Obama 's words in 2005 (and my considerable digression)

[barking_iguana]

yesthattom reminds me of Obama's two posts to Daily Kos, both in 2005.

Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party and this follow-up.

My word that man is smart, right, and at least for a politician, extraordinarily intellectually honest.

We're so used to seeing things go badly. Will his humility be sustainable as President? If not, will his personality come apart in ways that discredit him, everything he stands for, and those of us that support him? Etc.

You know what? No, things won't go that way; at least it's very far from likely. I don't know just how well things will go, but that's a more realistic question than how badly. This will be the story that puts the lie to Po-Mo nihilism. The story that say if you care about anything at all in the first place, then effort and intelligence actually pay off in ways that will matter to you.

And to chemoelectric I say that in a world where so many have become dispirited, to believe that nothing (at least nothing in the realm of government and politics) ever turns out genuinely good, chemoelectric's criticism of the thrill people get from Obama's rhetoric and of Obama for using that rhetoric is misplaced.

When one is actively suppressing hope in order not to be devastatingly disappointed—yet again, one is nearly paralyzed and can't be much of an agent for what one wants. Allowing real hope back into ones outlook is a return to a healthier, less disordered state. Of course such a cathartic change will bring a thrill. What would be abusive would be to keep people in that state of flux, so that they retain the cathartic thrill instead of getting the newly available satisfaction of agency. I did not see Obama be abusive in that way.

Instead I saw Obama repeatedly deliver, depending on your perspective, appropriate mass therapy or uplifting, non-theistic sermons that were finely tailored to America's current needs. There are many ways in which Obama may disappoint and prove mediocre. But as a speaker to the nation, even FDR is second rate when the scale is set to measure Obama. You have to go back to Lincoln to find someone comparable.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Barack Obama gives two types of speech, one to which I respond with ‘nothing’, and which others also should find unmoving—and the other to which I respond with pleasure and indeed a thrill. Is it possible to tell which speech is which, and why? It’s a question to ponder, since one other than I can only know by inference what goes on in my head. People should feel ‘nothing’ when given E plabnista such as ‘Yes, we can’ chants, and they should feel good when Obama speaks as he did at Mile High.

I disagree with the juxtaposition of ‘mass therapy’ and ‘uplifting’. I do believe that Obama does ‘mass therapy’, but that the most important aspect of this is how he makes people feel ‘nothing’ when pelted with words like ‘liberal’ or ‘spread the wealth’. If people feel uplifted then much of the reason is that they no longer feel shoved down by right-wing poison.

A person should be on level ground: no lower, no higher. When you start in a ditch the level ground is quite an uplift; but when you go far above ground there are eventual, needless falls and disillusionment.

My objections to the religious stuff I already repudiated.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

I think "yes we can? is an integral part of convincing people that yes, indeed, they can make a difference. It is not a whole speech. It comes with an already established and usually justified assumption that there is a shared goal. When the top of the ditch is higher than your eyeballs, it requires some reassurance there's solid, reachable ground above.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

‘Yes, we can’ may have attracted, especially, a lot of very young people. I do not know an alternate method for attracting very young people, so my input on this is purely negative: ‘Yes, we can’ is not a good way, but it’s perhaps the best I know; it is the method of an advertiser; it is similar in spirit to the famous Coke song. I intend to spend the rest of my days pondering the problem of a better way.

When Obama needed to appeal outside of those particularly vulnerable to advertisers, he had to work harder. (It would be nice to know what Obama wrote for himself. See below about Kennedy.)

Related: Recently I read or heard that Kennedy wrote all of his inauguration speech except the famous false dichotomy. I hope that is true.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Re. Kennedy: You say false dichotomy, because you see that we can and should do both. I say it's not, because he was calling for a shift of focus, as I think almost all adults and most interested teenagers would have implicitly understood.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Really? I don’t think I would have implicitly understood it, and I’m pretty smart.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

You know, people believe there is an invisible man who lives in the sky. I know, because I’ve been there. The reason people believe this stuff is because it is written that way, and people are trained to take words seriously in the wrong way. Especially as the IQ goes lower (or when there is too much ‘philosophical’ or religious training) there is a tendency towards rock-solid thinking of the sort exhibited by George W. Bush. And his ‘evil’ vs. ‘good’ is at the level of about a 106 IQ.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

BTW, who did write Ask not...?

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Bill Ayers. :)