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AMAZING ARTICLE on Obama. Sets out to articulate the potential magnitude of an Obama presidency by inferring the pragmatic genius of Ralph Waldo Emerson. WONDERFUL STUFF!!
THE BARACK OBAMA MOMENT
"America is on the verge of enormous calamity – and people know it. Skyrocketing trade deficits; record levels of national debt; pathological fetishism; epic corporate greed – starring the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Not to mention the warming of the globe and endless war. The dollar is plummeting. Jobs are scarce. Families are scared of the future. America's international status is at an all time low and we sense the worst is yet to come.
"But within this moment something transformative abounds. Something palpitating, an energy. Like the newness in the air before it snows. It gnaws at your conscience, it pounds in your gut. It's convulsing like an atrophied muscle. It's the ghost of Emerson, and he's speaking to us – in the language of a languished, American instinct.
""What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism," spoke American genius Ralph Waldo Emerson in a lecture at the Masonic Temple in Boston in 1842. "As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, the Materialists and the Idealists; the first class beginning on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell." (emphasis added)
"The senses realize the peril at our doorstep. The senses know our leadership is false. Experience, to our chagrin, provided political dynasty. And experience, we keep hearing, is the light. But the senses, says Emerson, only take us so far. Behind that which the senses "cannot tell" is this atrophied American consciousness; the embryonic manifestation of a cultural surge which "experience" can only mock. It is the magnitude of what is ours if we'll only reach out and claim it. The first authentic 21 st century presidency. This feeling – this American instinct – is the birth of a new national ideal. This, utters Emerson, is Transcendentalism. It is the promise of a Barack Obama White House..."
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http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3037/81/ 
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