We Deserve Obama

We deserve Obama because there is a chronic sense that "more should be done" about race relations, that the pace of change is not enough. We deserve Obama because most of the population has lost faith in "big business" and capitalism. We deserve Obama because we think Europe is "more civilized" than we are and have solutions for the common welfare that we haven't tried. We deserve Obama because people who believe the military is a noble profession, that the profit motive can be good for all, and charity is an important part of a community have not gone into the teaching profession. We deserve Obama because we have allowed education, particularly at the college level, to succumb to a one-sided point of view, that America is "on the wrong track" and needs to be changed quickly, and radically if necessary. We deserve Obama because we have lost our sense that the military has a clear mission, that it is good at what it does, and deserves not only adequate funding, but our children to serve in it. We deserve Obama because we have failed to show how easy it is to obfuscate blame, allowed the media to replacea analysis with sound bites, and ask so little of our elected officials in terms of deep knowledge and analysis. We deserve Obama because we have allowed the media, in search of ratings, to convince us that we are a nation divided, "red" against "blue," rather than a vast majority mulling about the unexciting center, mixed of opinion. We deserve Obama because our religions have faded in importance in many people's lives, yet we still yearn for the classic virtues of redemption and deity. We deserve Obama because we have allowed our faiths to become politicized, replacing soul with Mother Earth. We deserve Obama because of white collective guilt about slavery, however long in the past, and our inability to rationalize our culture's inability to communicate the necessary skills to people of color. We deserve Obama because we want to be cool, and he is the coolest candidate we've been offered since John F. Kennedy. We deserve Obama because we still don't know what caused the Great Depression and remain unclear about what constituted a mistake and what constituted great leadership in our effort to rise out of that crisis. We deserve Obama because we trust that politicians and central bankers are smart enough to "manage" the key components (interest rates, money supply) of the economy and will do so without bowing to pressure or objective standards beyond manipulation. We deserve Obama because we have caricaturized the core of our system -- the money managers of Wall Street and the CEOs -- as greedy, unpatriotic and essentially a people apart from the common man. We deserve Obama because we believe that new and young is better than cautious and old. We deserve Obama because we have institutionalized the idea that rebellion and radicals are mostly good things, that a Che Guevera T-shirt is cool despite what he actually did. We deserve Obama because we have allowed discourse to coarsened and feel hurt by it and we don't know how to get out of it. We deserve Obama because we are blind to our own snobbism, and we define diveristy to include mostly ourselves. We deserve Obama because we are willing to change everything, even the Constitution if we have to, because we think something must be done, because we are afraid.

the capitalism thing

i'm trying this out here, but i'm thinking about the ANTHROPOLOGY of our culture's relation to capitalism and how (we) may be reaping the rewards/punishments of those attitudes:

1. widespread distrust of capitalism, nostalgia for europe, socialism, etc. promoted tirelessly in (nearly) all schools, and in most mass media (bad guys often businessmen)

2. distrust of "getting ahead" philosophy (the 1950s version and the 1980s yuppie version), but what did we put in its place? "coolness"?

3. lack of attention to the MATH of our culture. (a) calculating interest and principle (b) how the world of finance works. [eg. when banking rules are challenged in Congress, who cares?]

4. Laziness and/or hoping "the government" will fix it. Without much evidence that the government's "fixes" help too much (Amtrak, Post Office) we persist in fantasies that (e.g.) that government-run health care would be a good thing. Now applies to "helping" people "stay in their houses"... we are seduced by good-sounding phrases...

5. Widespread corruption. I see this as (a) Democratic version - forcing the private sector to do the work of government, assuming "leveling up" is the government's work (b) Republican - hoping, against hope, that free market principles can work in a system already hobbled by say a 600 page tax code not to mention Congressional fiats... it aint' that strong! (c) Everyone -- easily passing blame, whether its to the "Bush Administration" or Barney Frank, there's plenty to go along, including Hollywood, and the corporations that don't promote capitalism, but are afraid to be who they are