Letters to the Editor
Carol Richards
Published Letters: 459
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Joan, Joan, Joan
[Read the article: McCain's offshore oil-drilling flip-flop]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good stuff. Salon has the potential to strike what i consider to be a very healthy and realistic balance in this election. We can passionately support an Obama victory while we keep in sight how desperately he needs an active, creative and intelligent civil society to urge him towards his better impulses.
This would be the case with ANY person running for president. The best we will ever get is a man or woman who could sit on the porch with us and have an open minded conversation about important issues. It isn't personal that no politician will be able to transcend the political machine without a robust civil society make plain their needs, wishes and disappointments. We need political leaders who are easily shapeable by an active civil society. Obama is about as good as it will get in these regards (in terms of people who can win a general election).
This is a wonderful time for people to write to Obama and let him know that his stance on this bill is not ok and that we expect him to put his words into actions on exactly these types of issues.
Disappointment requires adequate planning, so I'm not disappointed in Obama's decision. I expect him to very often succumb to these types of pressures. Politicians only reflect the unconscious activity of the wider culture. Superbowls can be so much fun, but when they function as collective escapes....what do we expect. Anybody who is upset about Obama's stance and hasn't written him a letter (and your own congress people) is secretly happily aligned with the exact same influences that directed Obama in this case. It's not personal. Expect Obama to be rather ordinary and be happy that he would probably be a president who could be maximally influenced by an awakening and increasingly connected civil society.
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@ saman65 (blame)
[Read the article: McCain's offshore oil-drilling flip-flop]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look, if you are simply stressing the point that our political leaders (on all sides) reflect how unhealthy we are culturally, I'm with you. But I'm also ok with the notion that Obama is an ordinary person working within the political sphere. In that sense he is ordinary in ALL the ways politicians reflect our fucked up, current, nature.
To point at Obama as some type of special case of our cultural deformity is to make the same mistake as those who point to Obama as a special case of our glorious humanity. He's ordinary; that means he has his own unique and utter weaknesses and he has his own specialized strengths. It means he is probably as much a failure and success as you and I. He is a guy who had nothing to do with the world he was born into and his unique cluster of circumstance, genetics, soul qualities, intelligence, good qualities and bad landed him in a situation where he might be the president.
He is none of our business, but his function as president is very much our business. And we have to take full responsibility for the shape of our political culture. Blaming puppets is not sane.
I wrote to him and told him why I am strongly against telecom amnesty. I told him that I wished he would speak about this issue and explain himself. I told him that I consider he stance on this topic to be an example of exactly why the criticism against his speeches is valid to a degree. I told him he has my vote, so far, but less enthusiastically than if he aligned his vote on this bill with his rhetoric.
If he gets one letter, so be it. But if he gets trillions of letters, I bet he'd be shaped. It's about shaping. Some politicians are more easily shaped by the voiced needs and demands of the population. Right now that voice is weak and fractured, so we get the kinds of leaders we get. The leaders are just projections of us. We can throw fits and get disappointment in them, but it's childish and naive.
There is not one shred of evidence that Obama represents anything other than a basic human being. He makes good eye contact and sometimes strings words together that inspire. He isn't too short to be president. Isn't it odd that just half a foot shorter and we wouldn't be talking about this guy at all?
Anger isn't bad and it can be used to wake up. But repetitive anger and dissapointment is a sign of neurotic fixation. There is no reason that a healthy grown up American should expect a person running in the general election who represents a mainstream party to take consistent stances outside the mainstream frameworks. It's never happened and it never will.
Our main options will always be men and women who fall within the conventional spectrum of option. Expecting the people who are viable options to be the very people who change that spectrum is insane. That spectrum (range) is a function how awake and active and organized the massively huge population is. If they sleep, it stays ill. If they grow beyond the childish and adolescent phases of development, we will see a space develop that allows new types of leaders. Obama will fail like anybody else who can become president in this time. But he's also got some basic qualities that will be a significant and welcomed change. But nothing too dramatic either way. The drama is in the sleepy masses. Expecting Obama to be a new type of success or failure is irrational and none of his business. I am writing letters about the telecom vote because it is my business to express what I want to see happen. It would be an awfully stupid dog trainer who blamed the dogs for their consistent tendencies.
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Erick (Thanks)
[Read the article: McCain's offshore oil-drilling flip-flop]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks very much for those links!