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What Happened to Obama?
It was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.
(Image: Edel Rodriguez)
The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.
Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”
When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.
In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:
“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.” A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative — and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it — would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit — a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.
And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.
But there was no story — and there has been none since.
In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.
Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history was his handling of the stimulus. The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led. Yet instead of indicting the economic policies and principles that had just eliminated eight million jobs, in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency — and against the advice of multiple Nobel-Prize-winning economists — he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy. That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual — that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.
To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away.
What makes the “deficit debate” we just experienced seem so surreal is how divorced the conversation in Washington has been from conversations around the kitchen table everywhere else in America. Although I am a scientist by training, over the last several years, as a messaging consultant to nonprofit groups and Democratic leaders, I have studied the way voters think and feel, talking to them in plain language. At this point, I have interacted in person or virtually with more than 50,000 Americans on a range of issues, from taxes and deficits to abortion and immigration.
The average voter is far more worried about jobs than about the deficit, which few were talking about while Bush and the Republican Congress were running it up. The conventional wisdom is that Americans hate government, and if you ask the question in the abstract, people will certainly give you an earful about what government does wrong. But if you give them the choice between cutting the deficit and putting Americans back to work, it isn’t even close. But it’s not just jobs. Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, “In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.”
When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.” This statement is far more consistent with what many economists are saying publicly — and what investors apparently believe, as evident in the nosedive the stock market took after the president and Congress “saved” the economy.
So where does that leave us?
Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.
THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.
As a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience, I will resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance, but as a scientist and strategic consultant I will venture some hypotheses.
The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.
Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars — in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars. When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability. Whether that reflects his aversion to conflict, an aversion to conflict with potential campaign donors that today cripples both parties’ ability to govern and threatens our democracy, or both, is unclear.
A final explanation is that he ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.
But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.
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181 Comments so far
Show AllLook O-bot it was Obama who wanted the social security cuts and the corporate Congress with a couple of notable exceptions went along because they are funded at the same corporate pig trow as the Repigliecons:
", Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor DID NOT call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CALLED FOR THAT,” declared US Representative John Conyers in a press conference held by members of the House ‘Out of Poverty’ Caucus on 07/27/11.”
Conyers added …”My response to him (President Obama) is TO MASS THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE TO PROTEST THIS.”
(Source: http://www.crewof42.com/cbc/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-calls-for-protest-at-white-house)
Cited in:
http://my.firedoglake.com/jeanine4truth/2011/07/29/rep-conyers-obama-demanded-social-security-cuts-not-gop/
Stay in your homes
Repeat
Stay in your homes
Do not leave the suburbs.
The City is under martial law
Repeat
The City is under martial law
After reading many of the comments I am vindicated in several of my perceptions. I do believe some of the most convicted Democrats and supposed left-wingers have been drinking the "kool-aid" that the vastly wealthy right wing fascist machine has been spinning for a very long time. They have been allowed to set the tone or reality"if you will" of what is happening in our society. They have gotten us to fragment and second guess our unity enough to bring actions to a screeching halt in many ways, mostly with money.
That being said, I do believe, in my heart of hearts that something did happen to President Obama. I have wondered about it ever since his and the First Lady's visit with the Bush White House. The long legacy of corruption, which I mean in the most basic sense of the word, has reached an alarming height and volume. This is what makes it easy for the extremists to paralyze the process, as there is a piece of the truth in what they are saying, but it is so distorted and misused for personal and political gain it in itself is very corrupt and ineffective for any true social or political improvement. I believe the entrenchment of power has shown itself in this administration more clearly than any other in that our President has felt compelled to keep the enemy closer than those who are willing to fight the fight. I believe in his impeccable character, however, can also see that he is very alone in many ways. Some of his decisions have made it worse, yes. Why would he appoint the CEO of GE to head the commission working to solve our unemployment dilemma? I am flummoxed! Has his family been threatened? I think I am behind the curve on this one. Are we now more of an organized crime syndicate vs. a Democracy? Is Congress to decayed and disrespected that it cannot function to serve the people it "represents"? I wonder what others think about this and what any and all of us are willing to do to recover our freedoms and exercise our citizen authorities. Have we allowed the contempt for education and the mass power of the pharmaceuticals to keep us comfortably numb and dumb, ultimately doing the bullies and gangsters work for them? How much do participate in our own undoing.
I feel the same way as the author about bullies AND that Obama has avoided the inevitable, which, to me, is stand them down as soon as they make a move. They have already proven they have no conscience, so to confront, standing for one's principles and values, is the only choice. Turning the other cheek is a vital principle to live by. It is sorely misunderstood as submission. I suggest it is forgiveness in action. It does not mean one keeps allowing the crime or attack to continue, it just means that you adhere to your values while you deal with it appropriately, protecting yourself and in the President's case, his people. Bullies never come around. They want it all, history shows that. I don't think the President's conciliatory approach will inspire them to shift their value system of 'I want more than my fair share of everything.'
I am behind our President, however, am acutely aware that without his constituents taking clear and regular action, standing up to the bullies ourselves, he shall be shoveling against the tide on his own. I do not support all his decisions, but know that we need unity more than anything else right now.. Inherent in the word Democracy is its definition. Without steady mass involvement, the bad guys always have the upper hand and resource advantage.
After all that tghome...and you still fall for the bull shit lies. Amazing. And you think progressives are drinking kool-aid!!!
Word Stonepig! Occam's razor says Goldman Sachs is on Obama's speed dial and always was for over a decade, that is all you need to know.
What's happened to Obummer is the corrupt powers that told him he'd be dead along with his family if he didn't cater to the powerful corporate made decisions for the US.
No, you can't stop the war because we will have too many losses in our corporate bank accounts.
No, to a decent economy because the poor have to be poorer so we can control them longer.
No to a better education because we need more soldiers to support international corporate interests.
No to truth in the media cause people have to be left fearful and stupid.
So what happened to O-b is the people who rule. He is just doing what he's been told to do.
Of course, his compliance will win him a great future somewhere outside the WH when he leaves. He won't suffer, so he caved. He didn't take his title seriously. A true soldier, any commander, is willing to die for the good of his country. Well,Obomba, you are a coward.
There is no one left on the left in Washington. We've been Left Behind. We have no representation LEFT. We've been blinded by the right. Ripped off..... We should start our own party. We could call it, "The Leftovers". I'm amazed that we could lose so much in so little time.
For crying out loud, he was like this from the beginning. Whoever believed Barry wasn't a corporate tool and a liar did NOT do their homework. But they WISHED - they just wished - that Obama was the real deal. Ta da! Not so much.
But there's an easy way to get rid of him, and call out all the scumbags that do the bidding of corporate and military-industrial complex America. On 4/27/11, Obama released a fraudulent document that he said was his birth certificate. IT IS NOT. This man is a criminal, and has been lying about himself and his life for a very long time.
Go to WhiteHouse.gov. Look at his "birth certificate." When you see, as you easily will, that it is a fake, make it your business to demand that there be an investigation. The Big Money Backers that put Oscama into office are the same ones that inserted George W. Bush TWICE - and we have to call their bluff! Otherwise, it will be four more, and eight more, and forever more, that the U. S. presidency will be the seat of the biggest corporate tool in the world, and America, and the world, will burn.
Democrats pride themselves on their integrity, and like to think they're not hypocrites. Then we have to hold Obama, who I was going to vote for until I researched him and his background, to the same standard that we would a Republican. He is not even eligible for office, and that is an easy way to get him out and to expose the selfish pigs that put him into office. Please, let's do this!
I certainly don't have all the answers but here are a few thoughts. Quit whining and do something. Nobody is going to come save you but yourself. Don't have a job? Create one or take any job offered; something is better than nothing. Need food? Grow some. Too many debts? Pay them off and don't use any more credit. Want out of consummerism? Quit buying.
What happened to the Obama who pledged that Lobbyists would get short shrift in his government? Hmmm?
I think he really saw the light about what was wrong with the government, as we all do, (or should by now), and spoke about righting those wrongs...that was his mistake. He telegraphed his punches, and the powers-that-be made some threats to him that he had to take seriously, that scared him to death-- perhaps to do with the safety of his family-- and he caved. Maybe there was some money involved, but I think the threats counted for more...I really think he believed in something big and good before he took office...right now he just looks 20 years older and like a highly disillusioned man. Maybe after he's out of office in a safe place, he will write a book about how the presidency is controlled. Meanwhile, it is up to we, the people, to try to identify and control the powers-that-be. If money is power, we could start by hitting them in the pocketbook, hard, before they amass the entire country's wealth.
Any ideas on how to do it?
A look at who Obama picked for his cabinet especially Robert Rubin is very telling. It is almost comical how the right keeps on talking about Obama as a socialists, and he has shown that he definatly is not. He is center right.
And he is most definatly not a populists he is for big money. Just take a look at the so called health care bill, if it was done right it would have been a single payer system, as it turns out it is a bonus for the health care industry.
And as for that idot talking about how the WTC was blown up with explosives. Let me throw out a few things. In 1993 the terrorists drove a whole truck load of explosives and detonated them and while it did some damage it didnt come close to bringing the buildings down. You would have needed tractor trailer loads of explosives and hundreds of people to plant them. And no one saw anything. I was a fireman stationed across the street from the WTC, those buildings had people in them 24/7, matinance workers, cleaning staff, port authority police. And yet none of them saw tons of explosives being planted, in just one night, truckloads of explosives!
Well said, Drew. All during Obama's first year in office, I kept saying he needs to bring back Fireside Chats to keep the public informed about what's going on. He didn't lose the midterm elections because of Obamacare or the debt, he lost it because he kept the public in the dark. We still don't know what he's about. Outside of healthcare, he has been a failure at promoting the Dream Act, expanding energy solutions and now he's returned to the drill drill drill mentality of the former regime.
The US has 40-million acres of public land outside of Alaska under oil/gas leases and Interior is still leasing more. Obama handed Shell Oil the hugest contract to drill in the Arctic continental shelf offshore of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Do we need that? Who's going to police Shell Oil in Arctic waters?...polar bears? walruses? whales?
We're still waiting to hear the president's promise to attack global warming. Where is it? It's not even on his agenda.
I'm a child of the Depression. I remember what it was like in those days. If we don't end these wars and if the government doesn't create jobs, we're headed to disaster. People have to have jobs in order to pay taxes and buy things...to stimulate the economy. The Tea Party plan does nothing in that direction. Where's our voice? What DID happen to Obama? We would like to hear he's on our side, fighting for us, and not Wall Street's side.
DREAMJOEHILL, wasn't it George W. H. Bush, that signed NAFTA, or originated it? Did GWH Bush have "anything" to do with it? If he did, why don't you mention papa Bush when you mention NAFTA, how come you only mention Bill Clinton? By the way, doesn't every president have moments of poor judgement? Why isn't Clinton allowed to have moments of poor judgment?
What happened to Obama? Our activist Constitutional lawyer presidential candidate who promised us "change" had to sell his soul to the corporate devil to get elected and it's cost us dearly. God Bless America!
The only candidate with backbone that has run in the USA gets turned down.
Why? Because the RINO and democratic party establishment tell voters this person does not represent america. Why do voters listen to the party establishment people who consistently screw up the economy and put americans out of work?
VOTE RALPH NADER who has represented america for 50 years as a brilliant consumer advocate backed by a brilliant legal mind. VOTE RALPH NADER the people's politician.
Note from the publisher: ah, guys we had a major typo, the book was supposed to be called "the Austerity of Hope", not "the Audacity of Hope". Sorry for the mistake. The new book is entitled the Audacity of the Dope! Coming to a Borders Book Store near you!
What lame stream media is keeping the lid on is that Obozo is a FRAUD. He's ineligable for the office, the B/C he posted was forged, he's using someone else social security number, his paper trail has been sealed, he has at least two aliases (a.k.a.) his father never was a US citizen (natural born?) he's a pathological liar. And NOBODY really knows who this man is. He has no college "chums", nobody remembers him growing up. And he could very well be an illegal alien, but nobody will investigate. He belongs in jail people.
This article has some important things to say. It is brilliant. You, bob-oso, have nothing important to say and are not brilliant. Sorry. Maybe studying psychology and psychiatry for years would help you achieve greater insight.
Science often exploits "value nihilism". It makes arguments and discourses look good, tidy and neutral but at the end "undo" nothing! Are sheer exercises enough?
There are three political parties at the moment in this show. LET OUR WRITER TELL READERS WHO 'HE TRULY WRITES FOR'!
Something well worth recalling by all:"Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” - a bold and fine quote in analysis of "comparative narratives" -- except a wish that it were possible to find a space sufficiently contextualizing Governor George Wallace's statement "SORRY I WAS WRONG". On top of all, Dr King said "He had seen the promised land", but added "I might not get there with you". Are these not bits and pieces of a story? Yes they are. Somehow, luckily we abstract in science-writing --- take clearly responsibility for the choice of the materials that matter to the sense we want to convey. In that sense, perhaps we are not nihilists for fond but strategists for chaos!
Lucky that stories are often written in as many diverse a manner as possible. In the time we are in and for all we have seen, many have heard and read stories. If a group of powerful people have a history of wanting to rule and thinking that no others do better than they, even when they leave economic surpluses for them to squander, many wonder what kinds of boxing cloves would have to be put on the hands of even the best political box that would do a magic of "conscientious" democratic game of political competition? It is about the psychology of trouble making in politics. On it, chart or reconstruct the narratives backward using: Watergate, 'Clinton' and the court case: Republicans versus Democrats of the Bush versus Al-Gore era. I truly wonder what to manufacture that can clean up all and help not breaking down the man named OBAMA! And yet he is not broken, because passive voting culture is seeing light, even if outcomes take time owing to depth of confusion and obstructions.
Let's hope I am not psychically attacked for this and my computer is not turned into ashes by agents breaking through all possible marks!
Being from Emory University, you may be familiar with James Fowler's work on the spiritual stages. Just as I was reading your piece a thought came to me that may serve as explanation for Obama's lack of accomplishment thus far.
There are those who claim Obama has moved through more of Fowler's stages than most politicians ever come close to. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spiritual-wisdom-secular-times/201106/spiritual-leadership-the-case-barack-obama-part-1) He is probably more or less at Fowler's stage five (Conjunctive Faith.) Here the person holds a unitive worldview. His "commitment to justice is freed from the confines of tribe, class, religious community or nation." He wants to see unity in the world, wants to contribute what he can to this end, but does not always have his stuff together about exactly how to go about doing it. Fowler's words: Stage 5's "readiness to spend and be spent finds limits in its loyalty to the present order, to its institutions, groups and compromise procedures. Stage 5's perceptions of justice outreach its readiness to sacrifice the self and to risk the partial justice of the present order for the sake of a more inclusive justice..." (Fowler wrote this in 1981. - Stages of Faith, Harper, San Franciso. How COULD he have known??)
Given that we are accustomed to leaders from far lower stages (the prior administration evidencing traits from Fowler's Stage 2 or 3 (!) and the "bully dynamics" you mention residing largely in Stage 2) we cannot recognize nor appreciate the value of a more enlightened leader. True the bottom line is that our country has yet to benefit (much) from Obama's presidency. But we can continue to hope. Should Obama experience further growth to Fowler's Stage 6 during this presidency, we can expect truly forceful action in the future.
Fowler's stage Six, called Universalizing Faith, is populated by such rare characters as Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Here the person has overcome the paradoxes that held him back in Stage 5. Stage 6 people have become "incarnators and actualizers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community...they create zones of liberation from the social, political, economic and ideological shackles we place and endure on human futurity." In plainer English, it means at Stage 6 people will risk the current order of society to bring about a universal justice that extends to all people, no matter what the risk.
Since a move back to a less evolved leader in 2012 could be disastrous (the Tea Party candidates existing some three to four stages below Obama) we should hope, pray, chant, send good vibes to Obama, hoping he will move forward in his faith journey, reaching Stage 6 while he is still in the position to do this country some good.
Margaret Placentra Johnston
www.exploring-spiritual-development.com
Hello Margaret Placentra Johnston --- wonderfully gracious of you! Thanks for reaffirming what it means to be touched by the "white light", what it means to swim in the "golden flame" and what it means to be surrounded by the "violet flame". You put religion in its pluralism to context. Last night I listened to the radio down here - a few middle-age males discussing the theme "there is nothing new under the sun". I listened to how the philosopher they invited came in to make a case in-between but somewhat 'surfacely' beyond. Our problem is partly the size of ignorance surrounding us amidst the light we do not open ourselves to see, enjoy, trust and appreciate.
In the midst of all blames and denigrations, relatively well summed up in your comment, truly it is easy to see how people underestimate the mysteries and the ways they come about. Political trouble-makers think it is all game as usual but give no time to see a Master's hand: one saying enough is enough with you stubborn children who continuously fail to learn. Whether physics can explain most of these going by its "dark matter" theory, is an open issue and yet one thing is sure: WE MUST NOW WAKE-UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT AND ABLE TO PEACEFULLY ADVANCE HUMANITY.
THANKS FOR CLEARLY STATING THE CASE WITH EXAMPLE THERE. They may rise to oppose, but the fact remains that you have made a wonderful case!
Thanks for this truth, blueskykate1. Nature's essential resources – energy, definitely, but also clean water, food-producing land and other basics – are peaking now, or on the verge of it, while our atmosphere's ability to cope with more greenhouse gases has reached its limit. There is no return to the Garden of Eden. THIS is the TRUE STORY we need to accept and face. Once faced, this reality can still (but just barely) be dealt with. A global substantial tax on carbon emissions would be a good start. Use the revenue for clean energy subsidies. Diminishing income disparity would definitely help – the wealthy should not feel their fortunes can insulate them from the common problem. And let's strike TRADE off our values list: trade means shipping stuff all over the planet, which means energy and pollution. Could a candidate for high office say these things? Winston Churchill offered BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS, and he was heard, because the Western world was on the verge of a catastrophic war. Today our whole planet is on the verge of a catastrophe at least comparable. Please let's everybody wake up!