ATTACK OF THE OBAMITES!!!

Actually, I mean that I'm now going to be responding to comments left by three of my close friends, all Barack Obama supporters, after my defense of the Senator from Illinois in the wake of "Scary-Black-Preacher-Gate," which also included another explanation of why I won't be voting for him.

Here's the original post.

Here's the comment thread for that post.

And now, here are some of the key points my buddies made, in chronological order, starting with my grad school pal Mark:

To your point of him standing behind Wright's negative sermons, I think he distanced himself from them not because it was a smart political move but because they actually are wrong. Or, more so, they do more harm than good. What's the point of standing there and saying "God Damn America" when he can stand there and make incredibly sophisticated, nuanced and true statements that boldly put the blame on America without being so incendiary? Just as working from within the institution is not going to effect major change, whining about it will not either.

There is certainly value in raising the ire of a mass of people. But Obama has been able to not only engage people on an emotional level, but a fiercely intellectual one, as well. Tuesday's speech has been the clearest demonstration of this so far.

Obama would be a fool to think he himself can create positive change from within. Which is why he is mobilizing the people (a "movement", if you will though I'm hesitant to use that term). They (we) are the only ones who can do anything. He knows this, and knows that it is in stark contrast to, for instance, the Clinton's cutthroat you-only-need-51% m.o.

Next, my high school and fellow Longhorn chum Matt chimes in:

On supporting Obama or not supporting Obama and on the bigger issue of gradula change or not - I think you should be careful what you ask for. You want an ideal that is not possible with human nature at this point in our history. There is much I would change about our world and much that saddens me deeply, even more so that I have children. But the world is about as good to as many people as it has ever been and the US has been a big contributor to that. I think we're way off our path these days and need to change - but I don't think revolution is the answer. The result would not be a better world - it would simply be more chaos, fear, death, injustice. Look around the world and see what happens when the walls come down. Except in very few cases, it gets much, much worse for anyone and for almost everyone affected, it's not something they deserved.

Finally, another of my grad school buddies, Reuben, inserts his two cents:

Why wouldn't you just say "fuck this shit" in your head and spend that same hour learning and perfecting your mastery of the game?

Nader running for president has never seemed to be turning over the board but rather bogarting his way into a game that he can never really win.

Yes, there is some political gain to be made by the candidate that can't win. Look at Al Sharpton in 2004. He brought shit up that none of the other cats would touch and people were grateful for that.

But if Nader REALLY wants to drive a wedge in the two-system, which I'm all for, then find someone who agrees with him and can voice third-party ideas in a way that is more accessible for the people. Get more organized. Take five years and raise money. Be serious about WINNING, not just opening the conversation. Good ideas from a loser are just good ideas from a LOSER. And if history is really told by the winners then, dammit, build a third party that can WIN.

Obamites to the left of me, Obamites to the right of me...where do I start to defend myself? Hmmm. Okay, I'll take these points one by one, and finish off with an overview. Here goes.

Mark may very well be correct to indict the efficacy of Reverend Wright's more controversial statements in terms of catalyzing actual social change. After all, as many observers have noted since the story broke, such rhetoric, going back many years, has not been uncommon in American black churches, which means such speakers may just be flapping their gums, preaching to a choir that isn't ready to make change happen right now. Maybe it all amounts to salving over deep wounds and nothing more.

But then, this kind of makes a point in and of itself. That is, if angry rhetoric about America's many misdeeds is off-putting and counterproductive, and the "sophisticated, nuanced" kind of dialogue Mark favors is mostly confined to left-wing journals and read only by academics and liberal snooty-snoots, what actually is effective? And effective is what we need.

What really concerns me personally is that Wright's statements are off-putting in the first place. Think about it for a moment. The US has at least two holocausts on its hands, the Native American genocide, and the African slave trade. Our government has supported abroad a seemingly endless parade or torturous barbaric dictators such as Augusto Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, and Saddam Hussein. Our government blessed the wealthy white adventurers from New York who stole Texas in 1836 by annexing the young republic and going to war with Mexico. There's Jim Crow. There's the drug war. We're the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons, not just once, but twice. We firebombed civilians in both Germany and Japan. We napalmed civilians in Vietnam. We've tolerated white supremacist groups like the Klan. We deny health care to people who are too poor to have insurance, often the same people turned out of good jobs by centuries of policy that favors the wealthy instead of the people. We torture people in prison. We torture prisoners of war.

I'm sure you get the idea. The US has performed, and continues to perform, heinously immoral acts upon innocent victims. We, as a people, are in deep, deep denial about this. "God damn America" is a rather mild rebuke. In school we are taught how great our country is. The mainstream news media attack Obama for not endorsing such "greatness" by wearing his American flag arm band. The reason Wright's remarks are off-putting is because Americans, as they say, "can't handle the truth."

What I want to know is how Obama, or any politician, can unite us, can change us for the better, can move us into a "post-race" era, when it is controversial to actually reference what the problems are.

On the other hand, Matt has very reasonable fears about my demand for change right now. Nobody should worry about this, at least as far as my being a revolutionary is concerned: I just finished reading Orwell's Animal Farm for the first time, and it strongly reinforced my misgivings about actual revolution. Suffice it to say, I do not support any immediate social change. When I say "right now," I mean that I would be happy just to see the ball rolling in terms of American culture. That is to say, I don't think political change is possible without a preceding change in attitudes. You must have a large majority of the population united before taking on the elite powers who actually run the country.

Right now, many Americans do indeed embrace "change," but it is unclear what that means exactly. Obama, who has a platform centered around some modest but positive policy change, is usually silent about the exact nature of "yes we can." I strongly suspect that, without philosophical unanimity, or something coming close to it, the Obamite movement will be in great danger of falling apart under the intense ideological attack sure to come in the event of an Obama election.

Obama's putting the horse before the cart. In building a large coalition of voters to get him into office, he is necessarily minimizing the most problematic of issues. This will definitely come back to bite him in the Oval Office.

One more point with Matt before moving on to Reuben. I disagree with his assessment of "human nature." I believe that most human beings are compassionate, moral, helpful people: social conditioning must make them used to that which is intolerable; changing the culture means changing the social conditioning. A just, fair, and equitable society is possible. But even if it's not, that's no excuse for not trying to get as close to it as we can. Kind of like space travel and the light speed barrier, we can't break it, but we can approach it, and that's pretty fucking fast!

Last, but not least, is Reuben's indictment of the efficacy of Nader's endless stream of presidential runs. I am also concerned that what Nader's doing will ultimately be ineffective. He is indeed pissing off lots of liberals. He's lost some of his strong supporters from previous runs simply because they acknowledge that, whatever his intentions are, establishment Democrats have essentially turned the Nader factor into a personality thing, as far as actual debate is concerned. Supporting him is, for me, a compromise position.

But, I think you can tell, the game, as it stands, for me, just isn't worth playing anymore. If, against all odds, Nader were elected, he'd be shackled by the same institutional forces currently shackling Obama. They'd throw him out within six weeks of the inauguration. There must be public force behind any agent of change within the government. That simply doesn't exist right now. My take on Nader is that he's going after the greatest institutional power currently rendering liberal philosophy moot, the Democratic Party. That is, in addition to trying to shake up the Democratic establishment, he's also appealing to like-minded liberals, that is, liberals who understand the whole institutional dynamic, showing them that fighting for one's beliefs is still possible in America, and encouraging them to insist that the public discourse be about issues, instead of vague personality differences.

Yeah, it's a long shot, but it strikes me as being more likely to succeed than Obama's inside the system machinations, which I believe are doomed to being watered down at best, to being white zinfandel, when what we need is a helluva cabernet. At worst, we'll get Franzia in a box, and be prompted to call it delicious.

Anyway, the overview:

Here's the situation. We have a public school system that successfully turns off over half the country's population to politics in general. We have a mass news media, which reflects the concerns of the wealthy elite who own the country, manipulating and lying to the people who actually vote. We have a two party political system dominated by corporate campaign cash and lobbyists. We're in an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war that all three candidates support continuing--further, the US political establishment doesn't even understand what's going on there. We can't talk about the most important issues facing our people in an honest and straightforward way. Racism continues unabated, as the whole "scary-black-preacher-gate" well illustrates. The rich are getting richer, while everybody else gets poorer. People are suffering right now, which is exactly how many powerful Americans want it to be.

Obama's got his work cut out for him. I have no idea how he can pull it off, let alone survive the likely political smears, and possible political violence, coming his way. I totally understand his appeal, and fault no one for supporting him. I just think it's all a waste of time.

Okay, fire back, Obamites!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$