Obama will accept the Democratic Nomination tonight, which seems like a fairly big deal. Only 45 years ago--not so very long, although we can pretend--Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, in which he called for a country would be judged by their abilities and goodness rather than anything people are unable to determine themselves. If a man be good and great, what a waste to care that his skin is black!
In recent months, Barack Obama has lost his luster. Tonight he must shine. Fashion know longer finds him so exciting, and the "celebrity" trope has certainly been a mind-fuck for weary Democrats, forever afraid the Republicans have some dastardly trump card of baseness up their sleaves. Their trump-card, precisely, is this: causing Democrats to worry so much that they emasculate themselves. I feel as though Democrats are beginning to doubt that their party would win an election if the public knew all their secrets. Why have any? Do Democrats actually doubt that the Republicans are now proposing to intensify the Bush model? After the last eight years, don't Democrats fully understand the urgency of repudiating the Bush Doctrine of empty moral posturing and hegemonic projection around the world? Obama need only be forthright and confident and, as smart as he is, he will win. The Republicans have not only made a losing argument; because of their policies and the people who vote for them, America has lived it.
Be like John Kerry was last night. Be unafraid, be terse, be witty, be tough and even savage--but never lose sight that this game is a chore. Although at times it appears to have a logic of its own, politics do not exist for their own sake. They exist because they prevent humanity from destroying itself in an orgy of anarchic chaos. Of course, government itself can be disruptive, particularly when it rapes a foreign culture by invading that culture's land. George Bush started a war. It wouldn't have happened without him and the ideological coterie of neo-imperialists that have aggresively suggested America exert and assert itself abroad since almost the end of the Cold War: first with NATO expansion into Russia's near abroad, then in China, then in the Middle East after the China intrigues were put on hold by 9/11, and now once again in the Caucuses. Putin's responses today--blaming the US for manipulating the entire conflict in Georgia--is infuriating, but it is instructive to note that he seems to be replying to the voice of American foreign policy the week of the invasion, John McCain. Relations between the major powers would likely become increasingly contentious if McCain were to win.
Tonight, we will find out how much Barack Obama trusts his own judgment. If he does sufficiently, the Republicans are toast. If he has lost his own self-confidence, and has lost direction in the darkness of the tirelessly shameless conservative movement, John McCain will likely pummel his way into the White House.
Comments