I am thrilled that Obama has chosen Joe Biden to be his running mate. I was fortunate enough to see Senator Biden a few months ago at the College Convention in Manchester, NH. The Senator’s late night speech was rhetorically brilliant and immensely inspiring. We are extremely fortunate to have two such articulate men on the ticket, and I know that America will connect with Biden’s common touch.
I was looking forward to tonight’s debate between Clinton and Obama. For those of you who watched it, as I did, I’m sorry. I’m sorry because you probably feel like you wasted two hours, but I’m also sorry to see that this bullshit passes for debate. The ABC News website has a blog with thousands of comments, most of which express great anger at this travesty. I’ll defer to one such commenter:
Our country is engaged in unlawful war, our military is breaking, our economy faces severe recession, our moral standing in the world has collapsed, our currency has lost nearly half its value, our infrastructure is disintegrating, our citizens cannot afford to stay in their homes though Wall Street moguls make billions of dollars annually, our current adminsitration condones and encourages torture – and lies to us about their actions, our borders cannot be adequatley policed for unlawful entry, our school sytems are so underfunded as to be barely above ‘third-world’ standards, our major auto manufacturers refuse to create vehicles that achieve even half the mpg of European manufactures, our minimum wage is slightly above poverty levels, our health care system operates to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, our veterans are ignored; their physical and emotional suffering trivialized, our energy conglomerates purposely stand in the way of advancing alternative energy, our citizens believe elections have been manipulated and stolen – and that our government has manufactured terror to maintain the facade of protecting us, our constitutional rights and responsibilities have been abridged and decimated, our access to meaningful ‘news’ is stymied by corporate media interests, our government spies on us by unlawful means under the guise of protecting our freedoms, our military commanders present disparate assessments of our ‘success’ in the middle east, our citizenry argues about gay marriage and flag burning while congress postures about life-saving possibilities of stem cell research, our airwaves are filled with hate speech spewing from commentators more interested in shocking us than being truthful….. and you waste our time at this most crucial period in US history asking a man as intelligent and insightful as Senator Obama why he doesn’t wear a flag pin on his lapel? This? This is the best we can do to elect a president?####.Bitter in Seattle
Indeed. Given the multitude of issues that are dogging threatening the very soul of this country, it is shameful that an hour is spent discussing flag pins, tenuous connections to some ex-radical from the 1960’s and other crap. When they “cut to video” to show a concerned midwesterner (who’s hair and home, by the way, looked straight out of the early eighties) ask about flag pins and patriotism, I felt like kicking her head in. I wonder how life is for her… does she have health insurance, a good job, college savings for her children? When she was given the opportunity to address the nation, all she could ask about is a meaningless symbol. I bet she has a magnetic ribbon made in China expressing support for our troops on her Ford Taurus.
But there will always be people like her. The real travesty is the fact that ABC sanctioned this garbage. It should come as no surprise to the older generations, after this debate, that very few people my age (25) watch network news. It has reached the point where the whole packaging of the news is so biased as to render it meaningless. There’s a lot of talk over at Kos about boycotts, etc. and I’m all for that. We need to cut ourself out of this destructive cycle:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html
We need big picture talk in these big picture times. Bush will soon leave office, but the damage done to our national institutions, including the media, will take a lot of work to repair. To hear it straight, check out NovaM Radio, home to Mike Malloy, and now, Randi Rhodes. Voices speaking truth to power are out there, but we must actively seek them out. Candidates must do the same and insist upon issues-based debates. If our national networks can not handle this, then let bloggers team up with PBS. No more.
As my previous post (not the psychedelic strobe candle light picture of my Mac) may have imparted, I feel a bit like an outside observer in much of what is going on. When I had this miniature epiphany, I tied it back to how perhaps I’ve always operated, and the re-enforcement of such behaviors by my Peace Corps experience.
As a foreigner in a highly unfamiliar culture, one stands out without much effort and must therefore first become an active analyst before developing any level of understanding about trust and boundaries; since these two attributes constitute much of what defines culture, one must be open to learning them in a method which is likely neither verbal nor written.
Back now in a familiar environment, this angst is channeled into the political process. People often forget that being a good rhetorician does not necessarily equate with being the most loquacious. In this regard, McCain will seem like a wise elder when compared to Bush, which will be in his favor. However, when it comes to inspirational, perhaps transformational rhetoric, Obama is without a doubt the leader of the pack and therefore my choice for President. Don’t worry though, it’s not only the rhetoric I dig, but also the message; Obama has become more Populist recently and seems to have successfully picked up the mantle of Edwards supporters.
Back to what I was saying before that sneak endorsement.
The more I’ve become aware of how deeply the democratic process has been subverted in this country, the more hopeful I am that its exposition and remedy will come in all due haste. No doubt the process has begun, but its accession to the new hegemony will be challenged ruthlessly. The paring of bold Kennedy-era vision with Millennial technology provides a potentially explosive fruit. Key to this is universal domestic high speed broadband access to an open internet (tax funded.)
I think my generation has moved beyond the outside observer status and joined the process via a diverse range of means. In many, if not most cases, the desire of one generation to change the policies wrought by the previous is universal. This fantastic power, does, however, have an often crippling downside, the tendency towards factionalization. If such pitfalls can be consciously avoided, the great power of coalescion can be applied to gravely important matters.
These are shockingly seminal times.
Although I have much to say, let me sit on it just a bit more. For now, please read this message:
President Bush won’t be joining the world leaders gathered in Bali this week for the most important UN climate conference ever. But Al Gore will.
Al Gore just accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he’s heading straight to the Bali conference to call for a visionary global treaty to stop climate change. With the world watching, he’ll bring our petition signatures onto the stage to show the world where Americans stand.
Can you join me by clicking here?
Check out the video of Al Gore’s inspiring Nobel prize speech after you sign the petition.
Thanks!
Yesterday brought more even more guests to the convention. I failed to mention that there happens to be a delegation from Louisiana here. They have brought with them some real positive spirit, and have been a lively part of the audience. Last night the main ballroom was set up in New Orleans style; each table had loads of bead necklaces, visitors guides and miniature bottles of Tabasco sauce. A band, lead by Delfeayo Marsalis, consisting of a trombonist, saxophonist, keyboardist, bass player and drummer, was set up on the stage. In addition to a sweet rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” they performed a memorizing original piece called “Lost in the Crescent,” which was meant to represent, via an alteration between cacophony and piercing solos, the turbulence of the post-emancipation South.
Earlier in the day, Mike Gravel gave a lively speech, making a number of bold claims while lamenting his exclusion from the Democratic party debates. I think it is unfortunate that he is being shut out, and am disappointed in the party for doing this. His big idea is to have citizens draft and vote on laws via direct democracy. I’m not sure whether this is a good idea or not, but it’s worth looking into. What excited me about Gravel was his passion and lack of mincing words; given that he has less to lose than some of the frontrunners, though, this is understandable. A good point he raised is that the current furor over immigration is merely the current manifestation of the tired old pattern of scapegoating. Given how much has gone wrong with this country over the past 8 years, he claims, certain “rednecks” look not inwards but rather seek to blame the ubiquitous “other.” He warned that with either Billary or Obama we’d get only equivocation instead of action while firing up the audience and eliciting a few chuckles as well.
We also had a great presentation from Ben of Ben and Jerry’s fame. If you are unfamiliar with his work, take a look at this short presentation. He educated the crowd, through extremely clever visuals, about just how much of the Federal budget goes to the Pentagon and how little goes to social programs. He advocates a reduction in the military budget to fund much needed social programs, such as school and infrastructure reconstruction, children’s health care, and job training. As an added bonus, he brought in a ton of ice cream… It is important that this theme get some airtime, because as I see it, the military still seems to be funding Cold War era programs as we continue to see the failure of superior technology on a daily basis in Iraq. This elephant in the room is one which the mainstream candidates must address.
Today and tomorrow there should be some Republican candidates, and who knows, there may be some surprises as well.