Speaking as a non-American who's lived in the States for a few years, I find this fervor for Obama and the concomitant Hilary hatred (as exemplified by Mr Shapiro)quite disturbing.

What it boils down to is people embracing Obama's vapid but resonant symbolism, as a black man out to redeem the dirty business of everyday politics. A kind of political Morgan Freeman? That someone as smart as he is is willing to play this cliched and frankly racist role doesn't reflect well on him - even if deep down he has progressive instincts.

What it also reflects is a despair at real progressive change. At least Bill Clinton was honest enough to admit that his room for maneuver, among the giants of Wall Street, was slight, and to eke out a few progressive changes in a neo-liberal ideological environment. His wife might do the same. Arguably. Edwards might have done even more. Perhaps.

But isn't that better than Obama's fantasy politics that denies the hard political realities altogether? And isn't that denial the very source of his success? His allusions to Reagan make sense to me - because like Reagan this guy is an all-purpose symbol-sponge, designed to absorb potentially dangerous energies in the young while making politics safe for Wall Street and big corporations.

Remember - MLK, Gandhi - these people only became symbols AFTER they had died and during their lives had been reviled as dangerous partisan figures. Someone who becomes a symbol BEFORE he / she has DONE anything is probably a dupe for the powers that be.

This was a beautiful and inspiring answer, even if it didn't address the questioner's overt inquiry - but Cary's best answers are always like this. They explore the background assumptions that lead people to form the options they think they have. The lack of enthusiasm among the other commentators is just a sign that he touched on something real that they'd rather pass over.

Perhaps the class markers of privilege at top 10 colleges are not what they were in Cary's day - in fact most grad students at these institutions are from lower / mid-middle class backgrounds and decidedly less posh than the undergrads they teach. But the elite colleges will always invent a new language and lifestyle appropriate to the parasitism of the day and age - and they will train their minions accordingly. The inclusive, post modern embrace of contemporary humanities departments is no exception. The upper class victimology and pervasive skepticism toward real political argument that these departments disseminate serves its function in society.

I think Cary was just saying to the questioner, - don't let these creeps set the agenda for your soul. Surely that is more important than the relative chances of getting a tenure track job. Well, in our world, perhaps not.

What is it with Salon posters?! Why does every debate boil down to this tedious generational backbiting?

Do people not realize that these 'generations' are more the work of advertising agencies trying to create differentiated markets to sell stuff to, rather than profound differences in philosophy?

Surely the baby boomers and whatever the current ruling 'generation' is are just as implicated in a mixture of authenticity and fakery in their rebellious movements? I mean - what is the gulf between the self-interested melange of anti draft protests, innovative drugs and Carnaby Street fashion of the 60's and Naomi Klein reading, market-savvy young organic eco-management consultants today? Both of them are / were innovators in new ways of justifying their privilege and massaging their inner nihilism, while elsewhere ordinary people do crappy jobs for stagnant wages.

No wonder Sorensen wrote for both Kennedy and Obama. Isn't it time you guys stopped reading someone else's script?

LW, watch 'Paris, Texas'.

Yeah - Obama, Biden, Kerry, Summers, Emmanuel. The kleptocracy must be shaking in their boots seeing those guys coming at them! More like shaking some martinis to welcome their buddies to the club.

I wonder whether salonistas really want "progressive politics" or just the thrilling appearance of it, until election day's come and gone and our leaders can get back to the serious business of making (non Salon reading) Americans work harder, for longer hours in miserable and depleted public spaces, for stagnating real wages, while the top 10% carve out private shangrilas for themselves in the exurbs. Obama! Yes he can! And you'll love him for it.

It is unfortunate that this guy invokes the word 'God' to explain his attacks on scientism. Most people, especially on the so called liberal-left, educated in America's undergraduate college classes seem to have been utterly mesmerized by additive, reductionist conceptions of life, politics, economics and history.

I take it Kauffman is actually a true materialist, not a spiritualist (despite his language) who sees life as a complex emergent system and creativity as something that can't be reduced to algorithms (didn't Godel point this way?)In this sense he stands with Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, etc, who are accused of being charlatans or extremists, but who at least stood up to the prevailing scientisms of their times.

Read the 'Journal of Consciousness Studies' for serious attempts to apply these 'emergentist' ideas to the mind.