Letters to the Editor
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@ xeroid47
Something you said struck me. It was about the confluence of the past and the present that bring about the future and that to get there we learn from the past. (I've summarized this from memory, so forgive me if it's not 100 percent accurate...).
Obama supporters say they're tired of the 60s, of the past, that they want something "new." They blame our problems on the Baby Boomers and the Clintons (of all people) and spread virulent Clinton-hating propaganda: misstatements, smears, half-truths, and downright lies about the Clintons and their accomplishments, parroting the status quo media lines that float around airwaves and cyberspace like germs.
I am not sure that these folks really know what the Clintons accomplished, especially Hillary. They certainly don't know about the divisive political climate Bill Clinton inherited from Ronald Reagan. I'm not sure Barack Obama really knows or appreciates this, either.
As smart as Obama's followers want us to believe they are, it's pretty disspiriting to watch and listen to them buy into popular media-bashing of the Clintons without any critical analysis of it. If they did, they would know how much Hillary Clinton has accomplished. More important, they would understand how that experience translates so seamlessly into the challenges we face now and the possibilities of the future. Instead, what I hear is more like, "tear it down."
I'm for change, too; I'm a dyed-in-the-wool idealist who believes that anything is possible. I want to live my life in a world where equality is real, where our planet is healthy, where women, men and children all over the world can live as god's true children, without war and famine and poverty, where we don't have to fear our neighbors, and I have worked for many years toward these ideals.
But I am also a realist. I know what it takes to achieve all of these things and how long many of us old fogies have fought to get the "floor" of rights we have today. We didn't get these rights overnight, or in a year, or even four years! We have fought long and hard, not only to get these rights but to keep them from being dismantled by the real status quo, not by Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton, or the Baby Boomers. Now, in one swoop, Senator Obama and his followers want us to "get over" those battles -- clearly not yet won by anybody's definition -- and move on. To what? To Senator Obama's version/vision of the future? Which is...?
And I wonder: if Barack Obama didn't have Hillary and Bill Clinton and the Boomers to demonize and turn into "faux enemies" so that he could be the dragon-slayer, if he would even know where to begin to fight the real enemies.