re: "Obama projects the aesthetic of the child-king who will lead us to the new age but for all practical purposes George Bush might as well be president. "

Child-king, but with God-like serenity

Thanks for this correction/counter to Joan's "part of Obama's problem is the unrealistic expectations of many enthusiasts," which makes him seem so much the adult having to come to terms with the dumbfounding extent of America's juvenilism. The first piece by Joan after learning of Obama's intentions to send 30 000 more youth to be "shot at and killed" (as Chris Matthews expressed it), shouldn't amount to a PR piece for the president, that also helps establish those who remain with him as realistic and patient (like the president), rather than as abandoning and cruel.

re: "In California, the students are rioting against tuition hikes, not that anyone would notice in safe $an Fransico enclaves. Why aren't Dems championing their cause?"

Thanks for bringing this up. One way to see good, is of course to make sure anything ugly is kept well enough away. 30 percent tuition hike?--jesus! How scary that must be for the students.

Strange how this article has a way of making IDing someone as the centrist democrat with wall-street backing, a way of re-establishing him as still, potentially, our great hope. Who is he? He's not the crazies on his right, he's not the swooners on his left. In a world of crazies, his prosaic origins beacon reason.

But these ARE portent times. Crazed goblins bounce about the body-politic, away from office but everywhere still in our face; the blind gain sight; hope has become an affliction. And it is appropriate, then, that Obama actually be made to seem most like an idol--something near frighteningly unknowable. Someone/thing with great potential, but yet remains inert and removed. Someone/thing we would draw out--to should and could!, but remain inclined to serve, to show before we would dare have him prove.

Going to the doctor seems like a surrender of autonomy, an act of deference--something many of us knew too much of when we were wee. The answer may be for young people to know going to the doctor to be about interaction, self-assertion, self-discovery. Doctors who don't see you as "patients," but understand you as intelligent, cany, and well capable of teaching them a thing or two.

The ascension to being a "profession" was by no means, all for the good. They can be the cause of what they like to lament.

re: "I don't understand why the self-assembly of our amazing planet and the resulting biosphere isn't miracle enough for people's spirituality."

It's cool. It's astonishing. But the fact that Moby Dick might eventually be written if you let a bunch of chimps pound at a keyboard for a few millenia, is interesting too: but if it was the fact of it, I think our assessment of the book would lessen. It was written by someone motivated to create something lasting, meaningful, and great--it was MEANT to speak to us, and that's a much more beautiful thing.

The earth wasn't, and too a certain extent should leave us a bit non-plussed--more entranced by the fact that we can imagine it as worthy of love--by ourselves, that is, and become way more interested in what we fashion out of the raw materials.

Evolution somehow lead to something that takes over in a way superior, fantastic sense (we need to stop speaking as if we're still operating under some other force: natural selection randomly lead to something--us--that is motivated, that can act out of love--not, that is, unknowingly out of a desire to spread the love meme). Tyrell was something in Blade Runner; but he created something far superior in Roy, who knew life was in the science, in a way I can respect.

Looks like tomorrow Obama will be increasing troop levels. To a large extent, this will be a deciding day for Salon. Most times when criticism has been made of Obama here, it has been hedged by making him seem the good king surrounded by poison-issuing advisors. So we have often enough heard pleas for him to please not listen to some corrupting so-and-so. But though we have evidence (from Sirota, I believe) that it could just amount once again to an instance of good Obama unnecessarily deferring (to his general, in this case), Joan and a number of others have essentially made clear that if he ups the troops, they will be switching to thinking of it mostly as HIS war--evidence, presumably, of his true moving instinct. After tomorrow, the pressure will be on them to evidence this turn away from "poor adviser" talk, from "the difficult task of turning the Titanic around" talk, which has hereto allowed them to believe the primary villains those--like, presumably, right-wing crazies--who have made him unnecessarily hesitant, reluctant to evidence his good nature, his true interest in the progressive reform he has spoken of so inspiringly.

If it continues to be one crazy after another, we have right to ask just how progressive Salon is;, if now that the time has come, what it is that gives "them" cold feet; if they have it in them to take the heat being stridenly anti-Obama will bring upon them, from many of their own liberal friends?

Just a note: I don't believe Obama EVIL. I just think he has not been so rosily raised that he can avoid the disassociative trance many Americans seem increasingly compelled to lose themselves in.