I am of more than one mind. It's been like this for a while. This diary is my unplanned attempt to take the next stop in putting words to it.
This diary is most closely linked, to my eyes, with the 2 other ones I have written about Obama and narrative/story.
Here goes:
Part I: The Good
I was in favor of Barack Obama from the moment that I started to care about the 2008 presidential primary campaigns. I don't usually care about primaries. I didn't care about this one until just after Iowa and I felt something shift in the fabric of this country. I don't know how best to name it but it got my attention. Not quickly enough to re-register as a Democratic Party member (I have been not affiliated for a while; I am significantly to the left of the Democratic party) -- I missed the deadline by one day. But enough to start paying attention and know who I wanted to win.
My attention led to interest, led to avid support. Mostly visible in action through small relatively regular contributions.
What caught my attention hardest is how candidate Obama related to blatant deception: he stood clearly in opposition to it in both word and action.
He had a context to do this in.
First, what I would describe as the disorienting persistent horribly ugly deception of candidate Hillary Clinton (I never realized what she was about til the primaries, and I was kind of shocked to observe the deep deception in how she spoke and acted in that time). He took it down. Quietly, calmly. He took it down. In his actions and his words.
I had never before seen anyone truly defeat the kind of deception that Hillary Clinton engaged in during the primaries, at least not like this. I won't go into the most recent experience I had with this kind of deception-practice in a social justice context, but I will say I still get sick to my stomach just remembering what happened and trying not to imagine what is still occurring.
Next, the McCain and then McCain/Palin campaign. Again, blatant deception in Obama's opponents. Again, Obama's quiet effective practice seemed to draw out the insanity so it was more and more visible. It seemed to me it got more and more visible for what it was even to people who usually don't notice the practice of deception, who are functionally immune to the pain of that practice.
Of course I was on Obama's side. Of course. He was able to do this. To stand quietly and effecively against practices of deception that I had never before seen defeated the way that he did. I didn't have to scream and mourn. I could support someone who in his action showed he knew how to deal effectively with this kind of insanity inside an equally insane cultural context.
Part II: "We"
I knew some things from very early on that placed me in conflict with Obama's work if understood correctly (I didn't entirely get it at the time, not in words at least).
I knew that Barack Obama represented the best that the collective of this nation had to fill the role he was seeking (president of the country). I knew that, appearances to the contrary, I am in some significant way not part of this collective. This became very clear when I read Audacity of Hope. This "we" he was talking with -- I could only keep reading after struggling to name and acknowledge that I am outside of it. Once I stopped trying to fit myself into a "we" I am not part of, I could read for what it said.
Outside of this "we," sure, but I still supported him. In my assessment, it is a responsible thing to do to support one from a collective who is the best fit for a particular role in it. The best that this collective has to offer for this role -- how could I support it, even from outside this "we"?
And besides which: that enacted opposition to deception he was engaged in. I was watching that and amazed to see it from someone seeking this role in this deception-rooted cultural system.
Part III: Story
After the election, I was pushed by a couple of events (insignificant in some ways except how they shifted my thinking) to re-assess the lens through which I had been viewing Obama's practice. Yes, he stood against the overt deception his opponents practiced. Yes, he both stated and displayed an ability to relate to truth as a source of power.
But his practice is itself based in part on lies. Who could seek the presidency of this nation without relying on lies? This made sense to me. But the thing is, I needed a framework to see it though.
I found a framework in an online article written by Marshall Ganz -- who had been heavily involved in the Camp Obama organizing trainings. This article explained to me what was going on that I had felt but not been able to see clearly.
This is how I think about it:
Barack Obama is a scriptwriter with a powerful powerful culturally resonant multilayered "story."
Analysis in conversation with my girlfriend brought out another piece that never would have occurred to me alone: he is not only scriptwriter but also a character in this story.
Scriptwriters like this, I realized, hold a deep fascination for me because they display an incredibly astute observational understanding of cultural patterns that are often invisible to those for whom the cultural system is so natural as to "not exist" in their perception.
I recognize in Barack Obama's story a very very keen anthropologist-type of comprehension of the cultural material of this collective (the nation and the larger cultural system it is part of). He sees the cultural dynamics very deeply, I think, to be able to draw so brilliantly on various strands of cultural material in this story, to weave together what he has woven in it. And I know he has people around him but my sense from reading his books is that he is the lead thinker and weaver in this work.
In my assessment, scriptwriters like this also desecrate truth because their communication goal is creation and control of narrative in service to whatever their agenda is. I don't use the word desecrate lightly.
In Obama's case, truth's power is just a tool to use to achieve other goals. This is not something I would have been able to imagine on my own, such a thing does not exist in my landscape. But clearly it does exist here in this context and so I have to recognize that it is happening.
This desecration places me in opposition to now-President Obama at some pretty deep levels.
And yet, I recognize that this is the best that this collective can do for a leader in this position. It cannot not desecrate truth, that's outside of its nature as an entity. So what do I really oppose?
Part IV: Telling Truth on a Slant
"Don't hate the player -- hate the game" is what someone told me when I was struggling to re-align my perception.
This entity (this nation and what it is a part of) is in my assessment a created and artificial context. The ways of life inside of it are based in deception in some very profound ways. This horror can't be revealed too starkly or members start to get ... unstable.
Barack Obama offers new stability through his story. The collective self ("story of us") of the group and the nation the group makes up is based in lies, but it makes its members feel better. Lessens the instability.
The game sets real bounds on what anyone inside of it can do and not do.
Is Barack Obama functionally telling truth when he desecrates it? Telling the truth that members of this collective cannot exist as cultural selves without certain kinds of deception, without a "story" to make it seem that this entity we are inside of is other than a monster, a cancer?
I think he probably is.
Part V: Overt Deception, Again
These last few weeks have shown me that the overt deception that Barack Obama stood against so well and skillfully in the campaign is still very active inside this collective.
And again, President Obama is handling this with quiet calm effectiveness. Again, the insanity of the overt deception is becoming clearer and clearer and its practitioners are, apparently, self-destructing in public view.
Isn't it interesting how those practicing overt deception become visible parodies of themselves when up against Barack Obama's steady quiet resistance?
And I am again reminded that I have a certain natural loyalty to the Obama side of this particular struggle. Again my heart is with his practice, for how he moves so well against this overt deception. Again I am following details that make me sick, because there is a certain pleasure in watching the deep quiet skill with which Barack Obama slowly and carefully makes visible and then takes down this particular form of insanity. One aspect of this skill is that his opponents start to take themselves down. It's not a coincidence that this keeps happening.
Part VI: False Foundations
"Don't hate the player, hate the game." Well, I don't hate this game, exactly, since hate is the other side of love and that is not what I feel. I am sickened by this game, sickened to my core. For me, the experience of living in this context is like living in a ferociously toxic sludge pool. I experience a sort of ritual debasement caused by my own choice to participate in its rules for the sake of my own survival.
I think that Barack Obama is telling the truth even though he stands on false foundations. He is telling truth about where the boundaries of this collective and its game are in relation to truth and deception.
I am not moved by his Story of Us. I think it is based in lies at some deep levels.
Without the necessary lies, I suspect this nation would itself self-destruct.
I think now, as I did during the campaigns, that Barack Obama is the best possible being to fill this role of president of this nation at this time.
I think that some of the truths he is telling in his actions are outside the story he promotes -- if you know where to look. It's not that simple, of course.
And as always, I could be wrong.