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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Obama In Portland. A first take. (OBAMA REPEATS HE WILL CLOSE GITMO, RESTORE HABEAS, AND OBEY THE CONSTITUTION) Obama In Portland. A first take. I saw Barak Obama in Portland on Sunday. I do not normally get caught up in shouting and crowd dynamics. And this event was no exception. But I was moved. Deeply. Quietly. I found myself about 30 yards off the main stage watching, watching closely. And listening closely to what was being said. While Obama spoke the obligatory crowd pleasing lines it was notable to me that he did not seem to be trying to whip up the crowd into emotional frenzy. In fact it seemed the opposite. A couple times the crowd wanted to get into the “Yes we Can” chant. Obama seemed to let it run its course and then proceed w/ his remarks. Not that I have anything against the emotion that people are feeling. I tend to want what is underlying the emotional outbursts. I want there to be substance to support it. In this case I felt it was there. Clinton, and others, have tried to cast Obama as having “just words” “he has only given a good speech”. I now understand better why they need to try and detract from the power of Obama’s oratory. It is not like so much political speech, full of vacuous thought, full of promises and non sequitur thoughts designed to appeal to a predetermined crowd. Obama actually talks in full paragraphs, with thoughts that hold together across the entire speech. It is not simply a collection of applause lines or attack lines. He actually engages the issues we are facing in a way that evinces an understanding of this simple maxim : You cannot solve a problem at the level at which the problem was created. My first take on the speech follows. Basic takeaway : His stump speech is smarter, more intelligent, logically cohesive, as well as inspirational and meaningfully hopeful than the best, thought out positions of the others candidates. Or any politician I am aware of for that matter. Reagan is held out as a “great communicator”. I never have understood this, never really feeling that much of what Reagan communicated was worth hearing. As a communicator I would posit Obama is orders of magnitude better than Reagan. And… he has the added benefit of actually communicating something that calls to our “better selves” while not eviscerating what it means to be an American. It seems that Obama has the power to hold this position of transformation. I have never heard a political candidate make the case that what he is offering is not pre-molded answers but a process by which we may affect change for the better. Now it will be up to the country to decide if we have drunk a full cup of the bitters and ready for such a change. Or if it will take another quaff, and another round of drunken stupor, for the citizenry to get it that the course America has followed for so long, (insert lots of detail here), and that has been especially manifest in the horror that has been this BushCo Administration, is fundamentally flawed and in need of deep systemic change. We have to begin to think again as citizens bound together in some essential way that is deeper than our epicurean pursuits and our silly infatuations with flawed beliefs like “we are number one” or/and “they hate us for our freedoms”. I am hopeful, but cynical. I live a contradiction. I am aware of the basic goodness and desires of people, the American people. I am also aware of the powers and forces and individuals who lie in wait to destroy what would destroy them. And they have their hands on the levers of power, money, communications. It is amazing to me however, that even though that is so, there is still the possibility for hope, and for change - change at a deep structural level. It lets me know that as formidable as the masters of the status quo are there is something that they do not own, that is not fully under control. It is from this, whatever that is, that something deeper, more integral, more essential will, if it will, if it can, emerge. My favorite line in the speech: In these two lines Obama has made the essential case: The constitution is the essense of what makes America America. Without it we become only another failed republic tending toward a new tyranny…. as we are now. And that it will take a change in our mindset in order to affect change. He does not promise it will happen. Only, and this is key, that if we, the citizens of America will embrace the notion of citizen once again, that promise that has been America may once again emerge. Maybe even in a more transcendant incarnation. Maybe we can retreat from empire and become less militaristic and more holistic in our foreign affairs? Maybe we can transcend the essential racism that has been in our deep psyche from the beginning, and has been a profound hinderance to our ability to function at the level of our principles. Maybe we can begin the process of being ruled by something more positive, more true, more substantial than fears. Fears stoked by demogauges who know better, and use the knowledge for their own purposes. Maybe we can recover from this financial precipice we find ourselves perched on. But it will take a systemic transformation akin, though different, to the social contracts that came out of the Great Depression. Maybe we can do it before we immerse ourselves in another , more horrible global Great Depression? Or maybe not. But these are the propositions that are before us now. What is certain is that to continue the path currently charted will be to proceed, pell mell, to a certain destruction. It is long past the time for vacuous promises that hardly last longer than the reverberation of the sounds of the words with which they are spoken. It is time for a commitment to a thinking that is different. A thinking that is motivated for a real comprehension of what it is we face, and propelled by a profound and essential desire to live true to “the angles of our better nature.” I know this post needs a good editing, and I will do that in subsequent posts. For now this is meant only as first thoughts on a moment that, to me, was seminal, and which seems to presage what seems to me to be a major choice point that we, as citizens of this country, have now come to. What has happened, even over the last 8 years, has happened. Now what? There is a choice that must be made. And will be made one way or another. Even trying, again, to not choose, or make a default choice of the known; even trying to hold fast to the well worn creeds of the past - our racism, our unsubstantiated beliefs, our formidible ignorance, our memories of world dominance, our lust for war as opposed to transformation, our lazy desire to have someone else figure it all out - just dont mess w/ my football game, or whatever drug of choice used to dull us to the consequences of our national choices; still a choice will be made. I hope we choose well. And for better reasons than we have in the past. Excerpts from Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Portland. As a final note: When have you ever heard a politician in recent times appeal to the constitution in such a profound way. And more, to recognize its authority. And to rever it as something to be upheld in the present tense, not as some historical but anachronistic idea. Not since Lincoln have I heard such language from a presidential contender. “We are now gathered to see if that nation, or any nation so constituted can long endure….”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 25.
#2. To: aristeides (#0)
His votes in the Senate prove he is a liar. But then he is a politician so that is not unexpected. What is unbelievable is that so many people have been taken in by this jug-eared clown.
Does Obama's Constitution contain the 2nd Amendment? I think it is important to establish whether the Constitution he is reading is the same one we are reading.
"I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation" like background checks, he said during a news conference. Obama Supports Individual Gun Rights . You may quarrel with the extent to which he would permit regulation, but he obviously believes the Second Amendment is in the Constitution.
Just one more thing that proves he is full of crap. No amendment "grants individual rights" and the founders must be spinning in their graves at such stupid stuff. They knew they weren't granting anyone any rights, just recognizing some God-given rights people had before there was such a thing as government. Obummer needs a lot more schooling.
Let's read the second amendment, shall we? A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. My reading tells me that the 'free State' may or may not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But, since the founding daddies decided that not infringing on the right helps with the security of the free State, they agreed not to infringe it. Let's see if you can follow me now. If the free State may or may not infringe on the right to bear arms, the free State is effectively granting it, through the second amendment. Because, if the free State finds that it has no need for a well regulated Militia, then the free State may decide to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms and there's nothing God can do about it other than maybe do an earthquake or send over some plague. I hope you understand now. Obama is right and you are not, which is not surprising at all, given his intellectual superiority.
Read post #24. You might learn something (it is within the realm of possibility that even deluded people who support establishment scum are not beyond reach or help).
#27. To: James Deffenbach (#25)
In what way is your quotation related to the second amendment? I explained it to you, by referring to the words in the second amendment itself that the right to keep and bear arms was tolerated because it served the interests of the State. Nothing to do with God, the pursuit of entertainment or any other freedoms. It's strictly about State security comrade. Shall I quote it to you again? Here it is: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
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