David Seaton's News LinksWhat I am worried about it the emptying of real political energy for change into the self promotion of who knows who or what, to be filled in later.
A cynic would say that modern America is built on that continuous process of emptying and transference.
The Bush years are not "lost" years.
Surely the last thing Bush meant when he referred to himself as a "transformational president" was the awakening, practically the re-creation of the American left, but that is what has been happening.
After eight years of Bush the United States is still standing, but something very good has happened in that time. Many people have awakened and begun to ask serious questions. A small but visible crack has opened in the system and some light is pouring through it. This we owe to Bush. Obama is here to plaster up that crack.
A reader over at TPM commented on my previous post:
Just gets me riled up to worry about a Democratic candidate that might just blow the GOP out of DC for a while, when we have had Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Ashcroft, Rove, Addington, Yoo, Negroponte, Bolton, Bolten, Alito, Roberts, Boykin, Delay, Lott, Boehner, Hastert, and endless other idiots in charge.This is a list of names that have caused millions of Americans to actually stop and think seriously about politics. Something that Americans are loathe to do. They have built consciousness and consciousness is what changes the world. Bull Conner and Orval Faubus -- after Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King -- probably did more than anyone else to advance the cause of African-Americans.
To me, Americans waking up is the key to real, permanent change in America and, to the extent of America's influence, changing the rest of the world. That is the real center of the question, certainly not about producing another, Democratic, "business as usual" version of "Good Morning America".
What is truly important and essential is the awakening and the energy conjured by Bush and all he represents and what I see in the Obama "movement" is the system's endless siphoning off of that energy and its singing a lullaby for the newly awakened.
Obama's "movement" is just another part of the endless manipulation that all Americans suffer from the day they are plunked down wearing diapers in front of TV set. DS
2 comments:
Adlai Stevenson perhaps?
I think I 'get' what you are saying...[although I could be wrong].
A new voice that only inspires actually undermines the real duty of the American people to actually get involved? We end up sitting on our hands waiting for the guy to deliver?
I can understand that one could have a problem with his experience, or lack of. But I see many experienced 'insiders' who have gotten on the bandwagon. [Our own recipe of kool-aid]?
So, I guess I'm missing your point. What is it you see that's behind the curtain? Pardon the term, but do you see evil?
How's this...I would want Obama to be able to fail. I would want that the people who want him to be the president, would be able to see just how hard the other sides will try to bring him [her] down. To expose the truth. To actually see and feel what we really stand for.
We elected a guy who had a "secret plan" to end a war four decades ago. What a disaster that was.
A very well reasoned comment.
Your question:
"What is it you see that's behind the curtain? Pardon the term, but do you see evil?"
Well frankly, all I see is the curtain. Anything could be behind it. That is precisely what bothers me.
I think that to be the leader of 300,000,000 people in the middle of two wars, whose decisions affect everyone on the whole planet, a lot more should be known. Things that we have seen, not just things the person has said. For me this is just plain common sense. It really bothers me that common sense seems to have deserted what passes in the USA for a "left wing".
Another thing is timing. Often timing is fundamental. You mention Nixon, the guy who had a "secret plan". If you think about it, if Nixon had won the presidency in 1960 instead of 1968, we might have been spared Vietnam and... Watergate.
As to the "experienced insiders", being inside and experienced all they care about is picking a winner, winners hand out the jobs.
You say,
I would want Obama to be able to fail. I would want that the people who want him to be the president, would be able to see just how hard the other sides will try to bring him [her] down
You are even more of a "Leninist" than I am, my head likes that, but my heart won't buy it yet.
Anyway, thanks for the reasoned commentary.
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