.
January
31, 2010
A friend writes ...
Joan, as I contemplate President Obama‛s first year in office, I am
reminded of a parable, a poem, an archetypal symbol, and the meaning of
a certain word.
The
parable is the famous story, "The Grand Inquisitor," as it appears in
Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's story seems made for
our time, though it is set in Seville, Spain, in the 16th Century
during the terrible time of the Spanish Inquisition when so-called
heretics were being burned at the stake, and the people, in need of a
savior, yearned and prayed for The Second Coming. And, as Dostoevsky's
parable has it, the Savior does indeed come. "He came softly,
unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognized Him..." They
fell at His feet and worshipped Him, and even witnessed the Savior
causing the scales to fall from the eyes of an old man, blind from
childhood, and watch as He raises from the dead a young girl laid out
in her coffin. "The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, they surround
Him, they flock about Him, follow Him."
But then, the appearance of the Grand Inquisitor himself changes
everything. The Savior is condemned as the worst of heretics, thrown in
prison, threatened with burning, castigated as One who would impose
freedom and enlightenment on a people unable to handle freedom and
light, and then finally banished from the earth. "Dost Thou forget,"
the Inquisitor queries the Savior, "that man prefers ... even death to
freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more
seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a
greater cause of suffering." The Savior is reminded that man does
not want to be weighed down by the "fearful burden of choice."
A
year ago many of us looked to Barack Obama as a sort of a savior, come
to rescue us from the terrible mire into which we had been sunk. And
candidate Obama, himself, felt great hope and the desire to help save
this troubled nation. He truly believed he could make good on his
promises for massive and significantly helpful change. He was not
naive, but neither did he envision the nasty and determined opposition
he would meet at every turn. In effect, President Obama has been
shackled by a vindictive, mean-spirited opposition – by a solid
Republican block determined to hold off any legislation that the
President supports and wishes to promote, and by a press out for blood
and criticism — grudging with praise and often gleeful to find or
imagine reasons for criticism. The President’s mistake was to have
believed in the essential goodness of the American people and in
trusting that bipartisan equanimity would be forthcoming from the
Congress, allowing him to accomplish common goals. (What common
goals?! We are a people divided.)
The
vitriol and rancor and angry, often untrue, invective directed at the
man elected to sail this Ship of State appalls and saddens me.
Never in my adult years have I been aware of such an ugly political
scene—a scene that brings to my mind W.B. Yeats’s poem, “The Second
Coming” portraying a nightmare vision not unlike the one that haunts my
mind:
…Things
fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,…
The
best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity. …
…And
what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches
toward Bethlehem to be born?
“Passionate
intensity” — doesn’t this describe Glenn Beck in his saying with utter
and evil passion that the tragedy in Haiti “is tailor-made for Obama?”
That he, in effect, will make political hay out of this?
Or
consider the self-righteous intensity of the televangelist Pat
Robertson, who smugly declared on television that Haiti is being
punished for black sins of their past. Passion — I’ll give you
passion when I declare that this man should be locked in stocks in Port
au Prince, Haiti, and made to witness the suffering of innocent people.
I
do realize that people are frightened and suffering repercussions from
the awful Bush legacy. In primitive societies, people sought
protection and release from fear by designating a sacrificial animal
(or sometimes even a person) to bear all the troubles and frights of
the society. This scapegoat was sacrificed in order to bring
about protection. As a people we’ve not come that far.
Still we choose a scapegoat to carry the weight of all our fears and
errors. I’m afraid the President, innocent and good-intentioned
as he is, is being made our scapegoat—the sacrificial lamb to expiate
the political sins of the past and present.
Of
the four tropes I’ve set about to use in this writing (a parable,
lines from a poem, an archetypal symbol, and a word) the last — a
word — serves to describe what I observe far too often in our political
scene. The word, Shadenfreude,
comes from the German. It means taking pleasure in someone else’s
failure or sorrow or defeat. Fox News is not the sole source of
such sick pleasure. The mode of contemporary news too often goes
by the rule of thumb, “Let’s see how mean and calculating we can make
the president look today. Get him — at all costs, get
him!”
Why must we be battered with this incessant negativism? Spiro
Agnew coined the phrase (by way of his speech writer, William Safire)
“nattering nabobs of negativism.” Well, the negativism that Nixon
and Agnew endured was mild compared to what we must hear today about
our president. I tire of listening to the news, especially the
rabid extremes of cable news, that hotbed of relentless lies and
negativity. But even NPR seems to have bought into taking
pleasure in painting a negative picture of Barack Obama. As Justice
Sandra Day O’Conner recently told the Utah Bar, “ Complicated decisions
are reduced to slogans, and fealty to law is subordinated to sound
bites.” It’s as if television journalists believe that their
public has been given a taste for blood that keeps them wanting
more. Even the fact that President Obama was awarded the Nobel
Prize receives not praise, but ridicule.
The
man we now call our President, and not always with due respect, is not
a monster with a desire to make this country fail. That would be
colossal Shadenfreude and foreign to what the President wants to
achieve. Look — this man has two little girls who, he
hopes, might grow up in a world where the air is breathe-able and where
the melting of arctic ice has not caused even more “natural” disaster
to our poor, polluted world — to a world where willing people can work
and make a reasonable day’s wage, and where the rich do not exploit the
poor in every dealing. What would this idealistic but pragmatic
president have to gain by bringing about things that would not be good
for this country.
Helen
Helen Cannon
Photo of President
Obama with boy, DailyKos,blackwaterdog
December,
2009
Obama's
Incredibly Difficult Job
Joan,
Wasn't it
Spiro
Agnes (Who even remembers that
ignominious politician now?) who coined the phrase, "nattering nabobs
of negativism"? Well, he should have lived now to see manifest
the relentless heights of such negativism.
I tire of
listening
to the news, I don't even
consider watching television "news," and certainly never want to come close to the rabid extremes of cable news, that
hotbed of ruthless and relentless negative attacks and
mauling. But even NPR has bought into focusing on reporting the
negative, at least when it comes to reporting daily scrutinizing of
Obama's every hiccup. The name of the game seems to be, "Get
him!--at all costs, Get Him!"
The German
language
has a word, Schadenfreude, for
which English has no handy equivalent. The word neatly
encapsulates the odd, but common human tendency to take joy in
seeing someone else fail. Nothing Obama does
escapes such
negative and joyful scrutiny by the press and its minions--not a visit
to a local DC hamburger joint, or a date with Michelle, and certainly
not a mediating, respectful, intelligent speech in Cairo or a
forthright, plain-speaking speech to members of AMA professionals along
with (dare I write, "greedy") pharmaceutical
representatives).
The press
seems to
have lost touch with the
true sources of blame--the preceding years and their fallible feckless
and out-of-touch and often deceitful leaders (the word leaders itself
being an oxymoronic term that I find myself uncomfortable using in this
context.) Everyone knows that President Obama inherited a
whirlwind--an impossible mess on every front, tangles that even a Deity
couldn't easily untangle, and hatreds that even a magician couldn't
make instantly go away, and yet the hue and cry is for magic and
instant gratification--for policy that pleases all parties, but policy
that favors only one people, let the rest languish in
hell.
As President
Obama
attempts, pragmatically, to
find common ground and to lessen hatred for the US in every
part of the globe, he finds few supporters behind him--few who are
willing to express respect for our adversaries' core
beliefs. The prevailing notion seems to hold to the damaging
"axis of evil" labeling, name-calling and villianizing that has
made true negotiation impossible. Saber-rattling is, apparently
the only negotiating gesture that the press understands.,
As the
President, a
skilled lawyer and debater
par excellence, tries to reduce partisan polarization and
international knee-jerk saber-rattling hatred, the prevailing tack
is to dismiss Obama's careful rhetorical skills as naiveté or
cowardice. The negative news nabobs refuse or fail to realize
that conciliatory, respectful rhetoric is itself a
ruthless and brave, if nonviolent, strategy.
We have
become a
people accustomed to instant
gratification. Not long ago our daughter gave us a fine anthology
of essays under the title, THE
IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE, edited by Paul Rigat
Loeb. The title alone suggests an important fact that we seem to
have forgotten. President Obama cannot fix,
overnight, the shambles of a financial mess that he inherited; no
one could. Such peaceful outreach does take time, and it takes
common sense, courtesy, empathy, frankness, and respect. It takes
careful, slow, deliberate delving into details; it takes study and
openness to advice from informed cabinet professionals. It takes
thought and depth beyond stereotype and rigidity of thought. And
sometimes it takes the courage to change an original view or
position. With new insights from specialist advisors, the
President is open to changing his original views on a subject-a
willingness and has the courage to admit, tacitly or openly, that he
was wrong or that he has learned, since taking office, a better way
that, with less information at his fingertips, he didn't see when
he was a candidate. Once a wise saying, "Consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds," was bruited about; nowadays we seldom
ever hear or heed it. Too bad. The flexibility and
willingness to change ought not to be viewed as a bad thing, but rather
as a healthy, humble, open-minded position. We hear a good deal about
Obama's pragmatism, but how many of his constituents on either side of
the aisle really understand what pragmatism is? As I understand the word and the concept, pragmatism
involves trying to discover what works and what doesn't work. A
fine example of Obama's pragmatism may be seen in his recent
interview on his approach to Iran policy with a journalist from NEWSWEEK:
"Now, will it
work? We don't know,
And I assure you, I'm not naive about the difficulties of a process
like this. If it doesn't work, the fact that we have tried will
strengthen our position in mobilizing the international community, and
Iran will have isolated itself, as opposed to a perception
that Iran is claiming that somehow it is being victimized by
a U.S. government that doesn't respect Iran's sovereignty."
Since making
this
comment, Obama has firmly
condemned Iran's crack-down on those who want to be heard. This
is an example of Obama's pragmatism--his willingness to change
that is based on new developments and information.
I do realize
that this letter is, itself, unmitigatedly negative, but negative in a
way seldom heard. I figure that equal opportunity is in order. I
speak up for Obama; I defend his deliberative, intelligent, pragmatic
way; I speak for supporting his efforts, for patience and good
will, for openness in dialogue (the camp, overused word is
"transparency"), I speak for fair and bipartisan democracy and
truly investigative negotiation.
Helen
Cannon
Photo
of President Obama
by Diogenes2008, DailyKos
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