It’s time for some reflection on the eve of a new chapter in American history.
Today there was another “the Obama Administration has already betrayed us” comment, followed by a “the Obama Administration will get punked by the Right” comment from our own scholar-philosopher, D.R . Add these to the pile of “the Obama Administration has already betrayed [choose as many as apply: progressive values, the Constitution, women, minorities, gays]” from the Left.
The Right, of course, already has fallen back to their early Clinton Administration battle lines. I understand the Weekly Standard had a Vince Foster retrospective a few days ago. In no time they’ll be assaulting the Obama Administration with all the subtlety of rabid wolverines.
I care about progressive issues as much as anybody, but right now I’m not in the mood to work myself into a lather about what might happen next. This may be because I’m exhausted with being in lathers about one thing or another these past eight years. Or it may be because the Zen training is finally kicking in. Or it may be my advancing age. Barack Obama will be (I believe I’m counting this correctly) the twelfth POTUS in my lifetime. I remember the elections and inaugurations of nine of the past eleven presidents. The one constant is that what president-elects say between election and inauguration has little bearing on what will actually happen in their administrations. People who are parsing Barack Obama’s every utterance for the Deeper Meaning should just stop and chill. Wait until the day after the inauguration to start parsing.
The whole nation is one big, inflamed wound right now. So Obama has been soothing and conciliatory in tone. Of course, the Left doesn’t like this, because we lefties (rightfully) are more in a mood for torches and pitchforks. I don’t think it would hurt us to be more dispassionate toward the departing Bushies, however. “Dispassionate” doesn’t mean “forgiveness,” nor does it mean “letting them get away with war crimes.” It just means inflamed emotions are not conducive to clear thinking and judicious action.
My impression is that Barack Obama has been extremely cautious when speaking of possible investigations of what went on the the Bush Administration mostly because the Bush Administration is still in office. And my guess is that Congress and eventually the Justice Department will get involved in the investigations of Bush II, but that Obama himself will stay in the background in these matters. However, once the Obama Administration begins it won’t hurt to push for investigations. I’m just saying there’s a huge difference in these statements:
- The Obama Administration should authorize investigations into the Bush Administration.
- The Obama Administration already has shown itself to be a pack of liars and cowards for not declaring clear intent to investigate the Bush Administration, even though such declaration would create a political firestorm that could limit the effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s first days in office.
Once again, I say we won’t know what the Obama Administration is going to do until it comes into existence and begins to do things. Then we’ll know. And even then, it may be several weeks before we start to see patterns and tendencies.
Regarding the Right — of course they’re going to continue their well-established pattern of using every lie and smear they can think of to discredit Barack Obama. And some of it probably will stick now and then. But it does seem to me the whole nation is in a very different place from where it was eight years ago, or even four years ago. I don’t think the same old tactics are going to work as well for the Right as in the past. I could be wrong; we’ll see.
Nothing is ever perfect. There are no unmixed blessing. Happy endings are not endings, but moments in time when beneficial forces come together, and as soon as they come together they begin to come apart again. Just because you saved he neighbor’s kid from drowning doesn’t mean the kid won’t grow up to be a serial killer. This is not pessimism, but realism. And I accept this. There’s a Zen saying, “the cup is already broken.” Every solid thing you see around you is just a temporary arrangement of molecules, including you. Do what you can do to make the world better, then let it go.
On the plus side, if you look at American history you see that the best administrations often have been preceded, or even bracketed, by the worst ones. Abraham Lincoln was preceded by James Buchanan and followed by Andrew Johnson, two bottom-of-the-barrel specimens. Franklin Roosevelt came after Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Maybe circumstance will be kind to America one more time, and give us a great president to follow possibly the all-time worst. We can hope. But at the moment, I’m not going to assume. We’ll see.
“The cup is already broken” – I like that a lot. So true. We’re kind of all on the Island of Misfit Toys. Or as the Beatles sang of “Nowhere Man” – Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
I’m cautiously hopeful, not only because of what I’ve seen so far in Obama, but because we’ve surely just come through one of the worst presidencies ever. Somehow we survived it, and on Jan 20 I’m definitely hoisting a few glasses of Trader Joe’s fine French champagne to this achievement. It will be the emotional counterpoint to the tears I cried while watching Fahrenheit 911 on its opening day. As your examples show, good people ascend in the wake of regressive times, and I believe Obama will further this pattern. Despite our young country’s many failings, our karma isn’t THAT bad, and it’s time for our good side to appear. A psychic I sometimes respect said that in the Bible Code, it’s written “BARACK OBAMA – YOU WILL BE ASTONISHED”. Take that FWIW. Whatever it means.
I’ve been recalling the kinds of things I worried about during the last eight years – for example, fleets of American warships moving into the Straits of Hormuz, deliberately intending to provoke Iran and kicking off WW3, while investigating how to position myself in oil futures – and I am so grateful we managed to avoid that conflagration. I’m certain cooler, shrewder heads in the Pentagon prevailed – completely flipping around the thesis of Dr Strangelove, where an insane general had to be contained by a sane President. In neocon world, everything is flipped around, and the military is the peaceniks and the Executive is belligerant and insane. Thank God for the military.
We didn’t avoid the decimation of our financial system, which is the price all delusions ultimately pay for their folly. This is the primary mess Obama will have to deal with, and the prognosis is not good. His approach so far is to bring on establishment players, the ones responsible for creating the mess in the first place, instead of learning the lessons of FDR, to be more radical, not less. Obama, like the rest of us, will learn as we go.
BTW, along the lines of “the world is not in the same place it was 4 or 8 years ago” do see this video of “Ann Coulter“. A send-up like this is long overdue, and it’s refreshing to see time move past her expiration date.
Much wisdom Maha.
If FDR was the first, Obama is # 13, enough to engage denial. 😉
Only one bone to pick, Andrew Johnson did try to carry through Lincoln’s rapprochement program with the rebel states but was thwarted by the radical republicans in Congress who’s insistence on retaliation and retribution led to Johnson’s failed impeachment.
How true, Maha.
Let’s all chill for a day or two and enjoy the moment….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxxit6Cukg
The way I see it, we’re a big ship, and Obama has to turn it.
When a ship is big enough, you can’t even tell it’s turning. I’m hoping there will be prosecutions; we already have confessions!
But how could he possibly declare this early on? When a lot of idjits are still infesting the House and Senate? Bush may be gone, but the hangers on are still hanging on.
Only one bone to pick, Andrew Johnson did try to carry through Lincoln’s rapprochement program with the rebel states but was thwarted by the radical republicans in Congress who’s insistence on retaliation and retribution led to Johnson’s failed impeachment.
That’s the Popular History version of the story, but that isn’t what actually happened. Johnson (a Democrat) was primarily interested in being sure the old Confederate states were returned to the Union asap with white Democrats firmly in charge, and the freed men unable to vote. He undermined the work of the Freedmen’s Bureaus and in some cases intervened to be sure white men were not punished for terrorism and murder of black citizens. Johnson thoroughly wrecked Reconstruction, and thereby ensured the Jim Crow era that followed. Much of the race animosity and atrocity that have taken place since his administration can be blamed in part on him.
The 13th for me beginning with FDR. I was in D.C. on jan 20, 1961 when JFK was sworn in.
WereBear says “When a lot of idjits are still infesting the House and Senate” That is part of the problem with the formof gov’t we have. Everyone is looking for short-term advantage to get re-elected.
Maha,
“Do what you can do to make the world better, then let it go. ” This is probably the most difficult thing in Western Civ to do. Mo one wants to “let go.”
I refuse to have my hope trampled on this day, this time of anticipation and joy.
I refuse to let the naysayers rain on my parade.
I refuse to allow anyone tarnish the golden glow of this moment because I have struggled for years to understand how any administration could be so cruel and so wrong.
So mock me and my hope, laugh at me for my happiness, but I will not hear you. I am glad, and my tears of joy will wash away the poison of the past.
I ain’t no Scholard…
Personally I think we need to give O the space to do some bait and switch, now and later. If done well, it could immobilize the right as much as they’d hoped W’s bait and switches would immobilize us. It means we cant jump all over every little thing that O says which we find disagreeable. There are lots of ways Obama can keep the other side unbalanced. But not if he lays all his cards out at once.