, from relative underdog obscurity and against seemingly impossible odds, to triumph and inspire millions with what appeared to be their personal examples of perseverance and historic, inspiring dominance in arenas where, once upon a time in less socially or(especially in Armstrong’s case) technologically advanced milieus, they’d have otherwise been completely left in the dust.

Both also lied and cheated so belligerently and audaciously, for so long.

It turned out, as his accusers claimed, Armstrong and his inner circle did threaten and even destroy people’s reputations and careers in his ruthless and vicious, win-at-all-costs pathological trajectory to fame and fortune.  Barack Obama has done all that in spades, and far, far worse, on a relatively staggering exponential scale.

Obama’s massive frauds, narcissism, and arrogant, reckless disregard for millions of people’s rights and well-being have much worse ramifications; Obama corruptly and dishonestly wields and abuses actual government power; influence and economic impact far beyond anything Armstrong ever even symbolized.

Now, with the diseased and fraudulently toxic fiscal chickens of the Obamacare hard-sell flim-flam coming home to roost in the pocketbooks of the starry-eyed, magical negro-worshipping idiots who elected him, along with the NSA debacle and myriad other appalling scandals and ghastly corruptions, Americans who supported and defended him can only wish Barry Soetoro was merely someone they’d so slobberingly admired in the world of sports, instead of someone they put in charge of their Internal Revenue Service, Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, Defense, State, ATF, DHS, ICE, Education, Labor, CIA, you name it.

Just as with Armstrong, people wanted so very badly to believe in Obama, despite ample evidence and red flags which portended the eventual revelations of complete treachery.  Like I was for a time regarding Armstrong, millions are still in denial about what a total fraud Obama is.  In Obama’s case, the stubborn denial remains even after the fraud has been proven, especially with Obamacare.  However, millions of Obama’s ardent supporters are, like I eventually did in the case of my former hero Armstrong, coming to realize how they’ve been had, and some former Obama flacks with mass audiences are even screaming loudly about it.

One severely disillusioned prominent Obama media agent, an editor at the far-left “Truthout” website named Will Pitt, is full of boiling venom and vindictive bile over realizing the complete falsehood which was sold to him concerning the alleged utopia of “affordable” Obamacare coverage.  He’d swallowed hook, line, and sinker about how Obamacare was going to pay for his wife’s pre-existing multiple sclerosis condition, only to realize that her expensive life-saving medications are not covered.  Pitt had this to say to Obama himself last week, right on the popular leftist Democratic Underground website:

“F*** you, Mr. President, you piece of shit used-car salesman.  From my heart and soul, f*** you…I helped, in my own small way, to promote this thing, because of the pre-existing conditions aspect that would benefit my wife.  I feel like a f*****g dupe.  I AM a fucking dupe.  Last time that happens.”

I wonder, by that last line, what exactly he intends to do to not be duped again?  Become a Republican?  

The chemical autopsies regarding the respective decomposing remains of the Armstrong dream fraud and the Obama dream fraud are similar in findings, yet really sort of opposite in their anatomy:

In Armstrong’s case, the precise chemistry which helped cast the spell of massively delusional fan-following and support(to which I also succumbed) had to do with banned chemicals, performance-enhancing bioactive drugs. Armstrong enjoyed years in a championship role which he achieved dishonestly, through the illegal manipulation of biochemistry.

In Obama’s case, the physical chemistry which helped cast an identical yet much more intense and widespread, mass-hypnosis and misplaced mass-mania was chiefly due to the de facto retail political un-banning of the naturally-occurring substance of melanin from the Office of the Chief Executive of the United States.  In actuality, melanin has not only now been increasingly “un-banned” from the highest levels politically, it is now moreover a crime (or at least a tort) to not have it in excessive abundance in the top echelons of whatever corporate workplace, civil service ladder, academic department, government agency, or what have you, regardless of whether or not the inheritor of the melanin is actually qualified or honest in the slightest.  The opposite of banning something is to enforce quotas of it. Obama has dishonestly enjoyed years in a presidential role for which he is unqualified and which he achieved dishonestly, through his cynical, political exploitation of biochemistry.

Armstrong audaciously lied to the masses about using unnatural chemicals in order to win.  Obama used the popular political requirement for a quota of a natural chemical to give him cover and help him get elected by audaciously lying to the masses about colossal frauds such as Obamacare, the climate psuedo-science hoax and green energy scams, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, Tea Party political persecution by the IRS, the list is endless.

I can understand why and how people get so caught up in inspiration-derived delusional enthusiasm for human heroes and leaders who seem to so triumphantly transcend the ordinary and surmount impossible odds, like overcoming hopelessly metastasized cancer, or who break the old moldy molds and overcome outmoded myopic mentalities such as racial barriers and abject bigotry.  But as we can see in the two cases I’ve compared, our need for inspiration can allow people to be ruinously dazzled by utter bullcrap.

You probably need a refreshing beverage after reading all that.  The human body is composed of up to 75% water, after all, and the intense focus and exertion required to digest what I’ve said here may have left you a bit parched and lacking some sort of chemical/s.  Don’t stay too thirsty, my friends.

And Democrats, don’t get fooled again.  Take the red pill.  Become Republicans.