Obama: The Beginning, Not The End, Of Change

[boztopia]

http://boztopia.com/?p=395alexander cockburn, America, american history, aspersions, backers, better future, black man, broadband, campaign, capital, change, choice, competing narratives, conservative, Disturbed, dollars, doug schoen, economy, election, energy independence, environment,

Comments

[anonymous]

fuck the marxist muslim nigger...NOBAMA

I want everyone

[boztopia]

to look at this comment carefully.

This, right here, is the past. Fear. Racism. Hatred. And cowardice especially--the cowardice of a wastrel who desn't even have the balls to put their name behind these words.

I won't delete it. I want everyone to see it for what it is, and go and do your part to fight against it. Because this is what we have to look forward to if the moment is lost.

So let's not lose.

One step at a time

[boztopia]

The country needs a lot more cultural readjusting before we can get to that point. But we will. Or, more likely, we'll have evolved to new ideologies that render the old divisions irrelevant. This probably just means we'll be replacing them with new divisions, but progress is progress. :)

Re: One step at a time

[quetzalcoatl_9]

No, I think much of the country would be fine with single-payer, strong anti-polution and safety regulations, stronger support for working people and unions- There's actually a fairly modern European leaning country here- then there's the 'heartland' filled with people trying to build a bridge to the 15th century.

Guess which group has more power of the way the country is run?

You can agitate all you want, but until the Electoral College is abolished, Ohio will determine what's best for the world.

Not exactly that simple

[boztopia]

If it were, why would working-class Americans continually vote for politicians who actively oppose their interests and make their lives harder? Because they're stupid?

No. It's because their minds are jammed up with crosswired culture-war touchstones that put their social values at odds with their economic well-being, and because they're fed a steady diet of disinformation from the media designed to keep them complacent.

We can't just disown the parts of America we don't like, as much as I would like to. That's too easy. Besides, if we don't do something about global heating, the coasts are going to get devoured by the oceans and we'll all be migrating inland in a few generations. I don't want the Dobsonites to have all the power if I can avoid it. :)

Pointless to argue

[quetzalcoatl_9]

the fact that the problem is the willful ignorance of these places. You can't save someone who refuses to be saved

That's the thing

[boztopia]

I don't think they are winning. They were, for a while. But a confluence of factors converged to pull back the curtain on how utterly rotten the core of conservative Republican policies are.

Iraq. Katrina. The economy. You name it, it's on the docket. Each one of these disasters has chipped away at the basic ideology of being out for oneself at the expense of the community. The generation coming up that's voting now has grown up in an era of fear, disgust, and hatred, and they're sick of it. People I never expected to vote for Obama--or any Democrat--are doing so.

The transformative moment is bigger than Obama, and if we don't seize the day and try to reach people with a set of higher ideals, then we're assholes and we deserve everything we get.

I can't let an opportunity like this pass me by. It is, quite literally, everything I've been working towards for the past eight years. We may never get a shot like this again until we're old men, and I don't feel like waiting that long. ;)