Three Thoughts on This Day
Well, today is the Big Day!
Those members of the majority who follow such things, which amounts to as much as a quarter of them, are in a state of great excitement. This is because for the first time a person will be sworn in as President who doesn't look like them. If it had been J. McCain instead, few of the analysts and headline writers would have used the words, "the 44th white President."
To me on the other hand, all this looks perfectly normal and no terrifically big thing, because I grew up used to seeing people who looked like me in positions of authority all around. And in addition to those experiences and what I am about to see now, I witnessed how Virginia didn't miss a beat after in my mind an even more unlikely event took place and D. Wilder was elected governor, as there are likely to be a number of more fair-minded people in the other states than there are in the region where, not so long ago, the dominant group fought like cats and dogs for the right to continue to "own" other human beings and to have powers of life and death over them just as if they were pigs and chickens.
It seems to me anyway that what happens with the country as a whole is more the responsibility of the American public than it is of the President. A wise leader is of no avail if the people he's leading can be influenced to head off into less admirable directions. Despite the abundance of computers, things aren't materially different from what they were on the savannahs a million or two years ago, and there is always the Limbaugh element running along the edges of the group and screaming, "Don't go that way. Go this way!" for no other reason than that they don't like the complexion of the leader.
Eugene V. Debs hit exactly on this point when, about a hundred years ago he said something like, "I won't promise to lead you to the Promised Land, because if I could, someone else could come along and lead you back out." And that is precisely what happened in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008.
Yesterday J. McCain was heard saying that B. Obama would have his support but that he wished it was him who was being inaugurated today instead.
I thought that remark, aside from being too obvious, also showed his usual lack of class, because it seems to be clear as day that there are millions in the country, seemingly a big majority, who are just as glad as they can be that it's not an old bird who had been swallowed whole by bitterness and a younger woman given to poll-parroting nonsense who are about to be put at the controls of the plane. The man's record with bringing planes back home intact was not good, while the woman was given to confusing congenital flightiness with having taken flying lessons.
Those members of the majority who follow such things, which amounts to as much as a quarter of them, are in a state of great excitement. This is because for the first time a person will be sworn in as President who doesn't look like them. If it had been J. McCain instead, few of the analysts and headline writers would have used the words, "the 44th white President."
To me on the other hand, all this looks perfectly normal and no terrifically big thing, because I grew up used to seeing people who looked like me in positions of authority all around. And in addition to those experiences and what I am about to see now, I witnessed how Virginia didn't miss a beat after in my mind an even more unlikely event took place and D. Wilder was elected governor, as there are likely to be a number of more fair-minded people in the other states than there are in the region where, not so long ago, the dominant group fought like cats and dogs for the right to continue to "own" other human beings and to have powers of life and death over them just as if they were pigs and chickens.
It seems to me anyway that what happens with the country as a whole is more the responsibility of the American public than it is of the President. A wise leader is of no avail if the people he's leading can be influenced to head off into less admirable directions. Despite the abundance of computers, things aren't materially different from what they were on the savannahs a million or two years ago, and there is always the Limbaugh element running along the edges of the group and screaming, "Don't go that way. Go this way!" for no other reason than that they don't like the complexion of the leader.
Eugene V. Debs hit exactly on this point when, about a hundred years ago he said something like, "I won't promise to lead you to the Promised Land, because if I could, someone else could come along and lead you back out." And that is precisely what happened in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008.
Yesterday J. McCain was heard saying that B. Obama would have his support but that he wished it was him who was being inaugurated today instead.
I thought that remark, aside from being too obvious, also showed his usual lack of class, because it seems to be clear as day that there are millions in the country, seemingly a big majority, who are just as glad as they can be that it's not an old bird who had been swallowed whole by bitterness and a younger woman given to poll-parroting nonsense who are about to be put at the controls of the plane. The man's record with bringing planes back home intact was not good, while the woman was given to confusing congenital flightiness with having taken flying lessons.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 9:45 AM
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