Precis
In a recent diary, I was encouraged to perform a literary critique of Barack Obama's public addresses. At the time, I'd sardonically remarked that Obama owed his political genius, his muse, to Stephen Carter, author of Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby and other post-black meditations on bourgeois society. Prior to that, I've alluded cryptically to his capacity for political victory being a function of his status as a "Harvard-educated striver." He is erudite, even clever, and financially creditable. But this certification of his success is in turn indebted to the multivalent culture of suspended disbelief that is quotidian Americana -- the perennial tabla rasa, illiteracy, economic and societal disintegration, and the biennial historicism manufactured by MSM, wherein one discovers national identity in a particular persona.
Rusty as I am in detailing armatures of postmodern aesthetic, I'll attempt a Frank Rich moment to reveal what I know of Obama's contribution to the big-ass narrative of The Dream and to exercise a healthy skeptism of the technology of televangelism.
My reasons for mistrusting Obama's capability to administrate our federal government, much less his ability to convey his idea of the role of Titular Head of Americana, are grounded in the conviction that civil discourse and conflict are the proper tools to ameliorate political agency or implement government purposes; that the alma mater of constitutional republic, "e pluribus unum," is perforce process, not product; that ideas do matter, eventually, as does intellectual coherence -- the notions of reason, of ideology itself, and an "organic" intelligensia.
I have little reason to believe that Obama and I learned the same lessons these past 40 years or the last five. Subjected to the idea of faith per se and faith in the vision(s) and corporate "mission" of the nation's first unitary executive, I have seen faith dismantle the purposes of government. Would Obama have me understand that religious faith and presidential ethics carry the same meaning? Am I to accept the idea that faith will resolve daily and profound conflicts among ordinary Americans?
The deep roots of religious extremism in the United States) is the foundation for a good many Americans' adhesion to the idea that their country is not like others, but a "new Jerusalem," called upon to guide all nations. ... To conclude from the elections that the voter has woken up from this dream that every day threatened more to turn into a nightmare, that messianism is in full flight, would be to go too far, too fast, prematurely. " source
Just so "A Place Called Hope" floated from the ruins of that temple in 1992 toward the 2008 Democratic Convention. Oh, God, the memories: G.H.W. Bush, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop (thinking about tomorrow), Ron Brown (RIP 1996, Croatia), Barbara Jordan, Zell Miller ("Not all of us can be born rich, handsome, and lucky, and that's why we have a Democratic Party."), Bob Casey, Richard Daley ... and, of course, the Big Dawg and his aristocratic mate.
There appears to be a general apprehension in the country about the future. That apprehension undermines our faith in each other and our faith in ourselves -- undermines that confidence.
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What is the catalyst which will bring about the change we're all talking about? I say that catalyst is the Democratic Party and our nominee for President.
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When I say something like (we will change in order to satisfy the present, in order to satisfy the future), I certainly do not mean the thinly disguised racism and elitism which is some kind of trickle-down economics. I will tell you the kind of economy I'm talking about. I'm talking about an economy where a young black woman or a young black man, born in the 5th Ward of Houston -- my town -- or South Central Los Angeles. I mean an economy where a young black woman or man from the Fifth Ward in Houston or South Central Los Angeles, or a young person in the colonias of the lower Rio Grande valley -- I'm talking about an economy where those persons can go to a public school, learn the skills that will enable her or him to prosper. Barbara Jordan's keynote, 1992
Predicting '08 party nostalgia for inter-racial, class cohesion (because there is little empirical evidence that such mobility exists), Obama ellides the mechanics of economic authority and social intervention we had vested government. Instead he deliberately patents false choices in government as a "religious [sic] divide" or potential "partnership" in morally positive actions. Doing so, he appears uniquely qualified to broker his invention, not because of his managerial experience in governance but his metaphysical proximity to America's "chosen" people -- who are incidentally not Jewish.
Further and to affect, he agrees with Americans who have no idea what is the purpose of government: that rights, conferred and continuously mediated not by God but by the state, are opposed, figuratively and literally, to the piety of its citizens. And that belief is just a pathetic indictment of his education and purported aspirations. His political rhetoric is at once apotheotical and disingenuous.
While Obama wrestles for the Democratic Party's mitre, Vatican City -- so to speak -- is burning money and heretics. And we are left to worry how his beliefs and suffering are anything like our own.
Executive Summary
Incoherence, the inabilitity to formulate or apprehend meanings, causes mistrust of oneself and in others. Mark it well. So advises our religious tracts and laboratories. Avoid it and its agents. For mistrust produces neither ethical imperatives nor moral goods. Rather ethical imperatives and moral goods produce trust in just society and just governance.
Ambiguity is the appearance of reality from which one assembles the coherence of a philosophy or metaphysical truths, through reasoning, justified true belief, of actions and things. Ambiguity is the expression, the conceptual differentiation of the imaginary world and the physical world divided by time ( a compound term of changes). How one evaluates that expression is foremost an intellectual exercise, an ethical difference, presupposing a minimal cognitive performance, the abilities simultaneously to perceive and to think, concept attainment.
Hope is, semantically speaking, neither belief nor faith, which may be justified a priori, in lieu of a proof (a true or false judgement), by accepting ideology. It is desire, the unrealized want, the suspended action, an indeterminate thought. "Hope" verbalizes inchoate desire for the future, a definition of ambiguity.
Post-black is a literary device, a trope; (1) in linguistics, a metonymy of persecution; (2) a metaphorical palimpsest of persecution; (3) in semiotics, a postmodern sign or signifier of the status of race classifications, specifically, identification with people and cultures of African origin ("Blacks") enslaved by the United States.
BTDT is the acronymn of "been there, done that," denoting the speaker's explicit and tacit knowledge of a particular set of phenomenological conditions. EX.: BTDT, I'll vote for Hagel. Hope he runs for president!
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- Thank you all for the crit!
Overweening comparative critique of Obama-Carter theses of "The Culture of Disbelief" forthcoming.