I try to strike a balance between being confrontational, and jovial in most arguments, but it seems like it's not worth the effort. It's one thing to tell some one that they're retarded for liking a dumb movie, or a shitty band. It's another thing to undermine a persons' core beliefs; to call into question the root of what, or how they believe things should be. We're talking about arguing over governing principles here. So instead of trying to toe the line of going too far, I just opt out. I choose not to engage in these discussions of politics, and I'll do my best to change the subject when I see the tempers flaring in others.
The problem here is this: I'm now apathetic. I've become as cynical as them. I haven't even been of voting age for two election cycles, and I just don't care enough to think about the process. I don't know the candidates, I don't know the issues, and I end up avoiding what information comes my way naturally. Why would I want to be involved in something that breeds such negative energy; such contempt for your friends and colleages?
So, fast forward a bit: I want to vote for Barak Obama. I want to be involved in the process for the first time, and I can't explain why in any certain terms. I feel like I need to tell people about it, but I'm still cautious of that fine line in political discourse. But at the same time I want to see people let go of the apathy, and the cynicism that we all see as normal. I don't want to argue anymore, I want to agree.
It's been said that we're just 'falling for it'; that we're just members of this 'celebrity cult'. I keep being told that he has no substance, and that "Hope or Change don't make a good road map." I don't want to believe that.
Here's a quote from a good friend of mine on the very subject. It encompasses how I feel so perfectly, and he words himself better than I can.
Barak: You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
I think it's an incredible line. I read way too much about the election and could probably bore you with policy arguments and votes each candidate has taken and so forth. In that "pick your candidate" quiz at the start of this thread Obama was like 90% of my ideal. I very much know what I'm getting into, and I'm not generally moved by empty emotional appeals, but when I was watching that speech, that line in particular made me say "Holy shit, that's a brilliant line" and others I spoke to who watched the speech had the same reaction. It's empowering and incisive -- it's all too easy to wait for someone else (like Obama, even) to come along and fix our problems, but that abdicates a portion of our own will and potential.
He has well-formed policy proposals, a health-care plan that the Wall Street Journal has deemed superior to Clinton's (as has Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor), an economic stimulus plan that media and experts have praised, a consistent record of opposing Bush's Middle East foreign policy (e.g. opposing the Kyl-Lieberman authorization of force in Iran, which Clinton voted FOR, despite her admission that she didn't realize in voting for the Iraq resolution at the time that Bush would misuse that delegation of authority), etc. He has plenty of substance.
But for all the talk about how "inspiration" and "hope" and "change" are vacuous, they are a valid end in and of themselves. There are millions of disaffected cynics who have given up on our political system, and as much as selling himself as a candidate, Obama is selling the idea that mass concerted action can change that -- that people who feel left out by politics as they stand today do have a voice if they choose to use it. The way you effect real change in Washington is with a sweeping popular mandate. GWB claimed he had one in 2000 and everyone laughed. He was lucky to even be in the White House at all. Reagan in 1984, however, had a real mandate. That was a crushing victory, and it enabled him to push his tax cuts and budgets and so forth through a heavily Democratic Congress, because politicians were loath to go against the tide.
If Clinton is the nominee, and Clinton wins the presidency, she isn't going to win 35 states. She isn't going to win 58% of the popular vote. She'll win Ohio and a couple of other states, and come in with a weak majority. She sure as hell isn't going to get her mandate-based health care plan through Congress, and Senate filibusters and opposition from Blue-Dog Democrats within her party will tie her hands on a number of policy initiatives. That's where a 50%+1 approach gets you. Obama recognizes an opportunity for a real paradigm shift instead of another round of "ok, now it's the Democrats' turn to screw things up," and the foundation for that change lies in reaching out to ordinary citizens and inspiring them to believe that Washington politics need not be mired in the same endless cycle.
That's not a cult of personality -- the whole point is that it's not about Obama, but rather about all of us, as citizens -- and I think anyone who dismisses it as vacuous is falling victim to cynicism: perhaps it's all a "fairy tale," to borrow a phrase, perhaps it's youthful nonsense to imagine that moneyed interests and entrenched partisan divisions could ever be dislodged, perhaps it's all a quixotic endeavor. Can millions of ordinary citizens crying out in unison really change our political system? That's what "yes we can" is all about -- let's find out.
Daniel Quinn wrote that you don't change the world with programs and policies and legislation, you change the world by changing minds so that everyone wakes up one morning and says "today we do it different." So that's it. It really can be that simple, I think.
-Lum
i'm burned out but it's mostly because we place so much in the top level of the federal government and not at the bottom. who's more likely to know my name, my needs and how i think my councilman or the president? that's how i see it. i really do hope, and i do mean hope, that obama does get through and that he does manage to cause a shift in power because refuse to believe that the cynics are right and that we can't really change anything even despite the evidence.