Only Time Will Tell

A lot of good and decent people are celebrating this morning, full of hope, full of optimism.
I wish I could join them.
I can’t.
Not yet...

I’m troubled by an inability of the Obama celebrants to offer specifics of just exactly WHY Mr. Obama has their adulation. Close inspection of Mr. Obama’s position on major issues clearly demonstrates that he and Mr. McCain were in substantial agreement: both want to occupy Iraq, more or less indefinitely, both want to increase the military budget and enlarge the military, and both want to escalate the war against Afghanistan, too.
Both gentlemen voted to continue funding the war, for the 700 billion dollar bailout, and to let telecommunications companies off the hook for spying on us. Neither man favors the single-payer national healthcare system. Neither would disavow the possibility of using nuclear weapons. Both are sword-rattlers when it comes to the so-called “war on terror,” with “terrorists” having replaced “communists” as the Official Bogey-man of the new & more hip generation.

I remember the celebratory mood of one of my young students (voting for the first time in 2006) when the Dem’s slid into a majority on the promise of “accountability.”
Having been on this unmerry-go-round a few times, I advised her to wait until we see what they actually DO. Before the dust of campaign promises had settled, impeachment of history’s Impeachment Poster-boy President was “off the table,” and the administration continued to run amok, not only unchallenged, but with the continued complicity of the laughable “opposition” party.
Wasn’t exactly a big shock for me, but it was for her, and I’ll forever hate those bastards for the eviscerated look in her eyes when she found out there was no Santa Claus.


Some folks are celebrating the election of the nation’s first black president as a turning point – and a good one – in our history.
Maybe that’s true.
I hope it is.
I confess that, in and of itself, this is the part I love. Waited a long time for it and it means a great deal to me personally. White people voting for a black guy for president. LOTS of white people. What’s not to like?

It certainly seems that Mr. Obama, of mixed racial heritage, is plenty black enough to be considered all black by those on the farthest right-hand fringe, the died-in-the-sheet bigots for whom only the purest, whitest white is white enough.
But at the same time, it seems to me that there’s black and there’s Black.

Mr. Obama isn’t exactly a wild-eyed radical. He’s not a Frederick Douglas, or a Dr. King, or a Muhammad Ali or a Malcolm X --- all very stand-up guys I would have voted for, by the way. Mr. Obama isn’t a black guy who fought his way out of the Chicago slums against all odds, overcoming a broken family, lousy schools, drugs, gangs, police brutality and general despair, with nothing but his own strength of character to keep him from going under. He’s a black guy raised by white grandparents in Hawaii who went to a private school and then to Harvard.
Good for him. I don’t begrudge him that. But it isn’t exactly representative of the experience of the typical African-American, is it?

Maybe I’m just sore about black guys I knew growing up.
Seems like none of them ever caught a single break and a lot of them didn’t make it.
(Or maybe this reminds me of the way the Great White Father always scrapes up some clown with just a tiny bit of “Indian Blood” to anoint as the recognized “chief” or “spokesman” for the tribe so this “representative” can sell off Indian Land Rights cheap to the Great White Father’s Friends. Chief Big Apple.)

And maybe Mr. Obama’s the best we can do right now. Maybe we have to ease into the hot water of this racial-equality thing one toe at a time. (Hell, it’s only BEEN a couple hundred years, be PATIENT!)

Self-described “progressives” claim that they are aware of Mr. Obama’s short-comings, but believe he is susceptible to changing if they “hold his feet to the fire.”
Maybe that’ll work.
It sure worked with Dubya, didn’t it?
Or didn’t anybody DO that?
Why not?
Why not, when we needed it most? If we didn't hold a known "bad" guy's feet to the fire to keep him in line, are we more likely hold a perceived "good" guy's feet to the fire, when we feel the imminent threat is actually LESS?
Somehow, I'm skeptical.

What I suspect, given my tragic character flaw of preferring evidence over emotion, is that Mr. McCain, and his ridiculous cartoon running mate, were decoys.
Straw opponents.
Patsy and vice-patsy.
Sacrificed pawns.
Nothing more.

I offer the following for your consideration:
1. If you can get people to respond emotionally to something first, it is unlikely that facts will change their minds later.
2. If people feel that they have participated in the process, they’ll tend to go along with the out-come because they “own” it.

With the disturbing similarity of their platforms, I cannot but wonder whether this is just a simple scam to get people to ACCEPT policies from Mr. Obama that they mightn’t have tolerated as easily, if at all, from Mr. McCain.

Maybe I’m wrong.
I’d be delighted if I were.
I would love it if Mr. Obama turned out to embody the best of his supporters’ hopes and dreams.

Only time will tell.


sj