The Cynic and Senator Obama

[SteppingRazor]

This month's Esquire cover story. Worth reading every single word of Charles Pierce's staggeringly great prose.

http://www.esquire.com/features/barack-obama-0608


It definitely crystalizes, for me, perhaps the one nagging aspect of the whole hope-and-change zeitgeist of the Obama campaign: That the candidate promises absolution without penance. A four-paragraph snippet (though as I said, you should really, really, read the whole unbelievably great story. Hell, while you're at it, buy the magazine, or even get a subscription. It's only the most well-written mainstream mag. on the market. Right. Anyway, here's this:)

"More than anything else, the presidential election ongoing is -- or, as a right, ought to be -- about ending an era of complicity. There is no point anymore in blaming George Bush or the men he hired or the party he represented or the conservative movement that energized that party for what has happened to this country in the past seven years. They were all merely the vehicles through whom the fear and the lassitude and the neglect and the dry rot that had been afflicting the democratic structures for decades came to a dramatic and disastrous crescendo. The Bill of Rights had been rendered a nullity by degrees long before a passel of apparatchik hired lawyers found in its text enough gray space to allow a fecklessly incompetent president to command that torture be carried out in the country’s name. The war powers of the Congress had been deeded wholesale to the executive long before Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and a passel of think-tank cowboys found within them the right of a fecklessly incompetent president to make war unilaterally on anyone, anywhere, forever. The war in Iraq is the powerful bastard child of the Iran-Contra scandal, which went unpunished.

The ownership of the people over their politics -- and, therefore, over their government -- had been placed in quitclaim long before the towers fell, and the president told the people to be just afraid enough to let him take them to war and just afraid enough to reelect him, but not to be so afraid that they stayed out of the malls.

It had been happening, bit by bit, over nearly forty years. Ronald Reagan sold the idea that “government” was something alien. The notion of a political commonwealth fell into a desuetude so profound that even Bill Clinton said, “The era of Big Government is over” and was cheered across the political spectrum, so that when an American city drowned and the president didn’t care enough to leave a birthday party, and the disgraced former luxury-horse executive who’d been placed in charge of disaster relief behaved pretty much the way a disgraced former luxury-horse executive could be expected to behave in that situation, it could not have come as any kind of surprise to anyone honest enough to have watched the country steadily abandon self-government over the previous four decades. The catastrophe that is the administration of George W. Bush is not unprecedented. It was merely inevitable. The people of the United States have been accessorial in the murder of their country.

Someone will have to measure the wreckage. Someone will have to walk through the ruins. Someone will have to count the cost."

[Ian David]

1. ...

"And then The Wicked Son asked, 'What does Obama mean to you?'"

[SteppingRazor]

2. Hey, I think I've got that very Haggadah!

:)


Anyway, it really is a great story, I thought.

[RichardRay]

3. Repentance and absolution are not required for change

in the exterior world, only to change the experience and perspective of the sinner, internally. Politics and world power are not about internal experience; they are the ultimate example of externalities played out without connection to each individual's experience. Good can be obtained in the worlds of politics and power with the complicity of the most awful or abhorrent individuals and the value of the Good obtained is in no way reduced for the Sudanese who is no longer starving or for the Burmese who finally gets help needed.

I know many feel politics is personal; I don't agree. It's impersonal a big rock rolling down hill. Expecting the rock to feel guilt or seek redemption for crushing me isn't going to change the direction it's rolling. I can create change, but not that way.

[tigereye]

4. very nice analysis!

funny how Iran- Contra has been forgotten by so many... :(

[Spazito]

5. Excellent, excellent article, a MUST-READ, imo

Warning, though, not for those who only have time for a "sound-bite" right now but book-mark it for when you have the time, it is well worth it.

I was going to post a few excerpts from it but realized they would not serve this amazing article well.

Thank you for posting it!

Recommended.

After pondering this article for a bit, I just had to come back and add:

It is a sad time when such exquisite prose is such a rarity in this day and age, we are rapidly losing something of great value.

[qijackie]

7. Thanks for posting this. It's great to know that someone can actually write out there in media land.

[JimGinPA]

6. Esquire Is Kind Of An Elitist Magazine...

B-)

Very interesting article. I bookmarked it to read again later.

K&R

[BlooInBloo]

8. Pretty good essay... Cynicism tout court becomes cynicism for no sake other than its own....

For such a thorough-going cynic, the justificatory burden is on the cynic, not on Obama.

The cynic wondered if Obama was tough enough, so he went to the far South Side of Chicago, where Obama did his community organizing.

Barack wouldn’t quit,” Love said. “He pulled us off to the side and he said, Well, we messed that up. We didn’t see that coming. We need to strategize right now about how to deal with stuff like this and hold people accountable so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”

Altgeld Gardens, the cynic believed, was tough enough. The far South Side was tough enough.

...

The cynic wondered if Obama was smart enough, so he went to Harvard Law School, where Obama went and shone more brightly than he ever had before, thriving in a lush rain forest of towering egos in which every second person already has the Supreme Court in his eyes.

Heisenbergian physics, the cynic believed, was smart enough. Harvard Law was smart enough.

...

He wondered if Obama was shrewd enough, so he went and he talked to Congressman Mike Capuano, a former mayor of the blue-collar town of Somerville in Massachusetts, who went to Congress in 1998 because he was a better street pol than the prettier, wealthier candidates he ran against in a massive brawl to succeed young Joe Kennedy to his uncle Jack’s old congressional seat.

Convincing Mike Capuano, the cynic believed, was shrewd enough. Somerville is shrewd enough.

...

So the cynic did due diligence, and at the end of it, he watched the campaign go on from Wisconsin and he realized that tough enough and smart enough and shrewd enough weren’t anywhere near enough.

Obama takes the stage and the hall explodes, the way all the halls have exploded in this, the last really good week he will have. All the rest of the upcoming weeks and months will be about becoming aware that the country he imagines is not the America that is, and that it hasn’t been for a very long time. And the cynic realizes at last that he is more naive than anyone else here, particularly more than the slim, smooth candidate himself, stalking the stage in his edgeless way and looking out over the crowd at something in his private distance. The cynic believes in an old, abandoned country that’s no less illusory than the redeemed one Obama is promising to this crowd. Isn’t that something? the cynic thinks. Maybe that’s enough, that single revelation, just a flicker of the lost imagination. For the last time, in the roar of the crowd, it comes back to him again. Convince me America is not an illusion. Convince me that it never was. Convince me that you’re not a pious mirage. Convince me that we’re not. Now that you brought it up, convince me.

Convince me.

Convince me.

Convince me.

It may indeed turn out impossible to convince some of the hopeless, but it won't be due to anything lacking in Obama.




EDIT: Forgot the bold.

[K Gardner]

9. Extremely INTELLIGENT read.. thanks for posting ! K&R

[Writer]

10. BRILLIANT article.

I awaited a catch to the writing because, after all, I'm a cynic. There was no catch.

This line took my breath away:

"The people of the United States have been accessorial in the murder of their country."

This is an uncomfortable truth that we refuse to address: Our stunted logic during a politically diseased era. Our abandonment of exercising democracy for the easy solution of placing blame on faceless institutions. Noam Chomsky, Ben Bagdikian, Bill Bennett, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, etc. have convinced us to point fingers: It's the media. It's the corporations. It's the educational system. It's the Soviets. It's the Arabs. It's the Welfare System. It's anything that removes us of our own responsibility for our democracy.

Convince us? Indeed. I want to be convinced that we one day may rise above the feel-good rhetoric of self-flattery and soberly assess what we really believe our ideals are, and act accordingly. I think if we were truly honest with ourselves we'd find that what we practice has little to do with "hope" and "change."

[Median Democrat]

11. Have the issue: Good Article

I wrote a post a while back about Hillary Clinton and how my consideration of her was a question of power versus principle. I think she will do whatever it takes to win, which is a great quality to have given the stakes at issue in this election. Conversely, as the Esquire article notes, the message espoused by Obama of an inclusive government, and his outreach to Republicans, makes me hearken back to the days when I was more idealistic about government being a means of change, rather than a corporate tool.

Of course, Hillary is not Karl Rove and Obama is not Bambi. However, I like Obama's message. I listened to the graduation address he recently gave, and I like how he did not simply pander to the audience, but asked the graduating students to consider their obligations to serve their community beyond simply working on the campaign of someone they support.

[BlooInBloo]

12. kick

(despite how likely fruitless it'll be)

[Writer]

13. Are people understanding what this article is trying to say?

From the kicker: "The cynic wants to believe. But far too much has happened, and inspiration is no longer enough. The cynic will need to be convinced."

[BlooInBloo]

14. It's clear that you don't.

[Spazito]

15. The message was quite different to me....

The key point, to me, was this:

The cynic believes in an old, abandoned country that’s no less illusory than the redeemed one Obama is promising to this crowd. Isn’t that something? the cynic thinks. Maybe that’s enough, that single revelation, just a flicker of the lost imagination. For the last time, in the roar of the crowd, it comes back to him again.

For the last time


The road traveled by the cynic was complete and he was not left wanting.

That is what I understood.

[Writer]

16. There's the catch that I mentioned earlier.

I missed that rather important line in the last paragraph.

It's an excellent article, because I think it underscores that the problem with this nation doesn't stem with who's in office, but with the people who populate it - from the view of the cynic. I think that there's a dichotomy between the ideals we espouse as a nation and the true lives we live as American (little "d") democrats. We believe we can change our country because we say we can, however we continue to fail in that regard, and unless we seriously rebuild aspects of our governance from the ground up will we see real changes. We do not need a movement; rather, we need a revolution.

However, it's not naive to believe that things won't change, because a change of party does not equate to real "change." Nor will a fresh face in governance. Unless we cease being wealthy, unless we learn the true plight of hunger, disease, and warfare on our soil, will we understand what revolution and change can bring. These small movements in the large span of history, even in America's relatively brief existence, do little to jar the social fabric of our nation. What needs to happen is something far, far more fundamental than a twist of belief from malaise to exuberance. If anything, Ronald Reagan did this very thing back in 1980 - back when the nation swung right - and the change it brought was good for only a few, and in less than a decade we were once again back to Square One.

We do not need to trade irrational fear for irrational exuberance.

[Lilith Velkor]

17. !

:kick: