Joe Soucheray: For those who believe anything, it's easy to believe in Obama

Joe Soucheray: For those who believe anything, it's easy to believe in Obama - TwinCities.com

It was all very UNy and One Worldy, especially when he referred to what he called the burden of global citizenship, as that burden might be applicable to saving the planet.

The planet is OK. What should concern the world is how we might survive our attempts to save it. One major volcanic eruption would put us in our place, but until some perfectly natural disaster comes along, we continue to be attracted by the warm glow of politicians whose extraordinary vanity makes it acceptable to believe that humans are bigger than nature and that as a result of us being, well, present and accounted for and driving SUVs, we have apparently ruined the planet.

Which we haven't.

"As we speak,'' Obama said in Berlin, "cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.''

Really? If you believe that, then you will believe anything — that you might head off this disaster, for example, by buying different light bulbs. Or you might have to believe that you had better stop driving in Boston and that the state had better close those factories in China.

Believing in anything, I do believe, explains Obama's grandeur. He preaches a meaningless belief in anything better than anyone, better than Al Gore or Sting or any of the notable reverends we have gotten to know.