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This thread has had a few bright moments, but mostly it has been the usual (of late) deterioration into mindless name-calling and oneupsmanship that has come to characterize the desperation of part of the progressive-leaning population for the security of the known, the past, the used, the "comfortable old pair of jeans", which is precisely what brought us under the clumsy wooden fist of George Dubya Bush.
There have been a few very large bones of contention regarding the suitability of Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President. The most recent one was a remark by his wife. Now again please bear in mind I am a lifelong Republican trying to defend and, yes, even boost my chosen candidate, Barack Obama. Michele Obama's "gaffe" about her feeling pride, makes my point. She said she felt "...proud of my country for the first time in my adult life...". Me too. You know, I've been so desperate for a candidate who would lead all the people in the interest of the people and using those uniquely American values which make us We the People, that I have not voted for a Republican candidate for President since 1972! I had hopes for Jimmy Carter. I supported Bill Clinton vigorously (and not just through, you should pardon the expression, lip service). But I have had little to feel actual pride in over the past quarter century. I began to lose it during the Reagan administration, against which I also voted both times. By the time of Bush the Elder, I was despairing for my country. There was a breather (but that is all) during the Clinton years. Then the bottom completely fell out during the past seven years, and I have watched my fellow Americans devolve ever more deeply into something like aimlessly milling sheep. That same quarter century pretty much coincides with Michele Obama's adult life. Taking into account that she is a "hostile" black woman with "an attitude" (how better to crush a black woman's pride than to portray her as uppity for speaking her mind), I am amazed at her restraint in her remarks. But she was speaking about what's happening now, not her trials as a black woman. She was speaking about the phenomenon surrounding her husband running for President, which brings us to my second point:
The Obama phenomenon is not a Democratic one. It is not a media creation. The reason we who support the man is not because we have "drunk the kool aid" but because we see him as creation, not the other way around (as a conventional politician, ie-Hillary Clinton, might). We are celebrating We, the People who have put him in the driver's seat. For the first time in my memory, the American People are having a collective out-of-the-rut-if-not-the-body experience, and learning what it really means to choose a leader, based on something besides the choices offered us by the establishment and the two major (and equally incompetent) parties. We have found someone and put him up front. He is beholden to us, and we believe he will pay us back in kind. We have chosen him because we like him far better than the choices we have been handed by our respective parties as the annointed ones. We the People are making a choice, and if our chosen candidate wins, we will have proven something that has only been mouthed over and over in this country: that The People rule, and the government serves at our pleasure.
Wouldn't that be something, if it actually turns out that way? Just once?
I know this is pretty wild talk, this choosing a candidate because we like him and not because he was presented to us. It's wild-eyed idealism! So shoot us. That was probably not far down on Dubya's to-do list anyway.
Word to the wiseguy.
