Zen and the Art of Valve-Control

Too many days in the city, and I am restless, hungry for quiet. My head is filled with "stuff." The greatest temptation of city life, when you are working on a book or your own art work, is to allow "what other people are doing" to fill your head. And numerically speaking, there are just so many "other people" here.

It is the difference between being the subject, or the object, of your own life. Here in the city, information and activity come tumbling over you, whether you like it or not. Someone has the radio on, or the TV on, people are talking talking talking, all the news--gossip especially--fills every space in which you move. You want to walk down the street and pick up a carton of milk, or take the subway to the library or post office, and all of it--in the space of four, five, ten blocks--assaults you. Suddenly, your head is full.

The battle of the city--I am finding, I am recognizing recently--is a battle of valve-control. You are trying to write something, to think something, to make something; your brain must be active, alert, clear, able to move in multiple directions as you work. Once city noise has cluttered the space--if the valve is wide open, information overload has already tumbled in--your mind, your imagination, are boxed in--like alternate side of the street parking days, when people double park and trap you in your space.

If you love city life, you don't experience it as noise or clutter or a trap, but as energy. Wondrous diversity. The world alive and vibrant in one city block, one subway car. Yes. True. But valve-control may be the secret here, too. Or maybe it's more like a Rorschach inkblot test, beauty and chaos moving in and out of relief. There is a zen to this, regardless. It takes work.

Today, it takes a lot of work. Between Mumbai, industry bail outs, and close-out sales on Senate seats... I'm struggling to get out of my parking spot.

On the Other Side of Nov 4

It's been a while.

Gardening and election season took over, for the most part. (And of course various and sundry personal travails.) We ended the summer with about 3 dozen mason jars-full of canned tomatoes, pickled everything (cucumbers, green tomatoes, green beans), some frozen string beans, and homemade chili oil.

The election brought the city-country contrasts to a head. Our country county has typically gone almost 3 to 1 Republican--this is guns and Bibles country. This year of course it was different. Between my house and the county seat, you'd see yard signs like proclamations, house by house. The Obama-Biden supporters staked out their intentions as an act of courage. In the end, the county went 53% to 44% Republican--a tremendous "win" for the Democrats. And, of course, Obama won PA by 10+ points.

I voted absentee in the Bronx and spent three days, including election day, canvassing in PA. Pax put on his Obama-Biden outfit ( a yard sign fitted to his hunting vest) and was a hit. One day I went out with three local women--white women in their 50's, who started out as Hillary supporters but eventually got on board with Barack. One of them was defying her very Republican husband. I learned that this was a common pattern. "You never know how they'll vote," she said, meaning, wives go with their husbands publicly, but once they're in that voting booth...

It was eye-opening, and a privilege, really, to talk to people face to face about their choices and opinions. People were definitely engaged and paying attention (sometimes too much attention--disinformation definitely seeped in); and I appreciated more than I ever have the distances--cultural, social, political--that many people in this country had to cross in order to ultimately embrace Barack as their candidate.

Anyhoo. Here we are.

Snow flurries this morning in the city. Forgot to drain the pipes in the country. Hoping, hoping I won't go back to a pipe-bursting disaster. Winter is here.

Man From Plains

In fact, the name of the tiny rural place in Georgia where Jimmy Carter grew up, where his family farmed, was Archery. The town - it wasn't even quite a town - no longer exists. Jimmy was born in Plains, and he and Rosslyn returned there after his presidential term and still live there.

Just watched the Jonathan Demme bio-documentary on Carter. It's a good one, I recommend. Demme is a fan, of the man and the President, which comes through. Talk about a country boy making his way to the big city; and yet never losing the country in him. Carter is nothing if not a man of place and land, which of course explains his tireless and unapologetic compassion (which has gotten him into trouble) for the Palestinian cause.

It occurs to me that, in this modern world, either you are a person of place, or you aren't. The dividing line between those two ways of existing on the planet is stark. We city people are nomadic, our fidelity is to things abstract. Seems to me Carter's relationship to place and land might be the most defining and driving force of his character, and thus his leadership and legacy.

I'm reading one of his memoirs now and looking forward to Peter Bourne's biography.

Food

What's happening with food right now is the lynchpin that links city people and country people, all around the world.

As city consumers, we can help set the parameters for what food is grown, and how. Food is something we all consume, our universal connector. Health and a thriving environment are the by-products of how we consume food. The more demand we make for real, healthful food - as opposed to processed, soy-and-corn-syrup based foods - the more of it will be grown. Theoretically.

"Increasingly we can see the wisdom of diversified farming operations, where there are built-in relationships among plants and animals. A dairy farm can provide manure for a neighboring potato farm, for example, which can in turn offer potato scraps as extra feed for the herd...To encourage small, diversified farms is not to make a nostalgic bid to revert to the agrarian ways of our ancestors. It is to look toward the future, leapfrogging past the age of heavy machinery and pollution, to farms that take advantage of the sun's free energy and use the waste of one species as food for another." (Dan Barber, NY Times Op-Ed 5/11/08)

Nature is genius, Nature understands how energy recycles itself symbiotically. Greed, impatience, excessively indulged appetites - these are what threw us off, worldwide. I don't know what's in the mind of farmers, perhaps they felt it was their due to cash in on ethanol as fast as they could; regardless, gigantic subsidized corn-farming is wreaking havoc on both food supply and prices.

City people eat. A lot. Join movements for more small-farm foods, make the consumer demand. Sign petitions to your elected officials when the farm bill comes up, voice against inefficient subsidies which support farming practices that do not benefit health or the environment in the short or long run. Buy real food and cook it. The more diversified farms that can thrive, the more likely you can buy local foods which do not require cross country trucking or international transport (more fuel).

I'm not sure what the right balance is between eating locally and international free trade. If our importing of South American bananas and mangos is helping to keep those countries' economies afloat. The economics of it I find hard to grasp. But at the least, it seems we can buy and eat the foods which grow naturally in our regions from local sources, and learn about the growing practices of the West coast farms from where our oranges come.

It has to get bad enough, I suppose, for the movement towards diversified farms to take a serious turn, and for Americans to change the way we eat and buy food. How bad, I wonder.

The Voter in My Head

There's been so much in the media about "that white male working class voter" lately. Will he go for Hillary, or will he go for Barack? Will he go for McCain over Hillary, or Barack over McCain, or not show up to the polls at all depending on who is on the ballot?

More importantly, who IS he, and is he real? Meaning, is he truly a group of he's that can be categorized in a block?

We're all being categorized and chopped up into voter blocs like never before (or, perhaps, like always before, but much more evident now) based on income, education, location, consumer habits, race, gender, age, etc. I even find myself trying to guess, based on some combination of appearance and observed behavior, who someone is going to vote for -- strangers, friends, acquaintances alike.

What is hopeful about this year's Democratic race is that people seem more open and fluid in their voting decisions. If democracy is about having an informed and active voting public - as opposed to a predictably self-serving / not-in-my-backyard voting public - then the voting patterns themselves will be interesting to observe. I will certainly be disappointed if Obama is not the Democratic nominee; but I will be exponentially more disappointed if he loses as a result of predictable voting patterns, i.e. people voting out of a kind of pre-determined fear and self-preservation factor (which I believe Hillary is exploiting to the utmost). If Hillary wins, I at least hope to be surprised by the how and why of it; I doubt it, though.

I will be interested to see how Wayne County, PA districts vote on April 22. We have a moderate Democrat as Congressional Rep. -- Chris Carney. Wikipedia says the following:

Carney is a somewhat conservative Democrat, which is not surprising given the nature of the district. For example, while opposing proposals to privatize Social Security, he said he is open to the idea of adding private accounts in addition to (not at the expense of) traditional defined benefits. He supports federal investment in stem cell research, and is an advocate of universal healthcare. He supports gun rights, does not favor abortion (but supports family planning and "comprehensive reproductive healthcare"), and opposes gay marriage. He supports estate tax reduction.

During the campaign, Carney raised money with a wide-variety of supporters including Sen. Barack Obama, Sen Joe Biden, Rep. Jay Inslee, Rep. Jack Murtha, and Richard Perle, a leading Bush Administration advocate of war with Iraq who more recently has criticized the decision to go to war Douglas Feith, another Pentagon hawk, congratulated Carney on Election Night.

The Campaign Trail (2)

No TV here in the country, so we check in periodically to CNN and NY Times online for election results. A victory/non-victory for Hillary Clinton last night in Nevada, attendant media spin about which victory – Clinton’s popular victory, or Obama’s delegate victory – counts more.

Last week, a Times Week in Review article about the “firsts” of this Democratic race – first woman, first black man. It’s weird to be a woman of color at this particular moment in history; identity politics are interestingly, disorientingly scrambled. An article speaking to this on today’s op-ed page: Whitney Terrell writes about living on the fault line between blacks and whites in his Kansas City, MO district, where the white senator endorses Obama and the black Congressman endorses Hillary Clinton. Terrell writes: “With bad times brewing, black voters seem worried they can’t afford to vote for Mr. Obama’s optimism and lose. ‘I like him,’ said one of my longtime neighbors. ‘I just don’t think anybody’s going to let him be president.’”

I have been frustrated (though not surprised, really) in finding the prevalence of this sentiment among fellow people of color. My two most intense and ongoing conversations about Democratic politics right now are with two close friends, one a black woman, one an Asian American woman. F. is black, born and bred in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, loved/loves Bubba, and has been a Hillary supporter all along. She is cautiously glad to see Obama’s ascent as a viable candidate, but isn’t a supporter (yet). She’s expressed a conviction that he will be “eaten alive” by the white political establishment on the political level, along with worry for his basic safety, on the physical survival level. “It ain’t gonna happen,” she has said. “There’s just no way a white country is going to let a black man be president.” And if they do, (she implies), it ain’t gonna be pretty. She says it in a you silly girl kind of way, in a you don’t know what I know kind of way. I respect that – that I don’t know what she knows about being black in America; but I’m frustrated still, because who are “they” if not “us”? We are voters, and black people are voters, not to mention participants in a democracy that, it seems to me, is desperately trying to revive itself, make itself real again, via the Obama candidacy. Of course Obama won’t get elected if skeptical/fearful black people vote for the elite/perceived-powerful white woman! But this feeling, that Obama – that hope in an optimistic black candidacy cannot be “afforded” – this is what I think is hugely at stake in this election.

S. was the most radical idealist I knew back in our college days. And she wasn’t just talk either – she has worked in Palestinian refugee camps, Mother Teresa’s home in India, and has done death penalty defense work in Alabama (she’s an attorney). For years, she rejected the institution of marriage. Until… she met her current husband. They now have two little boys, and she’s frantic with child care and financial responsibility and sleep deprivation. I was shocked (and yet sort of not, because I now have so many friends with small children, I am learning the all-consumingness of it) – to hear her say that she was voting Hillary, and for this reason: “I don’t want any idealism or ideology, I just want someone who can manage the office, do the job.” In her voice, I could hear her exhaustion, her I’m-just-trying-to-get-through-the-day exasperation with “ideas” and “hope.” Again, Obama seemed an expensive luxury to her.

[Interesting that no one is worried about Hillary, as a woman, getting eaten alive. I suspect that having Bubba by her side as her bouncer is no small factor.]

Youthful idealism specialist Dave Eggers (author of (mark the ironic but not ironic youth-inspired title) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) writes, on that same op-ed page:

How can hope be false? the young idealist might ask. Hope is the only horse these young people have in the race. And wasn’t it the other Clinton who liked to quote from “The Cure at Troy,” Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes,” which seems ludicrously apt right about now?

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Both tactically and substantively speaking, I think Obama would do well to invoke Dr. King, emphatically and often. There was nothing that seemed more unaffordable to black Americans in the ‘60’s than non-violence, forgiveness, conciliation; but, as only an effective leader can, he sold those impossible luxuries to his movement as both ideal and strategy: do this because your dignity and humanity are at stake; do this because it will work. Dr. King wasn’t perfect, but he was more right – and more leader – than any major American public figure in the last 40 years. He made world-changing activists out of raging, downtrodden citizens, made them to understand that what seemed most unaffordable was exactly what they could not afford to reject.

Green, green, and more green

Another sign of capitalism going green, i.e. an article in The Times about Clorox's acquisition of Burt's Bee's. A pretty amazing, and illustrative, story - the journey from hippie Maine beekeeper & hitchhiker, to corporate millionaires. The question, of course, is which force will win out - corporate environmental responsibility, or corporate profit-motive. The hope, and the argument, of course, is that they work hand in hand, and increasingly so as today's consumer becomes more environmentally and globally conscious. (Again, we "vote" with our dollars.) We'll see.

Also a sign of the ways in which city and country converge. Burt's is wildly popular here in NYC. The guy on the label is Burt (Shavitz) himself, who still lives in Maine in a turkey coop with no running water or electricity. City-dwellers love this -- they (we) love the vicarious live-off-the-land Thoreauvian experience. They want a "natural" life in the most man-made environment on the planet. A little beeswax lip balm goes a long way here in the concrete jungle.

This may seem like a superficial convergence, but in my (momentary) optimism, I'm curious to see where this goes; how the powerful forces of business/consumerism can get under the skin of a society, for good. "Social entrepreneurs" have been preaching this for decades. I am still a great skeptic about big business, about the catastrophic human and environmental casualties; which is why this presidential election is such a defining moment, I think. Obama is a capitalist, without apology; the question is about attention to the costs of economic growth and concrete measures to address them. Who is winning, who is losing, and how do we as a democratic nation, supposedly engaged and empowered to participate in our country's policy-making via our representatives - how do we mitigate the negative affects of largescale economic growth and design bottom-up infusions (financial, educational, spiritual, etc.), to build a world that is as healthy as it is prosperous (i.e. likely less prosperous but more healthy)?

Change Is A-Comin' / Change Done Already Came

"So does that make the father in the ad less an agent of change, or even more of a revolutionary by saying that hybrids and the environment are now no longer something we even need to talk about?" --Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, 1/6/08

The article is about the new buzzword in the race for the Democratic presidential nominee: change. Kirk Johnson describes a new TV ad for the Ford Escape Hybrid: a young girl and her father, presumably in a typical Midwestern conservative town, are getting into their Ford Escape, and the girl is complaining that she's embarrassed to be seen in a gas-guzzling SUV. Where they're going (a metaphor for progressive communities), people drive hybrids and care about the environment, she says. The father tells the daughter that the Escape is in fact a hybrid. Well why didn't you say that, she asks. "I never thought I needed to," the father replies.

Something strange is happening. Obama won Iowa, a mostly white state. People are talking about his racial identity, but not that much - it's not "the main thing." People are talking about Hillary's gender, but it's also not "the main thing." (Change vs experience has become the main thing.) These two individuals are vying for the most powerful political office in the world. The tipping point (a la Malcolm Gladwell) has come and gone.

The father is not grandstanding about the fact that the Escape is a hybrid, it's sort of just a given.

Change is funny that way. There are certainly moments of drastic upheaval and event: the Civil Rights Movement, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, Clarence Thomas. Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Nancy Pelosi. The release of scientific reports substantiating global warming. Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. But now, here we are. Barack Obama may become the President of the United States. Hillary Clinton may become the President of the Unites States. Bill Richardson may become the next Vice President of the United States. Homosexuality is further and further from "deviant" for the majority of Americans. Organic foods are now sold at Walmart, and "carbon footprint" and "global warming" are part of the vernacular. In the process, change feels excruciatingly slow and uphill and costly; but then, weirdly, all of a sudden, there it is. Here we are. How about that. And we barely need to talk about it.

Could it be that capitalism is in fact now in check? That corporate decisions are truly being influenced by greater social values, as expressed through political rhetoric, actual policymaking, grassroots activism, and the media? You are what you buy, you are who you vote for - meaning, the trickle down of cultural values in a democratic capitalist society becomes most clearly manifest via your checkbook/credit card bill, and your ballot.

It's early, but look, people came out in Iowa (the way people were supposed to come out for Howard Dean, but didn't). The numbers themselves are a huge indication of change. Is democracy back??!!

Some people might say that this is what you'd call "self-correction." The American Empire is either going to crash and burn, or pull itself back together. The average society has an intuition about itself and acts accordingly when things get way off track.

I buy that. But I also think that this pulling back together requires leadership and commitment and grit in every sector at every level. Perhaps now's the moment to humbly thank the generations of grassroots warriors, the ground-up soldiers, the visionaries - who've understood all along that change is both slow and fast, and who've persisted on behalf of the greater good - at great cost, and with patience. Here we are. This moment may not last long (and who knows which way the election will turn), but I'm going to enjoy it - a moment of optimism, of feeling proud and grateful for my country and its commitment to real progress. And I'll be showing my gratitude, at the very least, via my checkbook/credit card bill and my ballot.

Campaign Trail - Part One

The political report from the city: we went to see Obama speak at The Apollo in Harlem. A packed house of very enthusiastic supporters; and a pretty mixed crowd (meaning black and white; we were among very few Asians). The production side of things was a bit bizarre - but maybe that's because everything about campaigning and PR is bizarre to me.

You could see and feel the complexity of Obama's positioning in "the black community" (which in itself is a complex and slippery grouping). The first half of the program was heavy on "traditional black community" figures, including the Harlem Gospel Choir (a serious mis-step, I think. The holy-rolling pentecostal evangelism - basically 30 mins of church - was not appreciated by the majority of this audience, black or white or miscellaneous). You could feel how this part of the program - entirely too long - was intended to make a kind of "traditional Harlem" community happy; but it was clear that a much more heterogeneous/ecumenical spirit had filled the room, and so it all felt awkward. It wasn't until after 9pm that things started to really warm up...

...which was when surprise guest Cornel West showed up! As always, West was eloquent and convincing. If you were on the fence before hearing him, you were knocked flat by the time he was done. In particular, he spoke to Obama's character and passion and judgment (West is no dummy, he knows the key words for the next 11 months), his place in history, and the bogus "rhetoric of experience" that's getting tossed around in favor of Hillary. I wish the campaign would bring West on the road everywhere: he's brilliant and inspiring, and he's a terrific showman - he knows how to talk to people and entertain them without dumbing down. I think he knew that he needed to be an antidote to the anti-intellectualism of the Harlem Gospel Choir; and he was.

Just when we thought we'd come to the end of the line - the energy was high, this was surely the moment of Obama's arrival - one more surprise guest took the stage: Chris Rock, who was hilarious as always. His line (speaking to black folk in particular) about "If Obama does win and you weren't down with it, won't you be embarrassed? What was I thinking voting for that white lady?" has gotten lots of media play. It was a good move: West got our blood pumping, Chris Rock deflated the tension and got us relaxed.

Obama himself was predictably impressive. Calm, confident, clear (and very tall). He has a way of conveying intense passion and easy-goingness all at once. When he raises his voice to make a point, he does so with control, and a kind of gravity (an anti-Howard Dean). He also allows humor in to the mix. This is no small feat - in fact, it's no feat at all, I sense it's his real character/personality. Overall, he seemed to me both determined and exhausted - and very serious about this campaign.

The climax of his message (for me), was when he spoke about why he's running. "I never expected to be here," he said, which is another way of saying, "This isn't a long-calculated career move for me," which is another way of saying, "Hillary Clinton is running because she's a politician, and this is what's next for her." This is all campaign lingo, over-simplification to some degree, but I think it's going to be a strong message from the Obama campaign. He's running because of the "fierce urgency of now" (MLK), because he wants to serve/lead and sees a pressing need to serve/lead. "The only way we can win is if we stop worrying primarily about losing." Another jab at Hillary's disingenuous political maneuverings - another way of looking at her supposed "experience," i.e. that her primary strength is in campaigning, obfuscating, deal-making, winning; not leading.

The Case For Obama Is The Case For Everything

I’m all wound up about the race for the Democratic presidential nominee and am going to have to detour from city-country musings for a moment or two.

I’ve kept a distance from most media in the last few months, sorting out some things in my head and via observation/experience. Catching up on a few periodicals today, it’s weird to read analyses which articulate almost exactly what I’ve been thinking and saying ever since Obama joined the race. This is not to say that I am prescient or of particular high intelligence in any way; but rather to throw an “Amen” into the ring, affirming that something is happening in world politics and American leadership – that this is indeed a critical moment in history, of which we post baby-boomer, liberal-leaners in particular are a part – whether we like it, or acknowledge it, or not.

My draw to Obama, from the beginning, has been directly related to his biography. Meaning, my judgment of his leadership ability has everything to do with his person – how is this person shaped, what makes this person tick, what does this person most hate and most respect, with what inner capacities and outer strengths will this person approach the world’s greatest challenges and assets. In other words, HOW does this person think, not strictly WHAT does he think; and how does he understand his job vis-à-vis the individuals and groups over which he has power and influence. What a person thinks and does changes over time, in shifting circumstances – more so than ever in an increasingly complex world. But how a person thinks and acts is more deeply ingrained - a more fixed measure of character, effectiveness, and potential pitfalls as a leader.

All this is apparently getting some air time in the media now. Two recent articles about Obama – one in the New Yorker, and one in the NY Times Mag – speak to the strength of his experience as a human being. (“Experience” is the key word here, since Hillary is touting it as her advantage.) “[Obama] presents himself in all his cultural hybridity – African and American and Asian, black and white, infused with all-American hopefulness and with the reserve that comes of living on the receiving end of power.” Says Anthony Lake, one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors and former national-security adviser to Bill Clinton: “He has the kind of mind that works its way through complexities by listening and giving some edge of legitimacy to various points of view before he comes down on his, and that point of view embraces complexity.” Lake was first impressed “not so much by Obama’s policy prescriptions as by his temperament and intellectual habits.”

Complexities. Hybridity. Hopefulness and reserve. Something is happening. We are being asked to choose the long view over the short view. We are being asked to rediscover both our wild idealism and our belief in honest-to-goodness front-door problem-solving. “The security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people,” i.e. “what’s good for others is good for us, there is no contradiction between idealism and realism” (this, incidentally, is a traditional African belief – ubuntu).

Obama is committed to truthfulness, but he’s not stupid. He may be a little naïve, but not completely naïve; and a little naïve is I think exactly what a visionary leader must be. I think that Obama is savvy enough to know the difference between truth and self-sabotage; he is in for sustainability, not suicide, but he wants to do it with substantive conviction at the core. [See an earlier post which references Obama and sincerity.]

Here’s a thought that will surely get me lynched among traditional feminists and grassroots activists: when it comes to distribution of power, I have always believed in a democratic republic, as opposed to a pure democracy: some are fit to rule, some are fit to empower. I am not in favor of tyranny of the masses. This opinion is directly related to the above notion that biography is everything, that what drives us and shapes us as individuals is everything about how we lead (and you can be a perfectly admirable human without being the right person for broad-based leadership at a particular moment). Obama’s edge, I think, is that he stands on firmer personal ground than Hillary does; he has less to lose. As a woman, Hillary has to be reactive. She has to play to and against certain expectations. Her supposed “tough-mindedness” is more about crafting perceptions than it is about true leadership. Obama is less trapped in this way. He is freer to speak candidly, to lead transparently.

This is not to say that there is no woman out there who could lead in this candid, free, transparent way; but Hillary, I feel, is not that woman. She is the sort of powerful woman who has had to play the accomplished-woman game throughout her entire career in order to get to where she is; she is shaped and driven by these experiences and will approach a presidency in the same way, with “inspired cynicism.” She will cover her ass, she will look over her shoulder, she will rule her staff with an iron fist, she will act the part she must act in order to maintain her power base, she will manipulate and revise truth and position hubby Bill and do everything she has always had to do – with supreme skill and discipline – in order to keep what she’s got and continue building her “career” in politics. (Let me say here that I would not lay blame on Hillary for her path or her tactics; she has done something remarkable in a world wholly unfriendly to her success. I just don’t think her particular psyche vis-a-vis power management is the best thing for the world right now, not from the seat of the presidency.) Obama, on the other hand, for better or for worse, has more latitude to approach his presidency with an attitude and an ambition of true public service, fundamental changes for the greater good – and I believe that he does. He can use “soft power” without being accused of weak femininity. Simply put, I believe that Obama is strategizing his campaign, doggedly pursuing election, in order to pursue his public service vision; Hillary, on the other hand, is strategizing her campaign in order to get elected. To quote the character Josh Liman from my favorite prime-time drama, The West Wing (who is about to jump ship from the [Senator John] Hoynes campaign for the Jed Bartlet campaign): "Senator, I don't know what we're for. I don't know what we're for, I don't know what we're against. Except that we seem to be for winning, and against anyone else winning."

All this to say that there are some who will be more effective and fearless at the level of the US Presidency – who have less to lose, fewer personal agendas, less social baggage (Obama for his part has plenty of social baggage, but, as he’s demonstrated through his two memoirs, he’s pretty darn self-aware about all of it and has effectively channeled lessons learned into public service passions). NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the epitome of the unpolitical politician, who approaches his job with a genuine interest in effectiveness and change and public good, because he’s really got nothing much at stake personally – is a good example.

These presidential primaries are posing to us Democrats a fundamental question about what we fear and what we hope for. More than terrorism itself, what I fear is the voting public’s giving in to (short-term) fear: “This is Obama’s problem in a nutshell. Democratic voters seem to be torn between the hope of reshaping a frightening world and the fear of being terribly vulnerable to that world.”

Friends, there is much to be afraid of. Some threats are more obvious, more in our faces – and much of this has to do with media manipulation by a regime which has effectively used their version of the world order – scare tactics – to control us and push forward a childishly categorical and boys’ club-based, narrow-minded agenda. Let’s be more afraid of a world in which deception is the norm for the American presidency; where we expect little from our leaders as far as courage and vision; where fear and self-preservation translate into bullying force which ultimately only intensifies the threat of catastrophic violence. Obama is trying to do something new, something different; he is the post baby-boomer voice – finally – who is saying, Ok, time to get up off the mat, enough post-Vietnam cynicism. We can go that route – Iraq being our Vietnam, we are halfway there – or we can try something different. The fact that Obama is also friendly with corporate leaders, believes in free-market capitalism, raises money from the wealthy, is a student of history and an admirer of select “old guard” American and world political figures – all this should serve as reassurance that he’s not just some over-idealistic arrogant kid, throwing the baby out with the bath water. He’s shaped by no one thing, and he’s shaping something real, something truly contemporary; something based in deeply-held values and heterogeneous experience, working its way out via the political realm, expressing itself through power structures. C’mon, folks. Being brave and being self-interested truly are one in the same here.

Obama '08. Yeah.