On Wednesday, we leave for three weeks in Paris. I shall blog a bit from Paris, about food and beautiful buildings and such, but for the most part I shall be taking a vacation. By the time I return, I predict, the health care question will have been transformed, and it will become clear that something significant is going to pass. AS I PREDICTED!
Meanwhile, my principal concern is making a delectable hazelnut encrusted rabbit, and trying my hand at a genuine boeuf bourguignon. Wish me luck.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
IS OBAMA IN THE TANK TO THE HEALTH INDUSTRY?
Last evening, Susie and I went to her son's house for his 44th birthday celebration. While there, we watched a bit of Bill Maher's show. He interviewed Bill Moyers, who stated flatly that Rahm Emmanuel's anxiety about raising money from the pharmaceutical companies and other segments of the health care industry was standing in the way of meaningful reform. According to Moyers, Emmanuel has his eye on the 2012 election, to the exclusion of virtually everything else.
This is the sort of cynical insider information that we on the left live and die for. We are endlessly ready to feel betrayed by our false heroes, and happy to be made impotent by large forces outside our control.
But what Moyers said didn't make sense to me, so I spent a few moments on line checking some numbers. By October 19, 2008, three weeks before the election, the Obhama campaign had raised $605 million. So let us suppose that by election day the total was in the neighborhood of $650 million. This includes the enormously expensive primary campaign, of course, but never mind. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, as of September 25, 2008, the "health sector" [which presumably includes Big Pharma, HMOs, doctors, etc etc] had donated $17.7 million. The focus of the NEJM article, by the way, was on the fact that the health sector had donated more to the Democratic campaign than to the Republican campaign, reversing a long trend.
Now think about this for a moment. Health Care Reform is a centerpiece of Obama's presidency, along with energy reform and educational reform. Everyone understands that health care is far and away the biggest, hardest task the Obama White House will undertake. As I have noted before, health care gobbles up 15% of the total national GDP. It is HUGE. Obama's re-election chances depend on three things: First, pulling the economy out of its slump [already happening]; second, winding down the two wars in the Middle East; and third, accomplishing some sort of visibly significant health care reform. If he does these three things, he is a shoo-in. There is no one in the Republican camp who can stop him. If he fails to accomplish the third, he becomes vulnerable to attack.
IS IT PLAUSIBLE, IS IT CONCEIVABLE, THAT HE WOULD JEOPARDIZE HIS RE-ELECTION TO SECURE 2.7% OF THE ENORMOUS WAR CHEST HE WILL RAISE? GOOD GRIEF. HE WOULD LOSE FIFTY TIMES THAT MUCH FROM THE LIBERAL WING OF THE ELECTORATE SITTING ON ITS HANDS! AND HE KNOWS THAT.
There are many reasons why the reform of health care is so difficult, not hte least of which is the role that donations from the health sector play in the decisions of members of Congress. But it is simply not plausible thast the White House is being swayed by that consideration.
This is the sort of cynical insider information that we on the left live and die for. We are endlessly ready to feel betrayed by our false heroes, and happy to be made impotent by large forces outside our control.
But what Moyers said didn't make sense to me, so I spent a few moments on line checking some numbers. By October 19, 2008, three weeks before the election, the Obhama campaign had raised $605 million. So let us suppose that by election day the total was in the neighborhood of $650 million. This includes the enormously expensive primary campaign, of course, but never mind. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, as of September 25, 2008, the "health sector" [which presumably includes Big Pharma, HMOs, doctors, etc etc] had donated $17.7 million. The focus of the NEJM article, by the way, was on the fact that the health sector had donated more to the Democratic campaign than to the Republican campaign, reversing a long trend.
Now think about this for a moment. Health Care Reform is a centerpiece of Obama's presidency, along with energy reform and educational reform. Everyone understands that health care is far and away the biggest, hardest task the Obama White House will undertake. As I have noted before, health care gobbles up 15% of the total national GDP. It is HUGE. Obama's re-election chances depend on three things: First, pulling the economy out of its slump [already happening]; second, winding down the two wars in the Middle East; and third, accomplishing some sort of visibly significant health care reform. If he does these three things, he is a shoo-in. There is no one in the Republican camp who can stop him. If he fails to accomplish the third, he becomes vulnerable to attack.
IS IT PLAUSIBLE, IS IT CONCEIVABLE, THAT HE WOULD JEOPARDIZE HIS RE-ELECTION TO SECURE 2.7% OF THE ENORMOUS WAR CHEST HE WILL RAISE? GOOD GRIEF. HE WOULD LOSE FIFTY TIMES THAT MUCH FROM THE LIBERAL WING OF THE ELECTORATE SITTING ON ITS HANDS! AND HE KNOWS THAT.
There are many reasons why the reform of health care is so difficult, not hte least of which is the role that donations from the health sector play in the decisions of members of Congress. But it is simply not plausible thast the White House is being swayed by that consideration.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
THE PASSING OF TED KENNEDY
As Susie and I watched the funeral service of Ted Kennedy, I thought back to a 1976 TV movie, FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR, starring Edward Herrman and Jane Alexander. The part of the movie that I recall most vividly dealt with the early years, when Franklin was courting Eleanor [the two were fifth cousins once removed]. The couple came from old upper crust New York society -- Theodore Roosevelt was Franklin's role model, and Eleanor's uncle. In one scene, at a formal society party, the two step out onto the veranda of the stately home in which the party is being held, and carry on a long, thoughtful conversation about what they owe to those less fortunate than themselves. There is nothing condescending or pompous about the conversation. It seems perfectly natural to these two young fortunates that, because life has to given them so many of the material blessings of wealth and social connection, it is incumbent upon them to find some way to justify that good fortune by making a contribution to the welfare of others.
Wealthy White people were not better when I was young. In some ways -- racial prejudice, restriction of opportunities for women, even -- heaven help us -- acceptance of gay and lesbian men and women -- they were a good deal worse. But many people really did think as Franklin and Eleanor did, and those who did not had the decency to pay lip service to principles they knew they ought to embrace.
Those of you too young to remember that period could do worse than to watch the 2003 movie, SEABISCUIT. Although it is a movie about a race horse, it conjures up the Depression mentality and era better than any movie save the immortal GRAPES OF WRATH.
Say what you will about the Kennedys, especially their appalling father, Joe, they seem to have been the last large, wealthy White family to keep alive, and genuinely to live by, this ideal of Noblesse Oblige. It has become fashionable of late to use that phrase with a sneer. Many of the privileged these days would not be caught dead suggesting that they, or any of their fellow fortunates, owe anything to the world. The hollow ideology of the free market encourages the fortunate to attribute their wealth and position to their own sterling character.
One last story, which I have told before. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, in the very early fifties, my hero Carl Sandburg came to Cambridge to give a lecture. New Lecture Hall was packed, and I ended up standing along one wall, as I recall. Sandburg told the following story:
Two cockroach brothers were riding into town on the back of a farmer's truck, when the truck hit a bump. Both brothers bounced off the truck. The first fell onto a pile of dung -- very heaven for a cockroach. The second fell into a sewer. For weeks, the second brother struggled mightily to pull himself out of the sewer and back onto the road. By the time he had succeeded, he was thin, his coat was mottled and dull, and he looked just awful. Meanwhile, the first brother had prospered, growing fat and shiny. The unfortunate cockroach looked up and saw his kinsman, fat and sassy, on top of the dung heap. "Brother," he cried. "How have you done so well for yourself, while I have barely survived?" His brother looked down from his perch with a sneer, and said, complacently, "Brains, and hard work."
Can anyone imagine at speaker at Harvard today telling that story?
Wealthy White people were not better when I was young. In some ways -- racial prejudice, restriction of opportunities for women, even -- heaven help us -- acceptance of gay and lesbian men and women -- they were a good deal worse. But many people really did think as Franklin and Eleanor did, and those who did not had the decency to pay lip service to principles they knew they ought to embrace.
Those of you too young to remember that period could do worse than to watch the 2003 movie, SEABISCUIT. Although it is a movie about a race horse, it conjures up the Depression mentality and era better than any movie save the immortal GRAPES OF WRATH.
Say what you will about the Kennedys, especially their appalling father, Joe, they seem to have been the last large, wealthy White family to keep alive, and genuinely to live by, this ideal of Noblesse Oblige. It has become fashionable of late to use that phrase with a sneer. Many of the privileged these days would not be caught dead suggesting that they, or any of their fellow fortunates, owe anything to the world. The hollow ideology of the free market encourages the fortunate to attribute their wealth and position to their own sterling character.
One last story, which I have told before. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, in the very early fifties, my hero Carl Sandburg came to Cambridge to give a lecture. New Lecture Hall was packed, and I ended up standing along one wall, as I recall. Sandburg told the following story:
Two cockroach brothers were riding into town on the back of a farmer's truck, when the truck hit a bump. Both brothers bounced off the truck. The first fell onto a pile of dung -- very heaven for a cockroach. The second fell into a sewer. For weeks, the second brother struggled mightily to pull himself out of the sewer and back onto the road. By the time he had succeeded, he was thin, his coat was mottled and dull, and he looked just awful. Meanwhile, the first brother had prospered, growing fat and shiny. The unfortunate cockroach looked up and saw his kinsman, fat and sassy, on top of the dung heap. "Brother," he cried. "How have you done so well for yourself, while I have barely survived?" His brother looked down from his perch with a sneer, and said, complacently, "Brains, and hard work."
Can anyone imagine at speaker at Harvard today telling that story?
Friday, August 28, 2009
THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER
August is winding down, and as we approach the resumption of the real world, after Labor Day, the Republican craziness is imploding. After riotous town meetings, death threats against Obama, birther bizarrerie, and even the egregious Michelle Bachman being booed at a constituent meeting, with cretinous creeps like Chuck Grassley fresh out of plausible pontifications [do you ever wonder how some of these people actually got elected?], with Ted Kennedy lying in state, and serious talk of reconciliation now to the fore -- with all of this, it looks as though we will get a health care reform bill that has a good deal, but by no means all, of what we dreamed of and hoped for and voted for. JUST AS I PREDICTED. This is not rocket science or brain surgery, folks, it is Congressional legislating, pretty much as it has always been.
Let us suppose that I am correct. As we approach the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, where will we be? Well, the economy will slowly, painfully, be turning around, having avoided a second Great Depression, but unemployment will still be unacceptably high -- although much of the Stimulus Bill spending will still lie before us. We will finally have significant health care reform, though muich will remain to be done. The first serious attempt at confronting global warming will be law. A Special Prosecutor will be investigating the Bush Justice Department. And the President will be able to ask himself and the country, "What shall we do in my second year?"
I mean, seriously, what more did you really expect? Gay rights remains to be addressed, though the first steps have been taken. Barney Frank will have to find a way to shepherd serious financial reform through Congress. And Obama will have to actually wind down the Iraq war and place realistic limits on the Afghanistan involvement. But Peace Talks will be restarted in the Middle East, and we may even see some sort of major change in Iran, though that is up to the Iranians, not us.
I think back again to the wisdom of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse argued that all of us carry within us repressed infantile fantasies of immediate and effortless gratification -- fantasies to which an enormous amount of libidinous energy is attached, but which are, in their very nature, unrealizable. Combining the deepest ideas of Marx and Freud, Marcuse tells us [this in EROS AND CIVILIZATION] that the realistic goal of any revolution can only be to diminish the quantum of surplus repression imposed on men and women by the demands of capitalism and tyranny. But what fuels revolutionary fervor is the promise of LIBERATION, which is to say the fulfilment of those repressed fantasies. That is why those who have lived through revolutionary times, no matter how dangerous and uncomfortable, look back on them as the most glorious moments of their lives [rather like the way people think about tornados, hurricanes, wars, and floods, and for the same reason.]
Well, the election of Obama was no revolution, but for a moment it felt like one. Now we are seeing that the reduction of surplus repression, so to speak, still leaves us with repressed fantasies of liberation, and so we feel let down. That is normal, understandable, but not really vrey grown up of us, and so we must put away our fantasies and get back to the daily work of making as many incremental improvements in the life of this country as we can.
In an odd way, I think Teddy understood this, but that Jack and Bobby did not. That is why Jack was actually an indifferent President, and Bobby an indifferent Senator, but both were spectacular bearers of our fantasies of instant and infinite gratification.
Let us suppose that I am correct. As we approach the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, where will we be? Well, the economy will slowly, painfully, be turning around, having avoided a second Great Depression, but unemployment will still be unacceptably high -- although much of the Stimulus Bill spending will still lie before us. We will finally have significant health care reform, though muich will remain to be done. The first serious attempt at confronting global warming will be law. A Special Prosecutor will be investigating the Bush Justice Department. And the President will be able to ask himself and the country, "What shall we do in my second year?"
I mean, seriously, what more did you really expect? Gay rights remains to be addressed, though the first steps have been taken. Barney Frank will have to find a way to shepherd serious financial reform through Congress. And Obama will have to actually wind down the Iraq war and place realistic limits on the Afghanistan involvement. But Peace Talks will be restarted in the Middle East, and we may even see some sort of major change in Iran, though that is up to the Iranians, not us.
I think back again to the wisdom of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse argued that all of us carry within us repressed infantile fantasies of immediate and effortless gratification -- fantasies to which an enormous amount of libidinous energy is attached, but which are, in their very nature, unrealizable. Combining the deepest ideas of Marx and Freud, Marcuse tells us [this in EROS AND CIVILIZATION] that the realistic goal of any revolution can only be to diminish the quantum of surplus repression imposed on men and women by the demands of capitalism and tyranny. But what fuels revolutionary fervor is the promise of LIBERATION, which is to say the fulfilment of those repressed fantasies. That is why those who have lived through revolutionary times, no matter how dangerous and uncomfortable, look back on them as the most glorious moments of their lives [rather like the way people think about tornados, hurricanes, wars, and floods, and for the same reason.]
Well, the election of Obama was no revolution, but for a moment it felt like one. Now we are seeing that the reduction of surplus repression, so to speak, still leaves us with repressed fantasies of liberation, and so we feel let down. That is normal, understandable, but not really vrey grown up of us, and so we must put away our fantasies and get back to the daily work of making as many incremental improvements in the life of this country as we can.
In an odd way, I think Teddy understood this, but that Jack and Bobby did not. That is why Jack was actually an indifferent President, and Bobby an indifferent Senator, but both were spectacular bearers of our fantasies of instant and infinite gratification.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION CONCLUSION
After Prem's death, I was totally at a loss to know how to continue the work of USSAS, but at that moment, an old friend, Sheila Tyeku, stepped forward to offer to take Prem's place. Sheila has a long history in the struggle for liberation, working in the Eastern Cape area where she grew up. During the dangerous days before the release of Mandela, when a wrong step could mean house arrest or prison, she balanced raising her children with going to secret meetings, working toward the day when South Africans would be free. In those days, she came to know and form close bonds with many of the men and women who would later play prominent roles in the New South Africa.
Sheila had gone from UDW, where she worked on a project for which Mala had secured funding, to the Council on Higher Education, when Mala took over that organization. Sheila had also been selected as the Chair of the Council of the University of the Western Cape, so it was natural that USSAS would move its work to that campus. The Council of a University is an important governing body that, among other things, chooses the Rector. In the South African system, the Chancellorship is a purely honorific position, and the real head of the campus, the Rector, holds the title of Vice-Chancellor. The principal administrative posts are called Deputy Vice-Chancellorships. Thus, on the Cape Technikon campus, Koch held the title of DVC Academic -- roughly equivalent to an American Provost.
I had by this time totally committed the USSAS funds to students making a contribution to the struggle against HIV/AIDS. As it happened, UWC had, in the person of Dr. Tania Vergnani, a brilliant and charismatic head of the anti-AIDS effort. At the same time, I was directed by the friend of a friend to Dr. Frida Rundell, a wonderful woman who had started, and headed up, the Department of Child and Youth Development at Durban Technikon. Frida's students were being trained to work with AIDS-impacted children in the KwaZulu/Natal Province -- roughly, the area around and north of Durban. I made trips to walk-in shelters, street clinics, and halfway houses for children entangled with the law, seeing first hand the character and extent of their work. It was clear to me that Frida's program richly deserved whatever little support I could provide.
So it is that for the past six years or so, I have been dividing our USSAS money between UWC and what is now, under the new transformation arrangements, Durban University of Technology [actually the merging of a Black, and Indian, and a White Technikon into one institution.]
As I write these words today, I have been merge printing envelopes in preparation for yet another USSAS fund-raising appeal. This will be the twentieth year of the organization, and it may be that we are approaching a time when I shall have to finally wrap things up and cease our work.
In one of my mailings, I reminded my donors of Dostoyevsky's story, in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, of the mean-spirited old woman and the onion. [For those of you who do not recall it, Google Grushenka and Karamazov and Onion and it ought to come up.] As I grow older, I think of USSAS as my onion. I hope that as the Angel of Death holds out the onion to pull me from Hell, I do not kick so hard against the other poor souls clinging to my ankles in a desperate effort at salvation that I break the onion and fall back into eternal hellfire. [you have to read the story].
USSAS is a good example, I think, of the bit of actual difference that one person can make in the world, with the help of friends, and the willingness to be content with small but genuine victories.
Sheila had gone from UDW, where she worked on a project for which Mala had secured funding, to the Council on Higher Education, when Mala took over that organization. Sheila had also been selected as the Chair of the Council of the University of the Western Cape, so it was natural that USSAS would move its work to that campus. The Council of a University is an important governing body that, among other things, chooses the Rector. In the South African system, the Chancellorship is a purely honorific position, and the real head of the campus, the Rector, holds the title of Vice-Chancellor. The principal administrative posts are called Deputy Vice-Chancellorships. Thus, on the Cape Technikon campus, Koch held the title of DVC Academic -- roughly equivalent to an American Provost.
I had by this time totally committed the USSAS funds to students making a contribution to the struggle against HIV/AIDS. As it happened, UWC had, in the person of Dr. Tania Vergnani, a brilliant and charismatic head of the anti-AIDS effort. At the same time, I was directed by the friend of a friend to Dr. Frida Rundell, a wonderful woman who had started, and headed up, the Department of Child and Youth Development at Durban Technikon. Frida's students were being trained to work with AIDS-impacted children in the KwaZulu/Natal Province -- roughly, the area around and north of Durban. I made trips to walk-in shelters, street clinics, and halfway houses for children entangled with the law, seeing first hand the character and extent of their work. It was clear to me that Frida's program richly deserved whatever little support I could provide.
So it is that for the past six years or so, I have been dividing our USSAS money between UWC and what is now, under the new transformation arrangements, Durban University of Technology [actually the merging of a Black, and Indian, and a White Technikon into one institution.]
As I write these words today, I have been merge printing envelopes in preparation for yet another USSAS fund-raising appeal. This will be the twentieth year of the organization, and it may be that we are approaching a time when I shall have to finally wrap things up and cease our work.
In one of my mailings, I reminded my donors of Dostoyevsky's story, in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, of the mean-spirited old woman and the onion. [For those of you who do not recall it, Google Grushenka and Karamazov and Onion and it ought to come up.] As I grow older, I think of USSAS as my onion. I hope that as the Angel of Death holds out the onion to pull me from Hell, I do not kick so hard against the other poor souls clinging to my ankles in a desperate effort at salvation that I break the onion and fall back into eternal hellfire. [you have to read the story].
USSAS is a good example, I think, of the bit of actual difference that one person can make in the world, with the help of friends, and the willingness to be content with small but genuine victories.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
TEDDY KENNEDY, HARVARD '54
One after another my Harvard classmates pass from the scene. First John Updike, now Teddy Kennedy. I did not know either of them, of course. I was in Adams House, and all the Kennedy boys were in Winthrop. Besides, I was perhaps the least sociable member of the class of '54, and I ended up knowing very few of my more than one thousand classmates. I did visit Kennedy's office in the old Senate Office Building once, but he wasn't in.
Much is being said this morning by the television commentators of Kennedy's ability to forge friendships cross the aisle, and the role that played in his unparallelled legislative success. There is no doubt much truth to that observation, but I would like to comment on another of Kennedy's characteristics that was, in my judgment, equally important. Kennedy was preternaturally patient in his pursuit of the enactment of the liberal legislation for which he is rightly famous. He was capable of working unflaggingly for decades, suffering defeat after defeat as he tried to build the legislative coalitions that would turn child care or worker protection or health care reform into law. He, more than anyone else in the Congress, will deserve the credit when the health care reform bill now being crafted so laboriously and inelegantly finally passes in a month or two.
One of my readers objected to the fact that I mentioned Stalin in a previous comment about the need for such patience and commitment. I thought I made it clear that I was praising the trait, not the man. But henceforward I will happily cite Teddy when the need arises.
All of us on the left must learn from Kennedy's patience. Those of us, especially, whose professional work consists in having ideas tend to be hopelessly impatient. We get an idea, express it, and think that is the end of it. But as Kierkegaard so wisely observes, whereas novelty is the essence of the aesthetic, repetition is the essence of the ethical [see EITHER/OR].
Much is being said this morning by the television commentators of Kennedy's ability to forge friendships cross the aisle, and the role that played in his unparallelled legislative success. There is no doubt much truth to that observation, but I would like to comment on another of Kennedy's characteristics that was, in my judgment, equally important. Kennedy was preternaturally patient in his pursuit of the enactment of the liberal legislation for which he is rightly famous. He was capable of working unflaggingly for decades, suffering defeat after defeat as he tried to build the legislative coalitions that would turn child care or worker protection or health care reform into law. He, more than anyone else in the Congress, will deserve the credit when the health care reform bill now being crafted so laboriously and inelegantly finally passes in a month or two.
One of my readers objected to the fact that I mentioned Stalin in a previous comment about the need for such patience and commitment. I thought I made it clear that I was praising the trait, not the man. But henceforward I will happily cite Teddy when the need arises.
All of us on the left must learn from Kennedy's patience. Those of us, especially, whose professional work consists in having ideas tend to be hopelessly impatient. We get an idea, express it, and think that is the end of it. But as Kierkegaard so wisely observes, whereas novelty is the essence of the aesthetic, repetition is the essence of the ethical [see EITHER/OR].
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Cognitive dissonance is defined as "an uncomfortable feeling produced by holding two incompatible ideas in the mind at the same time." I think it is time to make a simple but profound observation about the outbreak of increasingly hysterical craziness surfacing on the right at town hall meetings and similar gatherings. Health care reform proposals are compared to naziism. Obama's citizenship is denied. Obama is called a little Hitler. Men show up at public meetings carrying assault weapons, and little old World War II veterans say that they are ready to take a gun to Washington if some others will join them.
What on earth is going on? I think the answer is very simple, so simple that the pundits and commentators just won't look it square in the face and acknowledge it. A BLACK MAN IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Scores of millions of Americans simply cannot hold comfortably in their minds the two ideas: Barack Obama is Black and Barack Obama is President. The world of these people has come unhinged. They know in their bones that something huge and deadly serious is out of whack, but they cannot say it, and probably most of them cannot even permit themselves to think it. So they reach for ever more outlandish descriptions of the state of things in an effort to give voice to their terrified awareness that the world they grew up in, the world they learned to negotiate, the social truths ingrained in their beings -- all of these are gone.
Because Obama is suave, supremely well-educated, soft-spoken, and anti-dramatic, because he speaks endlessly about compromise and reaching out to his opponents, pundits who are themselves reasonably comfortable with that kind of Black man in the White House simply cannot grasp how deeply, unacceptably cognitiviely dissonant Obama's presidency is to huge numbers of Americans.
Let me say it again: This hysteria is not about health care reform [of all things!!], it is not about deficit spending, it is not about global warming, it is not about Wall Street bailouts. It is about a Black man in the White House. If we can just stop singing Kumbaya and congratulating ourselves on how evolved we are, and look at this country for what it is, this truth will be obvious.
What is to be done about this? I think the answer is obvious, and Harry Truman understood it half a century ago when he desegregated the Armed Forces. The only reasonable thing to do is to cram this truth down their throats and make them swallow it. They won't like it; they will kick and scream, and yes, sooner or later someone will try to assassinate Obama. But if those whose very being is wrapped up in denying the fact that a Black man is in the White House are forced to accept that fact, then in time we will get past this. They themselves will probably have to die off, like old smokers. There are millions of Americans who will go to their graves unable to acknowledge that a Black man was truly and legitimately elected President.
Oh yes. Tomorrow, I will return to USSAS.
What on earth is going on? I think the answer is very simple, so simple that the pundits and commentators just won't look it square in the face and acknowledge it. A BLACK MAN IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Scores of millions of Americans simply cannot hold comfortably in their minds the two ideas: Barack Obama is Black and Barack Obama is President. The world of these people has come unhinged. They know in their bones that something huge and deadly serious is out of whack, but they cannot say it, and probably most of them cannot even permit themselves to think it. So they reach for ever more outlandish descriptions of the state of things in an effort to give voice to their terrified awareness that the world they grew up in, the world they learned to negotiate, the social truths ingrained in their beings -- all of these are gone.
Because Obama is suave, supremely well-educated, soft-spoken, and anti-dramatic, because he speaks endlessly about compromise and reaching out to his opponents, pundits who are themselves reasonably comfortable with that kind of Black man in the White House simply cannot grasp how deeply, unacceptably cognitiviely dissonant Obama's presidency is to huge numbers of Americans.
Let me say it again: This hysteria is not about health care reform [of all things!!], it is not about deficit spending, it is not about global warming, it is not about Wall Street bailouts. It is about a Black man in the White House. If we can just stop singing Kumbaya and congratulating ourselves on how evolved we are, and look at this country for what it is, this truth will be obvious.
What is to be done about this? I think the answer is obvious, and Harry Truman understood it half a century ago when he desegregated the Armed Forces. The only reasonable thing to do is to cram this truth down their throats and make them swallow it. They won't like it; they will kick and scream, and yes, sooner or later someone will try to assassinate Obama. But if those whose very being is wrapped up in denying the fact that a Black man is in the White House are forced to accept that fact, then in time we will get past this. They themselves will probably have to die off, like old smokers. There are millions of Americans who will go to their graves unable to acknowledge that a Black man was truly and legitimately elected President.
Oh yes. Tomorrow, I will return to USSAS.
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