Barack Obama Is John Frum

A reader at the Althouse blog first pointed it out, and I posted it on my LiveJournal at the time, but I'll repost it again here.

Barack Obama is obviously the reincarnation of John Frum, the cargo cult deity from Vanuatu (New Hebrides).

The story goes that, sometime just before WWII, an airplane landed on Vanuatu and the man who emerged from the plane identified himself as John from America, and proceeded to gift the astonished natives with the cargo from his plane. He promised the natives that, if they gave up their European ways that had been taught them by missionaries and returned to their traditional native religion, that he would return and shower them with more cargo gifts. The natives obligingly threw over their missionary-taught ways and went back to their own customs.

WWII saw Vanuatu as an important base for US forces in the Pacific, and the islanders became accustomed to associating free stuff with Americans. Then one day, the Americans left for good, and the islanders, desiring more largesse, began building mock-runways, complete with flagpoles flying the US flag, to encourage the return of the cargo planes. The original cargo pilot, John from America, was immortalized as the deity John Frum, who distributes free stuff if only the islanders go back to their primitive ways.

It seems obvious that Barack Obama is John Frum, or a close relative. He, too, wants to offer something for nothing, other than the promise to forswear missionary-taught (conservative) ways such as self-reliance, hard work, thrift, for the old customary ways of welfare, shiftlessness and sloth. It's seductive to certain people, judging from the size of Obama rallies. Free stuff! what could be better than that? And we don't even have to work for it! Quick, let's build a runway, and run up a flag made out of a Che Guevara t-shirt!