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TechnoratiToward a Coherent Presidency
“We must pursue peace through peaceful means… in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.; The Trumpet of Conscience
“I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own… structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere.”
Barack Obama; Dreams from My Father
Cohere. It is not a common word, and it’s an uncommon leader who understands the meaning of it.
As a Harvard graduate, former constitutional law professor and civil rights attorney, President Obama may understand what it means better than any president we’ve ever had, perhaps even as well as that other great Nobel Peace Prize winner quoted above, Martin Luther King, Jr.
King spoke so eloquently and coherently about so many things that it’s sometimes hard to remember the real heart of his message. Fortunately, he crystallized that message for the world when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. The award, he said, represented “a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”
In other words, our means and ends should cohere. We should be coherent.
Barack Obama’s verbal and moral coherency became evident to a large segment of the electorate when he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Voters across the political spectrum bought into the “Change We Can Believe In” slogan when he made a bid for the White House because Obama continued to articulate a clear moral framework out of which decisions would be made if he was elected. In his inauguration address, he said that America must not shrink from its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
By pledging to close Guantanamo, eschewing torture and beginning the draw down of troops from Iraq, President Obama has begun to bring means and ends in line again; he has begun to make us a more coherent nation.
This is in stark contrast to the policies and actions of the former administration, which epitomized what sociologist Michael Mann calls incoherent imperialism. George Bush gave lip service to unity and peace but gained office with a strategy of divide-and-conquer. These same three words could be used to sum up his foreign policy during his two terms in office. Bush’s verbal incoherence often amused but his actions, by and large, were anything but funny. I never begrudged him that he often mispronounced nuclear – an easy word to bungle. What mattered most to me were his policies and actions with respect to the use of force, nuclear or otherwise.
Bush was far from our first incoherent president, however. In a 1967 sermon that came to be known as his Christmas Sermon on Peace, King reminded those gathered that most military geniuses throughout history – and most U.S. presidents – have talked of peace while waging war. President Johnson, King said, spoke eloquently of peace even as U.S. jets pummeled North Vietnam with bombs.
King believed lasting peace would only come when the world and its leaders embraced the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere. Destructive means, King said again and again, cannot bring about constructive ends. It’s a lesson President Obama should heed, especially as he considers a strategy shift in Afghanistan.
“Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force’.” King was not dreaming when he spoke those words, he was reflecting lucidly on how far strategic nonviolence had taken the civil rights movement in America, and before that how it had been used by Gandhi and his followers to expel the most powerful military power at the time, Great Britain, from India without the bloodbath so many expected.
At his inauguration in January, President Obama seemed to echo King’s famous sermon when he said, “…our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint….”
“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new,” said Obama. Is strategic nonviolence of the type wielded so successfully by the Indian people against the British, the Poles and Czechs against their Soviet overlords, the Filipinos against the Marcos regime, South African blacks against the brutal apartheid government, and Serbian students against Milosevic one of the instruments to which the president referred?
The instrument is really only new in the hands of American presidents, though a few have understood the principle behind it. President Lincoln, whom Obama says he seeks to emulate, did not have the examples of Gandhi and King to follow, but the words of those great men would have rung true to him. By ignoring the loud calls to punish the Southern states after the Confederacy’s surrender, Lincoln probably saved our nation from a second civil war. “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice,” he once told a friend.
Without such understanding, redemptive and creative goodwill toward all people – the nucleus of nonviolence – government of the people, by the people and for the people would have long ago perished from the earth. It remains the only means by which we will ensure that such government continues, spreads and endures, and the only means by which we will win the hearts and minds of our enemies and short-circuit the cycle of violence. Nonviolence, King said in his Nobel acceptance speech, was not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force.
All other means will ultimately backfire. We claimed victory in the “war to end all wars,” but that victory gave rise to Hitler and fascism. Even our military triumph in the so-called good war, World War II, spawned the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and many other bloody conflicts. Indeed, al Qaida and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sprang in large part from the fears, divisions and resentments resulting from WWII.
If the United States is to lead the world again, we must do it with soul force, not military force. The real emperor with no clothes was not, as some think, George Bush, but the myth at the heart of his presidency and so many other presidencies – the myth that might makes right and that violence is somehow redemptive. The opposite is true: right makes might. America’s greatness has always been rooted in its moral power.
By following King’s example, by ensuring that his actions cohere with his words, by trying wherever humanly possible to make means and ends cohere, and with a little creative translation on his part, President Obama could indeed help the U.S. lead the world into the new era of peace of which he spoke at his inauguration. Not only would that make him the most coherent president the United States has ever had, it would make him fully worthy of the peace prize that even he thinks he doesn’t yet deserve.
Or Obama could turn out to be like most presidents, viewing peace as a distant goal instead of the only means by which we can arrive at that goal. If so, his presidency will fall far short of its promise – and far short of the hopes the Nobel committee and billions of people around the world have placed in him.
As we face two wars, nuclear proliferation, global warming, global terrorism and global pandemics, the world needs a coherent American presidency like never before. But the fulfillment of King’s full dream of a world at peace with itself is not up to one person. We are all heirs to King and Gandhi’s legacy of nonviolent change. As President-elect Obama reminded us shortly before he took office, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, he can’t do it alone. We the people must co-lead.
So let us all commit today to make means and ends cohere in our own lives. And let us make it clear to all our leaders – including President Obama – that we expect the same from them. We expect coherency.
77 Comments so far
Show AllExtreme language, hyperbolic and ad hominem attacks; some of ya'all are like Alex Jones with a dang bullhorn and veins throbbing on the side of your heads.
Frothy emotional appeals like the saccharine pap in this article, are mostly worthless. But when the emotion is blind rage directed at an individual or any individual that says, "Whoa, dude, turn the volume down," then it is destructive.
The problem with rigid ideologues is that they can't form coalitions with others on shared issues, if they disagree otherwise. You gotta buy the whole enchilada or go hungry. They are the catalysts of "divide and conquer" strategies.
Getting loud, commandeering the message, running people off with vile, irrational and unnecessary attacks, does serve a purpose. It serves the purposes of disinformation, disunity and often, we find out these agents of rage, are provocateurs and FBI snitches.
Mean people suck.
edited to add: The author is from Wisconsin and Wisconsin is good, if you're trying to avoid Chicago.
The challenge I see presented in this article is a personal call for peace as it is written in the last paragraph:
let us all commit today to make means and ends cohere in our own lives...
Integrity as this coherence suggests is actions aligning with words including how and what we spend our money and time on as well as forgiveness of self and others, major challenges for us humans. Yet this peace that we each much play a role in creating somehow also brings with it great healing and positive transformative power.
I;m sorry - but until Obama CLEARLY, UNEQUIVOCALLY turns his back to the status quo -
WAR corporatism, blahblahblah, which we all know about....
he is NO KING and is not even worthy of being mentioned in the same level.
if anything - obama represents the upholding of the status quo , trying to "patch it up" - but remains the status quo of the american empire of Violence in all ways ...
and is the EXACT opposite of what King spoke out against and died for speaking.
OBAMA represents what King said of america:
"I MUST WITH SADNESS AND GREAT SHAME THAT THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD TODAY, IS MY OWN COUNTRY AND GOVERNMENT".....
"WE ARE A NATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL GIANTS AND MORAL MIDGETS".
IF MAHATMA GANDHI WERE ALIVE - who was the true inspiration and original example for Dr King...
Gandhi would most certainly, if anyone read his words and about his struggles,
want to have NOTHING to do with obama or the USA as it stands today , any more than Gandhi would have anything to do with the British Empire that subjugated India - and is the progenitor of the US Empire - an even LARGER and even more ruthless one ... and which
if the USA EMPIRE EVER learned anything from the British Empire and all other empires before -
it is how to IMPROVE upon their ruthlesness and viciousness.
and obama today STANDS at the apex of that USA empire of War and Violence, Exploitation, and dehumanization and enslavement.
it can be seen in its own behavior at HOME and ABROAD behind all the nice rhetoric about "leadership in justice and freedom".
but then - have not many empires declared the same?
why should the USA be different for using "democracy" as its Flagship?.
and so long as obama stands at the helm of THAT ship - his "leadership" has NOTHING at all that resembles that which Gandhi or King dreamed about and struggled and died for because what THEY died for
was JUSTICE for ALL - not just for a "FEW".
REVERSE that statement and that's where obama stands at the helm of "USA GALACTICA".
It's true, President Barack Hussein Obama is no King. He is the guy who got elected as president of a cynical and war-mongering nation, against all odds, and said that he wanted to be everybody's president on the night that he was elected. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a political figure, he was a preacher and an activist. He did his thing, and now, Obama is doing what he can to make the world a safer, less violent place.
I think that this is a beautiful article, and that the author is correct. He is talking almost poetically about two separate things, using the same language - about the idea of coherency. Not only is the man coherent in his speech patterns and such, but he has a coherent plan to move the world toward nuclear disarmament and less war, death, and destruction. He is even taking action in the Sudan - that is a very significant move for the United States.
What I cannot figure out is why the people in this country cannot see what is going on here. Everyone is so cynical, they cannot accept the idea that Obama might actually be sincere in his attempts to bring "change that we can believe in." And those of us who do believe in that change are labeled as "maniacs" and having "drank the coolaid" and such, as if we are naive children.
Well, I believe that we who agree with every word in this article, especially the part about the need for us all to help in these efforts to turn a new corner toward peace, are the mature ones, here. Both King and Gandhi spoke of nonviolence as the higher road, as a more mature, more enlightened way to change the world - and apparently, it takes a mind that can comprehend the scope, the massive strength of character, and the intricacy of what President Obama is doing to get it. But this is something that will take patience and intellect and subtlety. Peace is a state of mind, and we must all make it happen if it is going to come about.
Peace is a state of mind? The problem is not so much Obama, it's narcissistic holier than thou attitudes like yours whereby you refuse to actually look at what this man is doing. Perhaps if your children were in bed in your house and one of Obama's Hellfire missiles blew your world apart and you lost everything that was dearest to you because you were poor and living in the poorest part of the world, you would understand there is no poetry in murder, no subtly, no patience. The reality of death and destruction and horror that the commander in chief's bombs have and will inflict will trump anything and everything the diaper hampered Mr. Obama reads off his teleprompter for people like you to continue to excuse him while sipping your latte and rubbing your stuffed belly. Peace is not merely a state of mind, that is elitist rubbish. You are either an unadulterated racist who secretly believes that Mr. Obama is too stupid or impotent to stop what he's doing or an unadulterated reverse racist who believes that a black man can kill with impunity because he is black. Either way, your ego like your belly is stuffed twith the pain and suffering of others. What you have written is pure unadulterated poppycock and continues to pave the way for continued bloodshed. Keep singing his praises in poetic verse; it's no different than what he is doing himself whilst hand picking his guardians of death such as Gates and McChrystal and unleashing their hell on the world. It is cowardly.
Do you honestly think that if MLK had been elected president that we would still be torturing prisoners, still be maintaining concentration camps? That he would fill his economic and regulatory positions with Goldman Sachs people and be sending bombers and drones to kill the people of Afghanistan?
If you think so, you don't know much about Martin Luther King. It's a matter of leadership. You're right about strength of character that goes with leadership. One man had it, one doesn't. You're dreaming.
Our country is in a constant state of quarrel. It does no good to worship or bash Obama. Like Gandhi once said, "be the change you want to be". It's easy to sit all day and bash or worship Obama like mad than it is to get out there and do one's own part in pushing the party to the left. When will they learn?
More 24/7/365/4 Obama trashing campaign mode from most of the comments as usual. Try pushing the party to the left someday when you're bored.
Gladly, Shawn, but the "trashing" you're complaining about is the push.
If you have some method of how to push the Dems by approving of them or by some in-the-party means that does not involve public disapproval, fire away. I don't see it.
A bazillion people voted Democrat in '06 and '08. I thought the progressive positions supported by the Democratic rank and file were pretty clear. Do you imagine that Pelosi or Baucus or 0bama do not realize what they are? The campaign elves of both parties did not choose the word "Change" as a slogan because they thought we were happy with the status quo.
Why do the leading Dems oppose the positions they pretended to support in the election?
Why do the leading Dems not at least compromise with their progressive followers?
In none of these loyalist posts do I see anything that progressive Dems got for supporting these candidates.
I don't support the wrong positions Pelosi and Obama are taking but there's no point in dreaming of a third party winning like magic anytime soon. It takes years and the third party has to take votes away from BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS. I hate what Max Baucus is doing on health care and wished he were removed.
Change has to come from everyone. I hate it that Obama said that we must make him do it but he's right and no matter what party is in office, that will always be our job. We still live in a democracy even if our politicians suck.
We had 8 years of Bush and it will take more than 9 months to clean this shit up. If Obama turns out to be a drag by 2012, believe me I will support primarying him out by then but now isn't the time for campaign mode. I'm ready to take care of Congress that's up for reelection next year.
Well, OK, I thought you would be upset about those things, or you probably would not have supported a candidate promising change to begin with.
However, I see no indication that 0bama, let alone Pelosi or Baucus, intends to be forced to do anything progressive. The public support for green jobs, leaving the wars, single payer health care and so forth is there -- these all poll higher than 50% despite the serious propaganda efforts of the commercial press.
Moreover, it's not like 0bama's standing still: He is authorizing mountaintop removal, escalating wars, hiding torture, and so forth. I'll spare you the longer list; you probably know it as well as I do. If 0bama had been fighting for change and meeting opposition, I might say "Well, 9 months is not much," but he has done quite a lot in 9 months: just all the wrong things.
What would he mean "make me" if he did not mean to criticize and work against those who support the positions he has indeed supported?
It leaves me a little baffled at his posture, but I have to conclude that the man is posing.
I'm right with you with regards to Congress, and I would add that we need referenda to get the $$ out of the electoral process.
If 0bama were to turn himself around and acts like a progressive on even a modicum of issues, I might vote for him myself, even if he were to fail to accomplish any of it. Hey, I'd happily apologise here in CD were I to get struck by the idea that anyone cared. I might vote for him as a centrist in a given situation, just to avoid the Republicans. But I don't see anything progressive in 0bama. I don't even see anything centrist. I don't see effort - not progressive effort. I don't see intent - not progressive intent.
Also, I don't see disagreement with an official as campaign mode, though likely there's something more specific you intend by that. If I get the idea, you mean that a lack of support for 0bama means he cannot enact policies.
But if he does not wish to support progressive or even centrist policies, how would my support make him?
bardamu, great post. I know it's hard for me to swallow a lot of this and yeah it sucks to have voted for Obama but I just don't see third parties having any chance in the forseeable future. As a repairman and a construction worker alternating between the two based on the contracts, I got used to the idea of trying to repair the existing items as much as possible and not giving up on it. Nader is much better than Obama but I just didn't think it was wise to risk having Mccain or worse, Palin, running the country. The last 8 years were bad enough. Any party can be corrupted by corporate interests. The Democrats and Republicans are known for it but third parties haven't been tested on corruption. If they can prove to us that they will indeed be more receptive to us compared to the Democrats and Republicans, then I see a good opportunity awaiting my vote.
Just for the record, McKinney was the Green Party candidate for president. Had she gotten a much larger percentage of the votes, the Green Party would have been strengthened and with it would have come more influence, and the progressive agenda embodied by the Green Party would have made it through many doors previously closed.
This seems obvious to me and a legitimate political strategy. It certainly wasn't about "winning" on the presidential level.
I am also convinced that large numbers a people registering Green would have a positive influence on policy. Registering Green, of course, in no way prevents persons from signing petitions, writing their congresspeople, demonstrating, and in other ways trying to influence legislation. The fainthearted could even punch a square or pull a lever for a non-Green in the voting booth. Nobody is looking over their shoulders.
The drawback, of course, is that they would have less influence in the Democratic Party in the primaries (unless they are open primaries.)
In my opinion, the same damn thing will happen in 2010 and 2012 that happened in 2008 and we just can't afford it. That's why folks should do something different. My strategy would work, but from long experience I don't think it will happen. I keep plugging it just in case because I don't think the "influencing from within" will work any more than it did last year.
By pledging to
close Guantanamo,
eschewing torture and
beginning the draw down of troops from Iraq,
hmmm....zero out of three ain't bad?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Sadly, comparing 0bama with King coheres poorly.
Sadly, 0bama's policies cohere mightily with those of the Cheney-bush administration; only the huff that so many took for promises did not cohere.
Somewhere, surely, the inhumanity of 0bama's policies do not cohere with his genetic humanity or even that of Bush or Cheney. But the contradiction of these lie deep within these individuals who have released themselves into free-fall psychopathy.
0's policies and his rhetoric cohere with his sale of American will and cooperation to the corporatocracy, the good will engendered by his eloquence, his racial history, and his faux gestures towards progressive humanity.
0's policies cohere with designs along the line of "The New American Century." Specifically, they support the attempt to monopolize the hydrocarbon economy, the better to dictate terms to the rest of the world.
Those of us without large blue chip holdings do not need 0bama's policy to cohere, but to unravel.
For the most part, we
Reject the war in Iraq
Reject the war in Afghanistan
Reject the war in Pakistan
Reject the threats to Iran
Reject the threats to Somalia
Reject the threats to Venezuela
Reject the strong-arming of Honduras and Colombia
Reject the continued isolation of Cuba
Reject the torture and kidnapping
Reject the false health bill
Reject the renewed coal mining, particularly by mountaintop removal,
Reject the renewed attempts at nuclear construction
Reject the theft of moneys to support financial speculators.
How then can we coherently support the administration that supports all of these things?
bardamu - I'll second Sioux Rose. You cut to the chase on "cohere". Thanks.
Sioux Rose
BARDAMU: Great play on the use of the word/concept of "cohere." Your post is right on! Gracias.
Y gracias a usted, Sioux! Que bueno oirle siempre. Thanks to 'Arry, too.
Am I right to interject the apostrophe, Arry or 'Arry? When I read your handle I hear the soldiers calling in Shakespeare's Henry V, though I'm likely way off, or it's a very new St. Crispin's Day. Cheers, anyway.
Just plain unapostrophed Arry.
I stand corrected.
After a long time of Obama bashing, Common Dreams finally delivers a positive article about Obama and here come the Naderites to trash the article and the author. Only the Republicans and the Naderites want Obama to fail.
Fail to do what, Nathan?
Succeed in doing what?
I assume it matters to you as it does to me.
I sense moral reproach in this "wanting to fail" theme, though. Am I right, or do I miss your point?
If I am right, what moral obligation might I have to support a man who refuses to support any position that I find morally adequate?
If we treat this rather as a practical or a tactical matter, I see little change. What motive have I to support a man who opposes the measures I endorse?
Unlike some of my colleagues, Nathan, I would be willing to compromise and vote for a compromise candidate, could I find one. But pretending to support a position that one works strongly to oppose does not qualify as a compromise, at least not one I can support.
You know, I do believe that progressive and moderate Democrats exist. But I wonder that so many of you-all are not more upset yourselves, seeing how thoroughly you have been betrayed.
You got that right dude ! I was wrong about you a few months back. You were right about Sioux Rose and most of the posters here. Obama bashing is their favorite hobby. It's easy to bash a sitting president and have fantasies of third parties winning than to push the Democratic Party to the left. I'm open to third parties but most of these posters push us away from them for sounding so Republican. I'm outraged at Obama's actions but what can he do? If he did everything they wanted, he risks losing his life just like JFK. I respect Nader and like what he had to offer but let's be realistic. The dude couldn't get elected dog catcher. He could try running for Chris Dodd's seat or one of the 5 house seats in CT and then give the White House run another try but oops too late, he's getting too old. He wasted too many elections running for an office he had no chance of winning. He could have been a Green Party senator from CT before entering the White House but nooooooo, he just had to run spoiler elections. He gave us George W Bush in 2000 and forced Obama to inherit 8 years of his mess. It's only 9 months after 8 years of Bush and all the complaining too far. I'm outraged too but that's why I keep doing my part to pressure Congress. Saying that gets me called names for working to correct the system from within. I'd rather stick to being practical and keep pushing the Democratic Party to the left than waste my vote on a party that has no chance of winning and is a vote for Republicans. You don't have to study in college to realize that third parties rarely won throughout American history and will never win.
"Positive" is meaningless if it doesn't conform with facts. Most of us have gone beyond wishing.
A general "want him to fail" is an amorphous thing that can only be meaningful with something attached to it. In what specifically do you think we want him to fail?
Why do you equate critical opinion and analysis with an "ite" (Naderite)? Are you an Obamaite and therefore on the "other side", secure in your "iteness"? Is this "shirts" and "skins"?
If this is what the Green Party stands for, it's obvious why they can't win. It's all about taking away votes from the Democratic Party only. The Republicans need the Green Party to spoil and steal. Third parties never won presidential elections and never will. They can't win past one or two seats in the House or Senate. Try spending some time pushing the Democratic Party to the left. I was going to consider supporting the Green Party but now that I know its supporters never learned their lessons from the party's losses, count me out.
A lot of the people who are unhappy with empire are closer to Republican and Libertarian positions than to Democrat and Socialist positions of various stripes.
Consequently, Nader took more votes from the Republicans than from Democrats in many precincts.
I can't say I feel too delicate about spoiling the Democratic agenda these days, though, and I wonder why you should.
How do you propose to push the Democrats anywhere if you vote for them while they institute the policies you voted to avoid when you voted against the Republicans?
Are the policies of 0bama, Pelosi, and Baucus those you do not wish to spoil?
Did 0bama not steal your vote by convincing you that he supported things that you support?
(If this question makes some improper assumption, please remake it so it fits. I do not intend it to be rhetorical or ironic. I just do not see what you imagine you gained. I'd be happy to vote for a compromise position: I do not see one.)
This country is conservative and the Democrats are the closest thing you will get to progressive. Third parties have no chance of winning, everything's stacked against them, they can't organize or fundraise well, and they're too idealist and killjoy. Nader doesn't need supporters who are pure Obama trashers. He wanted to be the party of YES, not the party of NO. I share his positions but voting for him would have given us 4 more years of Republicans as if 8 years wasn't bad enough. I'm mad as hell too with Obama's stupid moves but he's not alone. It would have been nice if Ralph Nader had run as a Democrat just like Kucinich. A Nader/Kucinich ticket was my dream last year. Do I feel stupid that I got a Obama/Biden ticke? Oh yeah but this country has moved to the right for years and maybe Obama/Biden is what we deserved. They may not be liberal but they're not as conservative as Bush/Cheney or Reagan/Bush. I'm not ready to accept another Republican presidency.
I don't care to accept a Republican presidency either, and as nearly as I can tell I have one here in 0bama to accept or reject.
I see 0bama as deceptive, not stupid. I don't see criticizing him as particularly negative or applauding him as particularly affirmative, and the day I find that he does something right, I will be willing to praise it -- if perhaps a tad suspiciously, pardon.
Their rhetoric is more liberal that Cheney/Bush, but not their practice. I do care a bit about the rhetoric, but not much.
I'd have voted for a Nader-Kucinich ticket inside the Democratic Party or outside of it, but the Democrats didn't nominate them or anyone like them.
You know, we agree on a lot of this, and I'm not being ornery just for entertainment. I suspect one of the basic differences in our ideas here is that I do not believe that a campaign necessarily wins because it elects its candidate or necessarily fails because it fails to elect its candidate.
I'm not talking about moral victory here, but influence on policy. Nixon instituted socialist measures, took the States out of Vietnam, and recognized China diplomatically --- obviously because he was getting his tail kicked from the Potomac to the sea.
Let's kick.
These policy-makers do blow with the wind to a fair degree. The Democrats -- Kucinich and other true progressives certainly aside -- have shown us that we cannot negotiate with them by voting for them. They turn and cater to mugwump Republicans and the legions of the wishy-washy.
See how this strikes you as shorthand for a US election:
The Repugs convince their minions that making the boss rich makes them well to do.
The Dems convince their supporters that they are really not altogether on the bosses' side, but they are.
We're usually better off with Dems because they have to act a little progressive to play progressive on election day.
This lot isn't even doing that, though. What's the advantage of their crowing progressive if they act completely like Republicans once they're elected?
I say dump them --- and let them know as soon as possible that this is an election-related and mission-critical criticism. If they want to make nice, fine, I'm thrilled: but let them do it in Congress and in the White House and running the country, and not just on the campaign trail.
That's a fair question. The trouble is most of us voted to fix the existing system from within when we voted for Obama. Some may have voted for Obama for other reasons too such as him being conservative enough for them or give him one chance to lead despite his positions they might not like. I just believe that like repairing appliances instead of buying newer ones to cut down costs, the same with repairing the existing Democratic Party and moving it to the left instead of buying into a new third party untested. I have altered between working as a repairman and a construction worker throughout my life. I'll explain more on that in another post maybe tomorrow or Friday.
Yes, Shawn, it probably is best to count you out. You have our number, all right, we Greens were such strong supporters of Bush and everything neocon.
I think millions of people registering Green would "move the Democrats to the left" or at least scare them, but I can't seem to get that started.
Parenthetically, the Green Party is about much more than presidential elections. Local races and issues are the bread-and-butter of the Green Party.
But I agree. You are not Green Party material as you are obsessed with the Democratic Party.
I suggest that the Green Party stick to improving on local races and issues and then come to the national stage when they're armed and mature. The Green Party is currently like bringing knives to a gun fight.
One other thing. We're both progressive but the only difference is deciding which way to solve this thing. One side believes in changing it radically from the outside while the other believes in fine tuning and pushing the party from the inside. History has shown that the latter option wins. If the Green Party can miraculously make it all the way, then maybe I'll drop my tweaking and join. Don't take this too hard.
Peace
But, of course, my political affiliation is irrelevant in my responsibility to say what I think about Obama in replying to an article about Obama and his policies. Certainly the gist of your posts is not that we'd better not speak our minds about Obama?...which is what we are doing.
It's one thing to criticize Obama's policies but bashing him in person I don't support. It does no good to bash or worship him and I made it clear that I do neither.
Don't worry. I won't take it too hard.
Your historical knowledge leaves much to be desired. Third parties have played a major role in changing the political landscape. Oftentimes, they have thrown in the towel too soon, however.
I'll agree to that. I wished this decade hadn't been the towel throwing moment.
Oh please ! Obama can talk perfectly all he wants but as far as I am concerned, his presidency has been nothing but fluff and puff ! As for the Obamabots showing up here telling us to "make him do it", I'm sorry but that is NOT leadership. It's cowardice. Oh Obama is brave enough for the monied elites but not for the working class. This presidency is nothing but big empty.
Ephraim nailed it the best. With Dubya, we all knew what was coming at us but with Barry, it's all slick and smooth talk followed by surprise sludge attack ! Sometimes, I can't stand Barry acting like this and will pull my hair and almost scream. At this point, Sarah Palin could win, not that I support her but at least she wouldn't make any bones about her intentions.
No offense, AD, but you obviously aren't understanding the comment-posting process.
Several days ago, I directed a comment to you that tried to "walk you through" the preview/publish deal, but you either didn't see it or didn't understand it.
I suggest you find someone computer-literate enough to help you out. Don't you notice that you're the only one who constantly winds up with multiple duplicate posts and is "plagued" by preview posts?
· Yr Obd't Servant
These preview messages are getting old.
Anyone who thinks the Second World War spawned the Cold War el al, needs to read Christopher Simpson's book "Blowback" which documents chapter and verse of how hard core Nazis with US collaborators' help infiltrated and then became dominant in the US intelligence apparatus, which in turn dominated the formulation of US foreign policy since the Second World War, and it resulted in these hard core Nazis using our government to carry out what John Pilger would call their hidden agenda, and it was our national security interests' expense.
AD
Anyone who thinks the Second World War spawned the Cold War el al, needs to read Christopher Simpson's book "Blowback" which documents chapter and verse of how hard core Nazis with US collaborators' help infiltrated and then became dominant in the US intelligence apparatus, which in turn dominated the formulation of US foreign policy since the Second World War, and it resulted in these hard core Nazis using our government to carry out what John Pilger would call their hidden agenda, and it was our national security interests' expense.
AD
Anyone who thinks the Second World War spawned the Cold War el al, needs to read Christopher Simpson's book "Blowback" which documents chapter and verse of how hard core Nazis with US collaborators' help infiltrated and then became dominant in the US intelligence apparatus, which in turn dominated the formulation of US foreign policy since the Second World War, and it resulted in these hard core Nazis using our government to carry out what John Pilger would call their hidden agenda, and it was our national security interests' expense.
AD
Whoever has not experienced peace inside himself remains ignorant of peace and can make no claim to speak of peace.
Without the direct experience of peace, peace will remain nothing more than a foggy concept.
The essential nature of man is peace, energy, intelligence, bliss.
www.tm.org
(Obama) said that America must not shrink from its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
How many times in my life have I heard some American politician, heavily burdened with bandoliers of ammunition and carrying a dozen guns, utter this same cancerous BS about a "new era of peace"? Uh, no, Mr. Obama, you have not made the two halves "cohere". You have merely become George Wanker Bush.
Perhaps our nation might learn coherence by studying martial arts. The key to unarmed combat could be described as balance. To neutralize an opponent, learn to pull when pushed and to push when pulled. This causes the adversary to become more unbalanced himself than the imbalance which he is attempting to inflict upon you. His attack may thereby be used against himself.
Sioux Rose
CLASS ACT: In my children's book, Cassandra's Tale, an introduction to "The Twelve Rays," I depict a scene where a row of scorpions enact martial arts and explain to the audience comprised of insects, that the ultimate goal of such movement is self-mastery. Plus as you related, testing the opponent's grasp of interior balance. (I just re-read this specific portion today, and found the connection to what you posted a fascinating "sign of congruence.")
Ummm...Lincoln was dead when the Confederate States surrendered. From my perspective, the author's grasp of Obama's true nature is as accurate as his grasp of American history. From his actions, Obama seems to be a whore for the Military Imdustrial Complex. Would Gandhi loose predator drones against civilians?
Lincoln was assassinated a few days after the surrender. Your point still holds as he didn't have much to do with Reconstruction, although he spoke and wrote a number of times on the subject before the war ended.
Equating Obama with MLK morally is obscene. Obama is a brand, and brands being constructed images, you'd expect the attempt to fit in a black theme that would resonate on some national level, but lies are not infinitely effective, and (as professional as branding is in the case of Obama) sometimes an egregious lie will only distort the brand. But they'll keep trying. They can fine tune the brand and/or continue to dumb down the populace where the brand doesn't have to be quite as sophisticated. Both methods are continually used.
Ephraim nails it, and many more examples could be given.
Anyone who thinks the Second World War spawned the Cold War el al, needs to read Christopher Simpson's book "Blowback" which documents chapter and verse of how hard core Nazis with US collaborators' help infiltrated and then became dominant in the US intelligence apparatus, which in turn dominated the formulation of US foreign policy since the Second World War, and it resulted in these hard core Nazis using our government to carry out what John Pilger would call their hidden agenda, and it was our national security interests' expense.
AD
Anyone who thinks the Second World War spawned the Cold War el al, needs to read Christopher Simpson's book "Blowback" which documents chapter and verse of how hard core Nazis with US collaborators' help infiltrated and then became dominant in the US intelligence apparatus, which in turn dominated the formulation of US foreign policy since the Second World War, and it resulted in these hard core Nazis using our government to carry out what John Pilger would call their hidden agenda, and it was our national security interests' expense.
AD
The USA is paranoid, looking for a giant Moslem/Arab/Middle Eastern conspiracy everywhere, and no we aren't better than the British in doing empire, we are far inferior and never learn our lesson, as we keep lying and denying the very existence of our empire. We need to look ourselves in the mirror and say we "have met the enemy and the enemy is us" and obviously the imperial nature of our nation state. We have to choose between keeping the US state or the US empire, and we can't have both, but we could lose both as have other imperial states with the classic case of Rome. Just as we can't have guns and butter, this equally true. We can deal with it or create our own debacle.
AD
The author probably didn't compose the headline, but... "TOWARD a Coherent Presidency?" The terms "U-turn" or "shift into reverse" didn't appear anywhere in the text, yet at the moment Obama is driving away like a bat out of Hell from the kind of coherence envisioned by the author.
Not unlike the Nobel Committee, this perspective reads as if it were written about six months ago.
I appreciate that some see a presidency as one might a football game; to them, it's still the first quarter and the game's wide-open.
But so far for the star quarterback, it's been all ball control, fumble recoveries, and punts.
Obama seems quite well able to "cohere" with banksters and Masters of War. And Old Europe elites, evidently. He only has "coherence" issues with his lofty rhetoric versus his depraved actions, especially vis-à-vis we underprivileged ordinary citizens.
Maybe these writers should hold off until after the 2010 elections, where they can express their sadly unfulfilled hopes-- there's that word again!-- in the context of "what Obama needs to do when he comes out of the locker room for the second half".
· Yr Obd't Servant
I wish Commondreams would have some coherency in the views and agenda of this site. Lately, there have been some incoherent views espoused by the journalists featured on this site. Yesterday, there was an article championing the devalue of the dollar which was an incoherent piece of trash. This article reveals that the author is incoherent by comparing Obama to MLK.
Sorry. Double post.
q
It is not in the nature of Progressives to enforce adherence to a single idea or policy in the way that the right does. Progressives are inclusive so you will continue to see varying viewpoints on this site.
q
Good try, Rick, but I think we're already seeing the contours of Obama's misadventures in coherence. He says one thing and does another--not exactly what MLK had in mind. He made various vague campaign crypto-promises and has so far followed up on none of them.
You say, "By pledging to close Guantanamo, eschewing torture and beginning the draw down of troops from Iraq, President Obama has begun to bring means and ends in line again; he has begun to make us a more coherent nation." Right there you give three examples of how this president thinks he can say something and do the exact opposite without anyone noticing. First, he isn't closing Guantanamo. That's been forestalled to some indefinite future date. And even if he does, the word on the street is that he'll only transfer those detainees (torture victims) to another military installation where they can resume their long careers as victims of US war crimes. He isn't stopping torture, he isn't even allowing the release of voluminous evidence from our torture sites around the world that would summarily indict the Bush crime ring for its countless crimes against humanity. He's absolutely forbidden any of that being made public, because one of his first concerns is protecting the Bush/Cheney thugs from ever being brought to justice.
Neither is Obama withdrawing troops from Iraq. All he did was reconnoiter them to the outskirts of the cities they had been obnoxiously occupying. Now the same numbers of troops obnoxiously occupy and encircle these population centers, and our multi-billion dollar fortress in Baghdad ("Embassy") is as bristling with American arms and arrogant busybodies as it ever was under Bush the Incoherent. Not to mention our dozens of other military bases in Iraq, all manned by Troops who have not been withdrawn and probably never will be, certainly not under Obama the Coherent.
He also ran on vague pledges to deliver healthcare reform, and we see how sincere that was. It's not happening; the proposals in the works are insults to very idea of reform and will only exacerbate an already completely shattered, incoherent and abusive health care system. We're better off with no plan at all than the ones thus far permitted to even be considered by the Obama junta. On the economy, Obama once again has proved his allegiance to thoroughly incoherent policy. This has been exhaustively analysed and described on this site, so no need to reiterate.
So, Obama's alleged coherence is actually making us an even more Incoherent Nation than we were before. At least under Bush the Stupid we weren't constantly misled by reality's failure to conform to rhetoric.
Sioux Rose
EPHRAIM: Most-excellent post! Either the columnists who still give Obama all these benefits of the doubt are a case-study in what Bernays/Orwell/BF Skinner exposed, or we really are inhabitants of parallel, separate universes here on planet earth. There is Truth, and then there are the acceptable fictions postured to simulate it. It's amazing how many can't tell the difference. Shakespeare was up against the same thing when he provided his own anti-war message as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern returned from a nonsensical conflict. I believe that is the place in the text where the famous words: "How can thinking men think so wrongly" can be found. An old malady, Mr. Shakespeare, one all-too apparent in today's literary midst.
Sioux Rose: I love it that you have introduced the magnificent bumblers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into the musings on this page. Anti-war Shakespeare: how about the monologue of Falstaff on honor in Henry IV part 1? I was once given the wonderful part of Owen Glendower: "and at my birth the frame and huge foundation of the Earth shaked like a coward!" And: "these signs have marked me extraordinary, and all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men". Would that Obama was like Owen!
"At least under Bush the Stupid we weren't constantly misled by reality's failure to conform to rhetoric."
That's for sure. The Bush/Cheney criminal gang made it quite clear to anyone but the densest rube that they were rapacious, ruthless, barbaric thugs while Obama pretends to represent civilized values.
Ephraim
I can only applaud Vern's comment, he said it beautifully.
But I can admire seperately, your last sentence for the truth that it is.
Exceptional!
Tell it like it is!
"If the United States is to lead the world again," ...."America’s "greatness" has always been rooted in its moral power"......what?....nationalism=nationalism=nationalism=death.
I am not so sure people will be patient enough to care that Obama is coherent compared to the last president. Even as a Republican turned Democrat, I am finding less satisfaction from President Obama than I did with George W Bush when I used to be an angry conservative. This essay would have made sense if Obama had done something about rising unemployment and health care. Even on foreign policy, Obama has both the right and the left against him. I am not getting a good feeling that Obama's coherent speaking skills will stop his sliding support unless he puts the right actions forward.
More like incoherent attempt at damage control.
Obama is no leader. He played the role of suave campaigner right out of central casting but when it comes to the real world job he is just a cardboard prop. We are rudderless and it doesn't help when those in denial keep propping him up. Hope against hope.
It truly is a pity that the authors of US foreign policy today and throughout US history have never sought wisdom from MLK in "The Trumpet of Conscience" but rather from Machiavelli in "The Prince."
The author fails to understand his very example of Gandhi's success in forcing the British out of India. Gandhi's strategy of non-violence prevailed because, regardless of the ungodly brutality and viciousness of the British military, the British people managed to maintain a basic decency that eventually drained support from Britain's colonial policies.
Sadly, there is too little of that decency in the US citizenry. No matter what atrocities are committed by our armed forces or what crimes are perpetrated by US-owned mercenary forces, too many Americans will seek a moralistic rationale to excuse themselves from caring.
q
Gandhi's strategy prevailed because in the end, the cost to Britain to fighting a brutal war of independence, thousands of miles away, in a country that dwarfed Britain in size, both geographically and population wise, would have been too high, especially after the devastation of WW2.
Not to mention those who in the end got Britain to leave, were those the British "could work with", for the most part British educated / anglophiles, and were generally not espousing any radical policies.
The decency of the British people did not prevent Britain from engaging in brutality and leaving much less gracefully in some of it's other colonies, such as Kenya. The decency of the British people did not prevent those decent British people from grabbing land in colonies such as Kenya, and then engaging in torture and other assorted brutal actions. Note, it wasn't just the British military in Kenya who engaged in torture. The decent British settlers who there participated too.
Not ot put too fine a point on the subject but you seem to be trying to equate the violence of the Mau Mau rebellion with Gandhi's peaceful resistance.
While Britain's brutality in response to the Mau Mau uprising is hardly defensible by today's standards, it is not unreasonable to raise the question of coverage of the war in the UK.
"The British described the Mau Mau as a group of "bloodthirsty terrorists", and news reports in the US and Britain during the 1950s made the name Mau Mau synonymous with African tribal violence against whites."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/06/200962354644711142.html#
q
The British (of the time) described the Mau Mau as bloodthirsty.
And why pray tell, should they be believed? Bush claimed that Iraq had WMD. Should we believe him too?
Why does British media coverage of the uprising justify what they did? Does US media coverage of Iraq and Bush's claims of WMD justify the support of American citizens for the Iraq invasion? And how does media coverage in the UK of the uprising justify the joining in of the torture by the "decent" British civilians in Kenya?
Furthermore, you need to do more reading on Kenya.
Firstly, 32 British civilians were killed by the "bloodthirsty" rebels. Compared to a minimum of around 11,000 Kenyans. Note that minimum is the official (colonial) British tally. Other tallies by historians range from 20,000 to 70,000.
Secondly and more importantly, the violence began BECAUSE peaceful attempts at getting the British colonial authorities to listen and to negotiate were ridiculed or even dismissed out of hand.
The uprising did not happen overnight. It happened because decades of attempting to engage the British in peaceful negotiation were ignored by the British.
The "decent" British civilians went to Kenya and grabbed land. These "decent" British civilians grabbed HUGE amounts of the best agricultural land. Not surprisingly, the Kikuyu weren't pleased. The British colonial authorities sided with the "decent" British civilians. The British colonial authorities ignored the moderates who tried to negotiate peacefully. the British colonial authorities provided absolutely no means for the grievances of the Kenyans to be resolved peacefully.
When they finally came up with an attempt at a representative legislative council, in 1951, the 30,000 white settlers got 14 seats, the 100,000 Asians got six, the 24,000 Arabs one, and the 5,000,000 Africans five "representatives" to be nominated by the government. The "decent" British settlers despite being a tiny minority would have received a solid majority of seats on the council. The black Africans? Oh yes, not only did they get a distinctly unrepresentative number of seats, they did not even get to choose their own representatives.
That "representative" council demonstrated clearly to the Kikuyu that the British had absolutely zero freaking interest in peacefully negotiating in anything close to good faith.
Oh yeah, BTW, this, this attempt at a "representative" legislative council happened under the government of the Labour Party, under the sainted Attlee who left India so gracefully.
I must disagree, Americans do indeed have that same decency. The British population were not under the attacks from every side the American people are today. A government that actually despises and denigrates them as citizens. A calcaulated policy to take their jobs. You know as well as I do whats going on.
The "atrocities" are very few and very far between. And histiorical fact will show you we are far better than most have been. Fasr better.
The circumvention of the Constitution is all too prevelant.
So give the poor old average American a break. Don't forget we are far more individualistic, more suspecious of government and far, far more resistent to government controls than most other countries. That make it far harder to throw the bums out.
Henry, I think you're right about Americans being decent folk, though I must say that the English treated me as well when I lived there, and the French did when I lived there, and the Mexicans did when I lived there as well.
People I meet and see and shake hands with always seem fine and super-fine.
The US government practices atrocities quite often, though -- the tortures; the wars every year or two, and almost never for anything but to control petrol or break strikes.
This goes back a very long way. Google "American Invasions" and check that out, for openers. Not everybody agrees which military interventions qualify as invasion, but even discounting many examples, the British Empire is the only conceivable parallel I can find.
Why would you not find these actions to be atrocities?
As to "more resistant to government controls," I can't say that I have found that to be true. Americans seem to have a very fixed idea that they are in the "greatest country in the world" in some sense that has nothing to do with what the government does or does not do on a daily basis. Many seem to have the idea that that business of being "great," whatever they mean by that, authorizes the government to do actions that they would normally condemn.
For what it's worth, and just as a subjective observation, I would say that the most government-resistant people I have met are the Mexicans, followed by the French and the English, with Americans being relatively compliant.
I'm not sure how I'd measure that objectively, though.
Three cheers for Henry8 for standing up for hard working Americans and our honorable soldiers. I reward you a free pizza and a beer !
Quickstepper and Sioux Rose on the other hand shall each be slapped an EGG PIE in their face !
Thank you Henry8. I'm glad to hear someone who understand us average hard working Americans and what they're going through. We might as well be honest with ourselves and break the ice.
"The 'atrocities' are very few and very far between. And histiorical fact will show you we are far better than most have been. Fasr better."
Two of the worst atrocities in US military history are continuing right now: the Iraq War and the Afghanistan/Pakistan War.
Please stop trying to excuse the depravity of current US military adventurism by invoking the honor of legitimate triumphs in the past.
q
I'm with you on the need to end those wars. They're the biggest drag on the US economy. We can't do any health care reform if those wars keep getting in the way.
Sioux Rose
QUICKSTEPPER: Excellent response!
Personally, I'd rather not have the USA "lead" the world any longer; I'm much prefer that the Elites recognize that this country is in decline, it's an inevitable historical process, and act accordingly -- i.e., to make the decline as easy and non-disruptive as possible, both internationally and internally. But what set of Elites of any country has ever been willing to do that? I fear they'll "rage, rage against the dying of the light" instead of "going gently into that good night".