On Obama.
I've been hearing wildly differing reactions to Obama's sweeping victory two nights ago. Some people, myself included, are celebratory, excited about what the winds of change have wrought in American politics, enthusiastic and hopeful that perhaps the US will now have a president who will approach that office with some kind of dignity and respect. Some people are just bitter that their candidate lost, and are inherently distrustful of anything remotely related to the Democratic party.
But what baffles me are those people - and it turns out I'm related to a number of them - who are fundamentally cynical about politics and politicians in general, who have made unfounded claims that Obama is the less ideal choice of the two candidates, because at least with McCain we would have known what we were getting. Obama is promising "change" - what is this change, and since when it change necessarily a good thing? And this is not even getting into the wild speculation and conspiracy theories (my family loves conspiracy theories) that Obama has some kind of a "secret agenda", that he's just as much a part of the Washington power elite as anyone else, that he's going to take what Bush started as far as the abuse of civil liberties and wasteful spending and bring it to the next level. Simply because (as far as I can tell) he is: a) a politician (who can't be trusted), b) a Democrat (and we all know how they love to spend money) and c) he's too charismatic (and look what happened in 1930s Germany when they elected a charismatic leader).
It irritates me that anyone would jump to these immediate conclusions about Obama almost immediately after his election, when they gave Bush a free pass for years and didn't start in with the criticism until it was wholly obvious that it was well-founded. It's not that these people are Republicans - I'd describe them as libertarians - but for some reason that I just don't get, Obama rankles them. Maybe it's because, after eight years of a president and administration that completely abused their positions, they've simply become distrustful of any and all political figures. I suppose I can sort of understand that. But Obama isn't even president yet - he hasn't even DONE anything yet. His supporters are excited about him because he has promised to make changes to an entrenched, static political system in the US, to repair the image of America abroad, to curtail an unpopular war... no one knows how he's going to do this yet, and I think that mixed with their enthusiasm, every American who voted for him is also waiting to see just how he's going to deliver on his promises. The guy has an extraordinary weight on his shoulders, a huge responsibility, and if he can do half the things he's said he will, the nation will be a better place.
As for change... It operates outside the moral dialectical realm of good vs. bad. It's neither. It's just NECESSARY. Stasis leads to corruption, it's the law of entropy. Change at least introduces something new. For a lot of people, the very idea of change is threatening, because it introduces an unfamiliar context and requires them to find a new way to cope with that. It's comfortable to live in a world that, while deeply damaged and rotting from within, at least has rules that you understand. But this is the whole point of why Obama got elected: he was able to couch those terms of shaking things up and making a lot of people's lives uncomfortable in hopeful terms. It might not be fun in the short term, but in the long term, it's going to be better for everyone.
So why did Obama win this election? My cousin made the claim that it was a "fake election" (though to be fair to him, both Bush elections were also "fake"). Nothing could be further from the truth here. Obama won because he was more organised. People across the country got behind him and spent hundreds of hours tirelessly campaigning for him in their communities. He raised millions of dollars on his website and through campaign contributions - all completely above board and transparent. There's nothing suspicious about where his money came from, or who he owes his allegiance to. Major corporations didn't fund his campaign in exchange for the expectation of favourable treatment later - the American public did.
There's a lot of misinformation around Obama. Not surprising, since we live in a world that, more than in any other period in history, perpetuates a huge amount of false facts and agenda-fueled opinion through that most democratic of arenas, the Internet. A lot of this misinformation, I have to say, has come out of the McCain\Palin campaign and is still making the rounds. In the final weeks of the election, as McCain started to look at the numbers and get desperate, he went on the offensive and started delivering low-blow after low-blow in an attempt to discredit his opponent. But McCain was nothing compared to Sarah Palin, who apparently pulled numbers and "facts" out of thin air in front of cheering right-wing crowds. These facts were not even meant to discredit Obama amongst undecided voters - they were intended to whip the Republican-supporting masses into even more of a frenzy at the idea of that "terrorist-abetting, money-wasting Obama". Well, it was a cheap ploy, and frankly I believe it lost them the election. People preferred to vote for someone with an optimistic, positive message than someone with a mean-spirited, smack-talking one.
Anyway, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
But what baffles me are those people - and it turns out I'm related to a number of them - who are fundamentally cynical about politics and politicians in general, who have made unfounded claims that Obama is the less ideal choice of the two candidates, because at least with McCain we would have known what we were getting. Obama is promising "change" - what is this change, and since when it change necessarily a good thing? And this is not even getting into the wild speculation and conspiracy theories (my family loves conspiracy theories) that Obama has some kind of a "secret agenda", that he's just as much a part of the Washington power elite as anyone else, that he's going to take what Bush started as far as the abuse of civil liberties and wasteful spending and bring it to the next level. Simply because (as far as I can tell) he is: a) a politician (who can't be trusted), b) a Democrat (and we all know how they love to spend money) and c) he's too charismatic (and look what happened in 1930s Germany when they elected a charismatic leader).
It irritates me that anyone would jump to these immediate conclusions about Obama almost immediately after his election, when they gave Bush a free pass for years and didn't start in with the criticism until it was wholly obvious that it was well-founded. It's not that these people are Republicans - I'd describe them as libertarians - but for some reason that I just don't get, Obama rankles them. Maybe it's because, after eight years of a president and administration that completely abused their positions, they've simply become distrustful of any and all political figures. I suppose I can sort of understand that. But Obama isn't even president yet - he hasn't even DONE anything yet. His supporters are excited about him because he has promised to make changes to an entrenched, static political system in the US, to repair the image of America abroad, to curtail an unpopular war... no one knows how he's going to do this yet, and I think that mixed with their enthusiasm, every American who voted for him is also waiting to see just how he's going to deliver on his promises. The guy has an extraordinary weight on his shoulders, a huge responsibility, and if he can do half the things he's said he will, the nation will be a better place.
As for change... It operates outside the moral dialectical realm of good vs. bad. It's neither. It's just NECESSARY. Stasis leads to corruption, it's the law of entropy. Change at least introduces something new. For a lot of people, the very idea of change is threatening, because it introduces an unfamiliar context and requires them to find a new way to cope with that. It's comfortable to live in a world that, while deeply damaged and rotting from within, at least has rules that you understand. But this is the whole point of why Obama got elected: he was able to couch those terms of shaking things up and making a lot of people's lives uncomfortable in hopeful terms. It might not be fun in the short term, but in the long term, it's going to be better for everyone.
So why did Obama win this election? My cousin made the claim that it was a "fake election" (though to be fair to him, both Bush elections were also "fake"). Nothing could be further from the truth here. Obama won because he was more organised. People across the country got behind him and spent hundreds of hours tirelessly campaigning for him in their communities. He raised millions of dollars on his website and through campaign contributions - all completely above board and transparent. There's nothing suspicious about where his money came from, or who he owes his allegiance to. Major corporations didn't fund his campaign in exchange for the expectation of favourable treatment later - the American public did.
There's a lot of misinformation around Obama. Not surprising, since we live in a world that, more than in any other period in history, perpetuates a huge amount of false facts and agenda-fueled opinion through that most democratic of arenas, the Internet. A lot of this misinformation, I have to say, has come out of the McCain\Palin campaign and is still making the rounds. In the final weeks of the election, as McCain started to look at the numbers and get desperate, he went on the offensive and started delivering low-blow after low-blow in an attempt to discredit his opponent. But McCain was nothing compared to Sarah Palin, who apparently pulled numbers and "facts" out of thin air in front of cheering right-wing crowds. These facts were not even meant to discredit Obama amongst undecided voters - they were intended to whip the Republican-supporting masses into even more of a frenzy at the idea of that "terrorist-abetting, money-wasting Obama". Well, it was a cheap ploy, and frankly I believe it lost them the election. People preferred to vote for someone with an optimistic, positive message than someone with a mean-spirited, smack-talking one.
Anyway, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.