Tag Archives: Bush

Black Styles, White Racism, and the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright Controversy

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I was raised to think that fidgeting, shouting and mopping one’s brow when speaking in public was unrefined. My mom only meant to teach me how to act, but her instructions left me judgmental of other cultures and styles. I squirmed with her when Elvis Presley gyrated and grunted and sweated. Together we hated Hitler’s rants, and shrank in dismay from Khrushchev’s noisy shoe. Loud, angry, confrontive voices still do nothing for me. They feel rude and threatening. And I’m not alone in this.
 
Maybe it’s my Calvinist streak, but I like my leaders calm, cool, and collected, like my man Barack Obama. To be sure, I would wager that Barack could make any congregation anywhere jump out of the aisles and pour into the streets anytime he wanted, as Jeremiah Wright can. And certainly Reverend Wright, a caring if conflicted Christian, has demonstrated on Bill Moyers's show that he can do scholarly and cerebral analysis along with the best of them.
 
I was also raised to be snobbish about grammar and diction. But people learn to speak however their families speak. Changing one’s everyday speech is an unimaginably arduous, individualized, time-consuming transformation not “covered” in English classes. Nowadays, many pop and sports celebrities who've won fame with colorful urban dialects will hire highly-trained linguistic coaches to give them personalized instruction in accent, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural modifications.
 
Every human being alive would like to be able to switch occasionally into more felicitous professional, business and academic English dialects should occasion arise, especially if one's dialect reflects a limited, impoverished or unlettered childhood. People are just more comfortable being around people who sound like them; fewer doors slam shut, and more open. Unconscious linguistic prejudices may not always be deliberate, but they’re very real and very limiting.
 
I can assure you that if Barack started writhing and sweating and screaming street slang in my face, I wouldn’t be able to focus on his logical argument. No, I’d be too worried about whether he was in good-enough physical shape to let himself get so worked up, or if he might be about to have a heart attack, or fall off the stage, or embarrass himself linguistically, chase somebody around the room maybe, or shoot somebody.
 
And if people around me, black or white, start to sway and wave their arms and call out and fall out? Well, I’m just not used to that. There’s nothing wrong with such choices, but people in my stuffy childhood churches just didn’t do those things. Where I came from, such behavior was considered, dare I say it, uncivilized, primitive, even tribal.
 
But what's so wonderfully “civilized” about a culture with a long sad secret record of exploiting and even obliterating other, weaker cultures? Civilization is as civilization does. I like the way people from so-called “primitive” southern-hemisphere cultures so generously share their time, money, warmth and help with one another. That kind of behavior sounds like pretty advanced-civ to me, more advanced in many ways than the often cold, hostile, lonely, so-called “modern” cultures of today. Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of western civilization, said he thought it would be a good idea.
 
All I'm saying is, there is no one single “way” to “be” that is universally “right.” All cultures, young and old, techy and traditional, have much to learn from one another, and much to teach.
 
I’m finally getting used to all the shouting and signifying so many people delight in, and I certainly know there’s nothing wrong with it. My kids love the loud emotional unity of rock concerts, and even I have a bit of the wild thing in me at times. But my mom’s early strictures insured that I wouldn’t come around easily to accepting other people’s different stylistic expressions. It’s all about what you’re used to.
 
But it’s not, as my mom believed, about what is “nice” or “right” or “correct” or even “appropriate,” because styles vary from culture to culture. It's about different ways of being civilized (and uncivilized.) And it's about holding to the highest standard of respect and support for human life everywhere, the Golden Rule of treating all others as we would want to be treated. It's certainly not about some picky stylistic stuff.
 
I was a military brat, so my far-flung army-post classrooms were racially-integrated long before the civil rights movement nudged America toward living up to more of its ideals. My classmates were pretty much all courteous, well-spoken, middle-class students of a remarkable variety of races, because in those days, the military establishment required cultural, stylistic and linguistic conformity. Non-white families could find reasonable welcome in the military if (and only if) they could demonstrate that, aside from skin color, they weren’t any different from most middle-class whites. All my classmates back then, regardless of race, seemed indistinguishably mainstream.
 
I didn’t grow up around many poor or uneducated people, or around any charismatic preachers and congregations, for that matter, although happily, I've had broader exposure to the world’s diversity since then, thanks in part to more representative television programming. I try to remind myself that my own carefully-taught class and race prejudices are limitations I want to remedy, both as a Christian and as a caring citizen of the world. Fortunately for me, I’ve been privileged in adulthood to spend time with good, patient people from all backgrounds, and have become comfortable with a broader range of personal styles.
 
Like everyone else, I acquired my own personal and linguistic styles from my parents, peers, and “neighborhood.” My family was a WASPy, bookish clan which gifted lucky-me (through no particular effort on my own) with a style and dialect acceptable in most circles. But there are many other delightfully valid ways of being an American swirling around me today in this great country—native and immigrant styles from all over, academic and business styles, hip-hop and Hispanic, inner-city and down-home country, Islamic, Asian, Caribbean, and a whole slew of other newly-blended personal styles I can’t begin to keep up with, but my kids can.
 
But the thing about personal style is, nowadays, it’s a positive, fluid thing, individual, unique, interesting, entertaining, and not so tied to race or ethnicity or social class as it once was. And voters are finally figuring all this out.
 
It seems to me that despite all the fuss about the particular words that Jeremiah Wright used, demagogues replaying his sound bites over and over don’t really care what Wright thinks or means, but rather, they're bent on dividing us along prejudicial lines. The small-minded con-men guiding the anti-Obama smear campaigns are absolutely thrilled to jump on any available excuse to show us ad nauseum how Barack once befriended a black man whose personal style makes a lot of voters uncomfortable.
 
The hucksters replaying such tapes are hoping white voters will conclude that “those people” “like Barack” are different from “us,” that “we” will think we have little in common with “them, ” that Barack won’t understand us and can’t represent our interests. Dirty politicians manipulate our unconscious racism so that we will see only difference, separation and error, instead of our many commonalities, our shared American dreams and challenges.
 
Such politics of division, hate and fear have a long successful history of convincing Americans time and again to vote against their own best interests. But as Barack keeps reminding us, American voters are smarter than that now. We’re becoming more enlightened, more open-minded and inclusive, more loving.
 
Smears-by-association can no longer distract us for long from the common pressing issues we all face, the real threats which ignore borders and cannot be solved competitively, but only through global cooperation, like a faltering economy, a culture of violence, costly wars, growing energy demands, poverty, political corruption, inadequate access to education, weapons proliferation, organized crime, infectious disease, poor health care, environmental degradation, mass migrations, crumbling infrastructure, pornography, homelessness, natural disasters, addictions, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, prejudice, civic alienation, and apathy itself.
 
Americans are finally seeing the relevance and possibility inherent in the American ideals which Jesus, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Mandela and so many other great leaders have urged upon us with one voice. We are finally turning away from the mean-spirited thinking which created all our problems in the first place, and toward the higher shared consciousness of universal brotherhood that alone will save us and our tiny blue planet.
 
 

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CNN’s Disappointing Coverage of the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Election Returns

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I was greatly distressed to watch CNN’s coverage of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary election returns. I tuned in when the polls closed, and listened until nearly 11 p.m. when I got disgusted and turned the TV off.

 

Not a single commentator mentioned the most glaringly obvious outcome, that Barack Obama, a virtual unknown a year ago, had used his time in Pennsylvania to gain from ten to fifteen percentage points on well-known local girl and party-insider Hillary Clinton, an eight-year first lady to a popular president—and thus added to his chances of winning the presidency. As in every other state Obama has campaigned in, people who get to know him, like him, vote for him, and go on to campaign for him. Not a soul on CNN’s political panel mentioned how, truly, in the general election in November, only the math will count.

 

No one brought up the important point that Hillary has played every card the Republicans will use against Obama later—except the overt hate-and-fear-of-black-people racist card—while principled Obama hasn’t even begun to untie the huge and readily-available bag of old Clinton family footage, quotes, votes, indiscretions, innuendo, mistakes, and general nastiness (think Kenneth Starr’s report, for starters) which anonymously-funded demagogues have no doubt already begun pawing through and honing, with anticipatory glee, to disgusting effect. Bill Clinton survived his campaigns because he was wildly appealing and charismatic. Hillary is neither, and her negative campaigning against her widely-liked and respected opponent only makes her seem smaller, meaner, scareder. Why didn’t CNN’s commentators point out how Barack has survived Hillary’s worst, while she hasn’t even begun to reckon with the evil that will come at her when the Republicans strike up their band?

 

Several other astonishingly clueless comments were voiced by the CNN bobbleheads-of-the-night. One callous voice commented in passing that, if super-delegates coldly overrule the will of the American people in November, “Sure, the Black people will be disappointed, but…”

 

“The Black people?” “Disappointed?” If representative government itself, the most sacred and fundamental premise of democracy, the promise of one-person-one-vote, is arbitrarily overturned…?

 

And only black people? What about Barack’s white multitudes? His youthful supporters? His devoted older ones? Rich and poor, women and men, party regulars and otherwise, Obama’s passionate followers are rapidly increasing in number, putting aside their long-held political cynicism and warming themselves at his bonfire of hope, a hope grounded in cherished American ideals and in trust in his character, vision and leadership.

CNN’s team did somehow manage to mention Hillary’s promise to “obliterate Iran” if Iran attacks Israel with a nuclear weapon. That’s just great; now two of three presidential candidates have casually threatened instant global thermonuclear war (see McCain’s earlier “bomb bomb bomb Iran”) in the Middle East. Not a single mouse-like CNN voice squeaked a word of protest. No one pointed out that Iran (unlike Israel) has no nuclear weapons, or that such an action would automatically condemn millions of innocent men, women and children to instant death, or how Hillary’s knee-jerk reactions automatically elevated Israel’s interests over America’s.

Hillary later would expound on her plan to return to the long-discredited cold war era. But why not bomb Iran all the way back to the stone age right now, as Rush Limbaugh has already argued? Obama’s thoughtful comment was, “One of the things that we've seen over the last several years is a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate….  It doesn't actually produce good results. And so I'm not interested in saber rattling.”

Hillary’s appalling threats demonstrate only that she shares George Bush’s cowboy approaches to diplomacy, and we've seen where that will take us. Such foolishness has become increasingly evident in her other equally-rash and polarizing comments, such as her offhand public description of President Putin, Russia’s popular leader, as, “a KGB agent—by definition he doesn’t have a soul,” which offended Russians everywhere while certainly dashing any hopes Hillary might have harbored of successfully negotiating with Putin during any future presidency.

Hillary also thoughtlessly insulted China recently by advising President Bush to break his promise to China’s premiere to not boycott the Beijing Olympics. In these few careless words, Hillary Clinton managed to alienate one-fifth of the world’s people along with all their leaders, by cruelly dismissing the single project dearest to their hearts. She also displayed an astonishing lack of integrity, shocking in a Senator and inconceivable in a presidential candidate. This is the person we want representing us and running our country?

Marilyn Ferguson (The Aquarian Conspiracy) convinced me years ago that when a nation's cultural and intellectual leaders take hold of an idea (as American leaders have embraced Obama's hopeful message) then soon enough, the rest of the people will follow. Barack may be in a tough race against time, but it is clearly on his side.

Today's Democratic race can be characterized as a long-overdue contest between Obama’s mission to change the destructive game of American politics—a goal we can all only benefit from—and Hillary’s unprincipled insistence upon playing that old same old cynical game oh-so-cleverly. Hillary is in it to win it, and if she does—which is the most she can hope for at such an unprincipled price—then for the American people, her winning may well mean losing—our ideals, our hopes, our freedoms and maybe even our way of life. CNN could have at least hinted at these baneful implications of her supercilious campaign.

 

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Obama Presidential, Hillary Polarizing, on Chinese Olympics, Petraeus

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In a prepared statement, Hillary Clinton urged President Bush to break his solemn oath to China's Premier that he would attend the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremonies. In this one swell foop, she managed not only to pander opportunistically to a xenophobic American public and carelessly mirror Bush’s light-weight cowboy-style diplomacy, but also offended one-fifth of the world’s population, permanently alienated Chinese leadership (as she recently insulted and dismissed Russian leadership off-handedly), and displayed a profound probity-deficit shocking for a Senator, let alone a Presidential candidate. 

Barack Obama, on the other hand, responded to an audience question on the same topic by respectfully highlighting a brief list of legitimate U.S. trade, intellectual property and human rights concerns (including Tibet and Sudan) while diplomatically offering measured support for China’s most-cherished long-term project, and reminding Americans, in his trademark non-polarizing way, that Olympic ideals bring the world closer together. He may even, in those few sentences, have brought his own adopted city of Chicago’s dream of hosting a 2016 Olympics one step nearer to reality.

Now that is political genius. 

Another example: Hillary used her brief opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, to deliver a confrontational speech intimidating her perceived political opponents—Republicans of all stripes, war supporters, and others opposed to her Iraq agendas. Obama, on the other hand, listened to the answers to his questions, and then led Petraeus and Crocker so expertly to points of commonality that they were smiling and nodding like bobble-heads in Obama’s direction. Barack concluded by thoughtfully challenging everyone at the hearing to work diligently together to clearly define “success” in Iraq, so that the war could be ended quickly and positively, as desired by all.

 

Hillary is a famously tenacious in-fighter, which is exactly what we don’t need today or tomorrow. Barack Obama’s whole life has also been about taking on huge challenges, persevering, thriving and prevailing against great odds, but his consensus-building problem-solving approaches to meeting those challenges don't create the blowback that Hillary’s belligerance does. The last thing we need is a paranoid President who bristles at perceived slights, sees enemies on every side, and creates new ones at every turn of events.

 

We need a President capable of vanquishing America's enemies via the best (and only) permanent approach to conquest, by turning them into friends. Barack knows well that the best way to befriend anyone, whether Iraqi, Chinese, Republican or any other, is to generously support their most cherished projects and goals, and to always treat them with understanding and respect. Hillary knows how to talk tough, but we should all know by now where that will get us.

 

Americans and others throughout the world need Obama’s statesmanlike vision, his wonderful people-skills and many leadership abilities, so that we can all come together to solve our common pressing global problems—disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and yes, violence itself.

 

Hillary’s down-and-dirty-roll-up-your-sleeves-and-mud-wrestle approaches to resolving conflicts may have served in her old world, but in the new world of tomorrow, such competitive models will be sadly deficient. Unfortunately for Hillary, her street-fighting instincts so overwhelm her peacemaking ones that she can't even enter the brave new world of tomorrow–Barack’s world–not even in her dreams.

 

 

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Is Moqtada al-Sadr One of the Good Guys?

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I only know what I read in the papers, and I’m nervous about speaking up for someone who is, for the moment at least, being demonized by the Bush administration, especially someone who is currently shooting back at American forces, albeit in self-defense. But I must raise the question of whether Moqtada al-Sadr might not be one of the “good guys,” a strong, spiritual leader whom world opinion should now be ecumenically supporting.

 

Al-Sadr is apparently a wildly popular leader of the Shiite poor, who, time and again, has demonstrated his commitment to peacefully resisting the overwhelmingly-superior military forces bent upon murdering him. Aside from his courageous refusal to relinquish the ancient homelands of his followers to invaders who would steal and exploit them, and his stubborn unwillingness to be assassinated, what has he done to deserve universal media condemnation and abandonment in the west?

 

Because al-Sadr’s charismatic leadership is seen by the west’s most powerful leaders as a major barrier to their hegemony in the Middle East, few journalists seem willing to raise this question. Yet several times throughout this conflict, when it has seemed temporarily expedient for the U.S. to leave al-Sadr in peace, he has urged patience and forbearance among his followers even as the wide-scale destruction of his country by foreign occupiers has continued.

 

Currently, American forces are attacking al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in oil-rich Basra, which is right across the border from Iran. Perhaps Mr. Cheney hopes to provoke just enough Iranian retaliation for this particular aggression to finally justify his own longed-for invasion of Iran’s oil fields? Patriots in Basra and Iran share far more in common with one another than with their American attackers; surely the Iranian government cannot be expected to indefinitely contain the passions of their red-blooded youth, currently standing passively by, watching while their brother-Shiites in Basra are being slaughtered.

 

Isn’t it time we reconsidered the unquestioned place we have given al-Sadr in our western pantheon of demonized enemies? He is a leader to whom the majority of Shiites in Iraq currently pledge their allegiance, one who has often turned the other cheek even while his beloved followers were being killed. Despite being repeatedly stalked, discredited, attacked, betrayed, and occasionally befriended by President Bush, his millions of followers trust him unreservedly to make their decisions for them. Shouldn’t journalists be speaking out loudly and clearly against the attacks upon him? Who are the bad guys here, and who are the good guys?

 

How can we expect al-Sadr’s forces to passively turn in their guns when our own country feels free to unilaterally initiate pre-emptive wars, invade, occupy and shoot up foreign country sides and villages and cities, interfere with sovereign nations’ internal affairs, drop nuclear and conventional bombs on civilian populations, disrupt livelihoods and lives, kill innocents, and stockpile armaments enough to end life on earth many times over? Al-Sadr has not invaded America. The reverse has happened.

 

The Bible does not say “the lamb shall lie down with the lion,” but “the lion shall lie down with the lamb.” In other words, powerful countries must first let their weaker neighbors live in peace. Our own interests, even as citizens of the mega-powerful United States, are served only when our leaders humble themselves to offer good will to all other nations, and treat all our neighbors as we would wish to be treated. It is the traditional moral duty of the military to protect the weak from those who would hurt them, not to push the weak around in order to get whatever a highly unpopular, unresponsive and unrepresentative administration wants when they want it.

 

The willingness to turn to violence to resolve conflicts, whether through state (military) terrorism or through civilian terrorism, turns out to be the problem itself, and not, as many have tried to persuade us, any particular ideology, ethnicity or religion. The burning question too often overlooked in every conflict is: which side is committed to accommodation, compromise and non-violent resolution of this conflict, and which side isn’t?

 

In the past, partisans loyally embraced only their own leaders as the “good guys,” regardless of their personal records of using violence or keeping the peace–whether Bush or bin Laden, Saddam or Arafat, Hirohito or Mao or Stalin or Cheney or Eisenhower or Hitler. In the future, we will realize that the “good guys” are those real leaders, found in homes, businesses, communities, nations, and throughout the world, who are committed to resolving difficult conflicts—which are perfectly natural and human—harmoniously and peacefully. On the other hand, those violent soldiers and suicide bombers representing belligerent aggressors and extremist zealots will in the future clearly be identified as “the bad guys” of our time.

 

All-out war makes sense to me only when people are cornered in their own homes, fighting for survival against overwhelming odds, as al-Sadr’s followers currently seem to be.

 

More and more people today are recognizing man’s inhumanity to man—whether seen in bulldozed homes, in the shattered bodies of innocent children, or in the maimed and traumatized minds and bodies of young soldiers from every land—exactly for what it is, regardless of context, and despite all the attractive ideological, ethnic, religious, and national colors and flavors violence always comes wrapped in.

 

Around the world, journalists, activists and average citizens are turning away from the angry diatribes of opportunistic demagogues and ideologues bent upon stirring their fellow-citizens to torture and murder, and instead, embracing the world’s highest universal values: the oneness of all mankind and the sanctity of human life.

 

Shouldn't we all be supporting those who are upholding these important values, and resisting the use violent solutions in the present conflict in Iraq?

 

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Barack Obama is a Conservative, Not a Liberal

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Barack Obama, like other true American conservatives, is deeply committed to conserving and preserving our American values, ideals, and way of life. The only thing “liberal” about Barack is his openness to fresh solutions to America’s many contemporary challenges.

 

The dictionary definition of the word, “liberal” mirrors the only liberal side of Barack: “not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.” 

 

American conservatives have always known that cooperative, caring, harmonious relationships among Americans and among nations is a very practical goal, critical to our national security. Certainly, we can sustain neither a desirable standard of living nor our well-loved freedoms at current levels of war spending; yet the problems we face in a violent, unstable world relentlessly compound.

 

The American dream of “peace in our time” is the essential and  constitutional business of a government charged with insuring domestic tranquility, a more perfect union, justice, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. Peace has always been a conservative idea. Peace conserves lives, resources, good will, money, health, principles and values, our American ideals and traditional way of life, our environment and talents, our time, energy, and property.

 

We can no longer kid ourselves that America can shoot its way out of a world filled with angry, well-armed enemies and criminals. Growing cycles of hatred, injustice, and violence increasingly threaten the very survival of mankind today, while other serious problems on our small, fragile blue planet go unaddressed. Despite our many prisons, laws, and police forces, despite our huge nuclear and conventional arsenals, our vast military, and our seemingly limitless expenditures for espionage, we are becoming less safe with each passing day.

 

True conservatives realize that peace and stability, both within and among nations, is a practical mainstream political goal for generations of Americans. What better way could we find to show our troops our appreciation and support for their past and future service than to express our debt of gratitude to them by offering them a President truly charged with partnering with our defense and diplomatic leadership to insure that American soldiers never again march into an ill-planned or unnecessary war?

 

Although the vast majority of our nation’s well-informed, well-educated, and broadly experienced professorial “experts” identify themselves as “liberal,” most of them hope to conserve what is best about America through their contributions. It is exactly these same pointy-headed experts we desperately need to bring their knowledge, complexity, and sophistication—i.e., their “expertise”—to urgent contemporary American problems.

 

Fearing change, we often distrust “fancy-talking” experts as “others” and “outsiders,” and thus time and again vote against our own best interests, electing legislators and presidents who themselves distrust experts—with the unsurprising results of bumbling, inexpert political leadership which creates truly bad foreign, domestic, environmental, monetary, social, and defense policy.

 

Barack Obama realizes we no longer live in our fathers’ world. He knows that he cannot find solutions to tomorrow’s problems using the same old approaches that got us into trouble in the first place. He sees that, in today’s small, interconnected world, what we do to others comes back quickly to help us or to harm us, as we have chosen.

 

Just as in WWII, we cannot avoid shared sacrifice, nor avoid all injustices, but we can avoid adding to their sum.

 

We no longer have a choice of changing or not changing. Our only choice now is whether to change for the better, or for the worse. American conservatives everywhere are coming to recognize that Barack Obama is truly our most conservative candidate. With their support, he yet may become our greatest, and most conservative, American President.

 

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Obama Walks With Those Who Hate?

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Michael Gerson says, “Barack Obama is not a man who hates — but he chose to walk with a man who does.”

(Not that Obama is Jesus) but Jesus also walked with sinners. So do we all. So are we all, sinners, each in our own ways…. Let him among us who is without sin cast the first stone.

Obama is guilty merely of seeking out and finding the most compassionate, passionate, intellectual, committed, loving, and yes, angry, leader of the Black church community in his Chicago neighborhood, and not only learning from him, but contributing greatly to his mission to fight injustice, poverty, and the ravages of AIDs in Chicago.

 

Obama has clearly stated their areas of disagreement. He has rejected Wright's words of fear, divisiveness, and weakness. Obama has greater faith that America has come a long way, and wants to go further, wants to live up to our ideals.

 

Obama, like Wright, like all candidates, like all leaders, is not a perfect vessel, as he has said many times. However, he is a uniquely able and good human being, willing to learn and serve.

 

If we once again let ourselves be distracted or frightened by opportunistic campaigning that stirs up old fears, divisions, and hatreds, causing us to unwisely vote once more, out of panic, against our own best interests and those of our country, we will never solve our problems, which will require the whole country coming together to make that happen.  What is in our best interest is: working in unity to resolve the common problems which all Americans, white and black, must resolve—our huge challenges in education, poverty, jobs, fair wages, health care, unwise wars, terrorism, debt…..

 

Barack Obama has the potential to be the truly great, unifying, inspiring leadership our country desperately needs. We can get back on track. Barack promises to help us get the job done. Let’s take him up on his offer.

A Clinton Coronation or an Obama Revolution?

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Hillary can’t wait to put the finishing touches on her wonderfully aggressive 60’s agenda, while Barack is at home in a tomorrow Hillary can’t visit even in her dreams.

 

Hillary is thrilled with the chance to add more contributions to her amazing lifetime list, while Barack is thrilled with America’s chances for real change when he is President.

 

Hillary is amazed at where she’s been and what she’s been able to accomplish, looking forward to recognition and vindication for her life’s work, while Barack envisions efficiently accomplishing today’s most pressing American policy goals and then moving forward to heal the world’s common global challenges.

 

Hillary loves herself-in-power ruling over her former enemies, while Barack loves the-power-in-himself leading a unified America and world into a hopeful 21st century.

 

Shall generations await coronation of Jeb Bush into an inevitable succession of Clinton and Bush kings (and queen) reigning in hubris over a 20th century past? Or will we charge our servant Barack Obama to lead us into an American future of unimaginable possibilities?

 

 

 

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“Attack-Dog Hillary Heals Nation and World.” (Not Likely.)

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I find watching Hillary Clinton’s baseless attacks against Barack Obama repellent, if unsurprising. It's now clear she'll do and say whatever is necessary to win this election, which is exactly why Obama is running for President: because he wants to change American politics.

 

In recent weeks, and in last night's debate in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton lost my respect and my vote, in any election, along with the votes of many other Americans. I’ll vote for an honest conservative, or sit out the race, if my only choice is a slippery politician who will lie to my face again. I’m so tired of listening to lying Presidents.

 

Bill Clinton subconciously must want his wife to lose, because his smear attempts, like hers, aren’t doing her any good. Bill’s just mad because he told Barack to wait outside the kitchen door another eight years and that uppity whipper-snapper had the sand to tell him no. No! To him! Bill Clinton! Regrettably, Bill Clinton is destroying his solid legacy in an enfeebled attempt to extend it. (It's called hubris.)

 

Maybe I should be glad the Clintons are out of integrity, because such behavior can only help the Obama campaign. Still, I hate to watch.

 

Barack speaks so persuasively and eloquently because he’s been writing and saying the same things to anyone who will listen since his college days; nowadays he just has bigger audiences.

 

If Obama were killed today, he would be mourned as one of our greatest and most beloved American heroes for the priceless vision he came so close to successfully pulling off—the transformation of American politics. Like Dr. King, Obama has served the American people passionately for many years, fighting for the same values, ideals, and goals, and winning many important fights. May he live to fight and win many more.

 

Barack Obama, like Dr. King, is at great risk for assassination, because an Obama Presidency would completely upset the applecart for all the moneyed insider special interests in America on both sides of the political aisle. And there are some scary white supremacists out there who would kill him just for being presumptuous.

 

Obama is not only popular, well-organized, politically astute, and brilliant, he is a very viable political candidate, which makes him a huge target for assassination. Historically, America kills her charismatic popular leaders, those few and rare individuals who are brave, talented, and daring enough to actually stick their necks out to serve the people instead of established interests. Obama and his family are incredibly courageous, as courageous as Dr. King and his family were.

 

What are Obama’s odds of just surviving this campaign? Of living through a two-term Presidency? Of just plain living long, and prospering? I, for one, don’t intend to wait around to support him until after he’s dead. I only hope many more Americans will soon recognize what an unusual and precious political commodity Obama is, and what a rare opportunity we have for real change, if we will come together right now under his capable leadership.

 

How many Americans once misunderstood or opposed Dr. King, who now wish that they had dropped what they were doing to walk beside him? Well, we’ve got our chance again.

 

“Barack Obama Heals Nation and World.” Yes, I can see it. And I will hope and work to see it happen.

 

Please send comments to njcpace@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charisma, Courage, Leadership: MLK’s Heroic Legacy

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A few decades ago, on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I ignorantly explained to my curious classroom that Dr. King was important because he freed a lot of black people. A courageous and well-informed young (black) student raised her hand and gently reminded me: “He freed white people too.”

 

Many black Christian churches proudly plan welcoming celebrations in Dr. King’s honor, in part because he was one of their own. But Dr. King was one of our own too, whoever we are, whatever our race or religion or nationality.

 

Dr. King was that rare, brave, idealistic hero willing to courageously stand up publicly, to speak out, and thus risk his life, so that all who dreamed, with him, of non-violent political change, equality of opportunity in America, and an end to racism, war, and poverty, could find own their own courage in his brave leadership, and walk beside him. 

 

Dr. King's life and stirring words have touched, in our own generation, another great and inspiring leader, Barack Obama, who just as courageously as Dr. King, leads us today, encouraging us to work with him in unity for change.

 

In 1967, at a time when nationalistic fervor made opposition to the Vietnam war an agonizing choice, Dr. King spoke out boldly:  “America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way (in a) revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. These are the times for real choices and not false ones.”

 

Dr. King’s words could not be more relevant today. Barack Obama has been equally bold in his own steadfast opposition to the Iraq war since before its inception, when nearly everyone else was calling for the much more popular idea of vengeance and retaliation after the 9/11 tragedy.

 

If Dr. King were alive today, he would be working to help Barack Obama, today’s bravest American hero, as he courageously leads us to work together for political reform reflecting our deepest American values and ideals. 

 

 Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com .

Message from Iowans to Obama’s Opponents: Sit Down, Shut Up, and Let Him Lead

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When the other Presidential candidates hear Obama’s speech in Iowa tonight (1/4/08), they cannot but feel daunted to compete with the world’s most formidable political opponent since Bill Clinton. Tenacious fighters all, yet must they wish, if for only a moment, that they too, along with the rest of us, could just sit down, shut up, and let him lead. For Obama’s spirit gives us hope, and hope has been hard to come by lately.

 

Even those hearing Obama speak for the first time tonight must recognize his brilliance, eloquence, and depth of passion, his commitment and strong faith in America. It was a soaring speech, a great speech, one for the ages.

 

Finally again, we have a leader we can follow, we can trust. I for one am ready to be led by Barack Obama.

 

I wish he could step right into Bush’s shoes.

 

By this time next week, a majority of Americans will have joined him; the rest will scramble on board soon enough. Because tonight, Obama took on the mantle of Kennedy, of Lincoln, even Dr. King, the greatest speaker and moral leader America has ever seen. 

 

If you’ve not yet heard him speak, please google “YouTube,” type “Obama” in the search box, and watch any of his speeches. Tonight’s speech would be a good place to start, or the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech earlier in Iowa, or any campaign ad. All his speaking events are available on YouTube.

 

Governor Huckabee’s win was also one for the people, and against the entrenched political and corporate powers-that-be, because Huckabee too is a trustworthy patriot of conviction and principle, though not nearly so broad-banded as Obama. I am proud to see that, at least tonight in Iowa, American democracy, howsoever greatly outspent, still works.

 

Hillary Clinton will always be my idol and a great great public servant, but through no fault of her own, she is a partisan polarizing figure, and were she even electable, which she is not, I cannot predict for her any more success with Congress than the brilliant Nancy Pelosi. With respect to demonstrated judgment and useful experience, Obama is the wiser, humbler, and more able leader. And I am just as thrilled to have the opportunity to support a minority candidate for President as I would have been to support an equally electable and capable woman.

 

Like John Edwards, who is truly a great American, Obama is a staunch friend of the working class, yet stronger than Edwards in intellectual depth and breadth, charisma, consensus-building skills, and in holding the visionary and cooperative global perspectives America needs.

 

Republicans, Independents and Democrats of all persuasions already love Obama. No one can think of a word to say against him–they're embarrassed to, because there's nothing to say. He will make mistakes, as all leaders do, greatly tested as they are, but Barack Obama will win the Presidential election in November with the largest turnout and victory America has seen, and with the warmest well-wishes of every nation across the globe. Our best and most-beloved President may yet follow our (however well-intentioned and hapless) worst.

 

I am so moved by the courage and selflessness of this good man, this healer. God bless Barack Obama, and God bless America.