Ruminations of an Expatriate

Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category

Ralph Stanley Does Obama Ad

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Wow. I think it is really cool that Bluegrass music star Ralph Stanley has recorded an ad promoting Obama.

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One Main Reason I Support Obama

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Fouad Ajami, “professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University”, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, though critical of Obama’s foreign policy vision, in two sentences explains one of the main reasons I support Obama.

So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama’s own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America’s claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama’s rise.

Further along Ajami correctly, I think, notes:

This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling.

I think Ajami is certainly correct, but disagree profoundly with his belief that a sense in the USA public of “American exceptionalism” and that the USA as an “imperial republic” are good things. The sense of USA exceptionalism has it’s roots in the Puritan immigrants to America, “who saw themselves as ‘chosen people’ who had made a mutual ‘covenant’ with God and who would have a special role in establishing a ‘new Israel’”, as John Judis put it in his excellent book The Folly of Empire.

This sense of exceptionalism is what rationalized the assault on Native Americans, the Monroe Doctrine and the subsequent hundred years of the brutal domination of Latin America, as well as the USA adventures in Asia and Africa aimed at securing national governments compliant to USA economic interests and the current adventure in Iraq.

I have absolutely no understanding of how it is that Ajami, or anyone else, can argue that a national sense of “exceptionalism” is a good thing, but believe that he is correct in his estimation that Obama would usher in “a break with the consensus over American exceptionalism.” I know McCain would not.

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Obama and USA Racism

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

The fact that purely political circumstances have forced Obama to address the nation relative to the matter of race, and to answer for the remarks of the pastor of his church is sickening. The whole episode illuminates an appalling double standard.

No Caucasian candidate, past or present, has been called to answer for the bigoted remarks of their pastors or clerical supporters. Candidates have been occasionally called to repudiate such comments, but never to answer for them. But, then again, the bigoted comments of such prominent republican clerical lunatics as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and et al, have not been aimed at the Caucasian economic and political power elite, such as were those of the Rev. Wright.

The episode clearly illustrates the racism which continues to permeate USA society.

I am one who shared a dorm room in 1968 with an 18 year old African-American fellow from rural North Carolina whom I often found crying in our room, from his home sickness and alienation amongst an only recently marginally less than all Caucasian student body. Often he told me he was going home, though, ultimately he persevered.

I shared a roach infested one bedroom apartment in Wash. D. C. with an African-American fellow during much of 1970. And for nine weeks in 1970 I shared a tent in a Cuban sugar cane cutting camp with Black Panthers from L.A., whom treated me, a wet behind the ears 20 year old, middle class Caucasian kid, with great kindness, and often tenderness.

None-the-less, I recognize the racism that resides within me. Evidenced, for instance, by the anxiety I noticed years later while approaching a group of young African-Americans on the street in Seattle, and such. And I don’t think I am at all unique in this respect.

Racism continues to be the great contradiction in USA society that must be addressed straight on. And I think Obama did that today. He pulled few punches. A characteristic I find very refreshing in Obama is his honesty to tell us what we may not want to hear and to tell us it is our responsibility to effect change.

Kudos to John McCain for defending Obama and waving his campaign staff off of the Rev. Wright story and shame on Senator Clinton for not.

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Obama Plagiarism

Monday, February 18th, 2008

Everyone paying even casual attention to the democratic nomination campaign has is aware of today’s dust up wherein Clinton campaign officials are accusing Obama of “plagiarizing” Massachusetts’ governor Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial stump speech, countering his opponent’s contention that words aren’t important. Patrick has assured the world that he and Obama are friends and supporters, and often share stump speech material.

The funny thing to me in the whole sorry episode, which the media is eagerly lapping up, is revealed in this Politico.com report.

Here’s Patrick at a rally for his gubernatorial campaign on Oct. 15, 2006, during the final stretch of his successful campaign against then-Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R):

“But her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is that all I have to offer is words — just words. [bold added] ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, [applause and cheers] that all men are created equal.’ [Sustained applause and cheers.] Just words – just words! ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words! ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words!”

So Obama, whose chief political strategist, David Axelrod, and speech writer, Jon Favreau, also worked for Patrick, may have been sharing stump speech material with Patrick; but it was in response to Clinton’s lifting an attack from Patrick’s republican opponent.

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