Barack in the USA

Will blog more later. I’m busy with running, and doing taxes (I owe, I owe), and this weekend is Anime Boston!

But I would like to say that I listened to Barack Obama’s entire speech, given in Philadelphia, dealing head-on with the race issue, and I was very impressed. I’d forgotten what’s it like to hear such a lengthy, thoughtful, and coherent speech, delivered effectively from start to finish.

16 thoughts on “Barack in the USA”

  1. Ah, but I do have some idea, because you have a blog…and I don’t! 🙂

  2. Ha. This attitude isn’t sudden or recent. You don’t know all of the stress behind the scenes, dealing with the database and my service provider. The technical aspects of doing what I’m doing are, in and of themselves, often a major aggravation.

  3. Whoa, Doug! Settle down! Only asked because of what you wrote in the original post. I was thinking of checking out info. on the “Only Yesterday” books since they sound interesting. Now, calm down and take a deep breath…

  4. Oh my, is this post really from back in March? And now it’s already July.

    I’ve been browsing through the Frederick Lewis Allen books, and the first one is the more interesting to me, because the time period seemed to be of more interest to the author.

    I don’t know yet if I’m going to devote a series of posts to them. This gets into a much bigger issue of the existence of the blog itself. My original intent was do quick “get in and get out” posts. I don’t put a lot of background into what I say, because I figure people can do their own research if something I’ve put out piques their interest.

    But now I feel as though I’ve run the course of stuff I want to touch upon, and what’s left is more autobiographical stuff, and that’s why I’m about to talk about Paul Howley, a Christian comic book dealer (go figure!) whose autobiography I’ve been following for years when he puts out new installments.

    The other approach I could take would be to get into topics in much greater depth, and do the background work necessary to back it up. Everything I do now is written off the top of my head, with corrections added as required. But blogging, while it can be about profound things, really isn’t supposed to be about in-depth exploration, is it?

    Also, being my own webmaster, dealing with the technical aspects of running the site becomes a thing unto itself. Between my job, and the running I love to do, and my wife, son, and house, I need to find the right balance.

  5. Hi Doug! Just interested to know if you were going to compare the 2 editions of “Only Yesterday” to now. I love to read past and recent historical books of all nations, and am reading “Losing America…Confronting A Reckless And Arrogant Presidency” by Sen. Robert Byrd-a great historian in his own right-which is a treatise from 2004 about our dict-uh, Dubya. Monte, I love reading your ports and will check out your work!

  6. Allen’s a very good writer. Only Yesterday was one of the books I used for basic research on my 20’s novel. I believe it’s more instructive to read books written at a particular time in history than to read ones about that time. The latter often loses that sense of zeitgeist.

  7. There seems to be a notion, that Bush certainly displays, that somehow at the bottom of everything there is a simple truth. There’s an outright refusal to acknowledge that “simple” can sometimes also mean “simple minded.” We’re fighting the bad guys in Iraq, to help Iraq build a democracy. That’s the simple truth. Period. Anything more than that just confuses the issue.

    Bush’s latest pronouncement off of the top of his head is that al-Qaida can’t be allowed to gain control of Iraq’s oil fields. First, for all of the uncertainties in Iraq, that outcome is assured to be a near impossibility.

    Second, didn’t Bush want to fight them there, so we won’t have to fight them here? To me that implies he manipulated al Qaida into going there by toppling Saddam Hussein. But a certain percentage of people — I hope no more than 25% — aren’t going to listen to the contradictions. They’re going to say, “Yeah, Bush is right! We can’t let al Qaida get Iraq’s oil!” People such as these can’t remember what Bush said a few years ago, let alone recall any history lessons from school.

    Another example of history repeating itself is the stock market. I have old copies of Only Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen’s history of the 1920’s, and his sequel about the 30’s, Since Yesterday. Maybe I should review them to look for parallels with what’s going on today.

  8. I’d guess it goes back much farther than that! I’m reading ‘Breach of Honor: The Fall of Richard Nixon” by Theodore White now, and it’s a good and interesting sort of companion piece to “The Making of the President: 1960” in explaining, again, historical elements of the political parties in America, why they are the way they are, and how our system developed through the past sixty years to get us here now. It explains a lot of things, but few people have the desire to read history to gain insights for better opinions. Better and easier to talk off the top of one’s head. And anyhow, aren’t uninformed opinions usually the most strongly held?

  9. All I can say, Monte is… yes! This is, I feel, the outcome of the influence of the Neocons, who never hold themselves to the same simplistic standards they accuse others of lacking.

  10. I think what is missing in political dialogue and analysis is an almost complete absence of reality: how people think, how we speak, how we behave. For instance, what is considered good and proper in real life regarding the ability to change one’s mind about something, becomes the sin of “flip-flopping” in political discourse. Also, the concept of nuanced political realities or expediency. For Hillary on NAFTA, perhaps she was uneasy about it, yet supported it. Both things can be true. Yet that concept, which would be completely understandable in real world situations, becomes somehow political suicide. It makes this sort of dialogue seem childish.

  13. The point is that Obama is being worked over for comments about race almost as if there is no racial issue in this election year, which is very much ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room. Of course there is a racial issue. Obama could very well be the first black president of the United States. And it is also silly for people to pretend there aren’t those who despise the idea of a black president. I like when I read someone saying, “I have nothing against a black president, just not Obama.” Because the unasked follow up question must be, “Well, which black man or woman would you like to see in the Oval Office?” Now, some might say they’d vote for Colin Powell. Which means we then have to ask if they agree with Powell’s opinions on illegal immigration, NAFTA, universal health care, the war on drugs, repairing our deteriorating infrastructure, drilling for oil in Alaska, and the surge in Iraq. And if not Powell, then who? And we know the answer to that. No one. Because I suspect that a great many people who would never vote for Obama, would never vote for any African-American candidate running for the highest office in this land. Not now, not ever. So in the next few months we’re certainly going to see Obama’s candidacy carefully scrutinized, and fair enough. It’s important and necessary to do so, but I would at least like to hear some of those doing the scrutinizing to admit they also believe race to be an issue.

  14. For the moment, I’ll assume that “Christian Prophet’s” comment has been submitted to many blogs. For me the bottom line is if the choice is between Obama and Hillary Clinton, I’ll take Obama. And I have no blinders on regarding his religious and business associations. The Boston Globe has done a good job of covering Obama’s ties to sleazy Tony Rezko.

    Monte, good point about equating Obama’s speech on race (with a religious aspect) to JFK’s on his religion. The people who are trying to make this an issue for Obama may, like JFK’s critics, end up regretting it.

  15. I just finished reading “The Making of the President: 1960” and it’s interesting how similar and necessary Obama’s speech was to an address JFK made in Houston on his campaign trail back then. Kennedy’s words on religion can be viewed on Youtube. The comparisons are interesting.

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