It's hard to find a blogger on the political column of things that's managed to escape having to read about the Ferraro disaster. As it happens, I was reading through a few posts here and there on the former VP candidate's statements, and I was struck by something rather troubling.
No, this post isn't another rant against Ferraro's statements, that's been done everywhere and I'm feeling rather too tired to raise my own protesting voice to join with the multitude.
Instead, I've some thoughts on the historical context and Obama's message of Change.
To start off with, I was reading up on Ms. Ferraro, and I think as any respectable (or not so respectable) would-be hobbyist quasi journalist ought to do, I thought I'd try and educate myself as to who exactly this woman was and what her background was, what she'd stood for and what she'd stood against through her career.
Naturally, when embarking upon such an undertaking, one refers first and foremost to the most esteemed bastion of collective knowledge on the planet earth, the most highly regarded compendium of information, the very fount of all facts. Yes, I refer to Wikipedia (with some self depreciating sarcasm).
No really, Wiki is a good starting point for a lot of research. It gives you a point of origin to look further into things. But I digress.
While wandering the hallowed halls of this most esteemed virtual institution, the Raconteur came across this transcript of a 1984 (prophetic dating, perhaps, it brings to mind George Orwell) VP debate between Ms. Ferraro and George Bush the senior, who was VP at the time.
As said earlier, this article, if I may be so presumptive as to label it thus, is not about Ms. Ferraro, or about George H. W. Bush. This article is about Obama and his message of Change, and inherently, of Hope.
In 1984, Obama was younger than the Raconteur is now, and had received his Bachelor of Arts only a year prior. What has this debate, this transcripts of to do with our charismatic candidate of today?
Everything.
Strip away the names, the faces, the incidentals. It could have been a debate from this year's primary. What struck me, as I read through this leaf of history, was the remarkable similarity between then and now, in the content of the debate.
The issues are still exactly, perhaps alarmingly, the same: War and Peace. Healthcare. The Economy. A massive deficit.
It could very easily have been Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain there, instead of George Bush and Geraldine Ferraro.
Twenty four years ago, we were still arguing about the exact same things, still hashing out the exact same issues. Twenty four years from that point, they're still here, they're still contended, and they're still problems.
Seeing this, I ask myself, what has changed? Has anything really changed, have we made progress, has there been any effect at all, of the innumerable votes cast year after year, election after election?
How much passion we have thrown into the wishing well.
Enter then Obama, with all his promise and all his emphatic stand. Yes we can, he says. And yet, haven't we heard it all before? An endless theater of plays, ineffectual yet entertaining, riveting.
Is this Barack Obama? What does this say, for Barack Obama, if all of his promises and all of his speeches have all been made before, albeit, with less charisma, less passion, or less style? We've been here, haven't we?
And yet, nothing changes.
That is where, I believe, Obama's greatest weakness lies, and also his greatest strength.
On the one hand, we are all, to a great extent, jaded and disillusioned with the systems we have inherited. It is perhaps difficult to believe another man with another promise, while the dragons of decades ago still hold society under siege.
From a different viewpoint, however, that is exactly the point of Obama's campaign, and his candidacy. He challenges us, we who are often skeptics and godless heathens (first among them, myself), to believe. He challenges us to run the gauntlet one last time and cast aside our pessimism, to embrace yet again the idea of hope, the idea that yes, we can. We can change. We can hope.
In the light of history, yes, you'll find many debates in the past that circle around the same issues today. Yet it is also true that there have been a few among us that have managed to bring about change, that have managed to alter society for the better. There was a man called Martin Luther King, after all.
Could this man, Obama, really be that different, from all those that have come before him, raising the same banner that he holds up today? I don't know. But many believe he could, and he is.
Whether his promise proves as good as his speech yet remains to be seen. What is true however, and something of great value in of itself, is that he has inspired thousands, in this cynical age, to remember what it was like to hope.
To the countless among us, who often find ourselves with many convictions and yet few beliefs, he has given a gift that maybe we have missed out on for a long while.
He made us believe again.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Hope and Nihilism in 2008
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2 comments:
Obama is charismatic, but what is there to his message? How is he going to make things better?
What the politicians don't want us to remember is that people don't change. Not now, not ever. People don't change; generation from generation, epoch to epoch, country to country. Our delusions to the contrary are laughable. Each generation's leaders would like us to believe that the Now we live in is the best of all possible worlds, that we live at the culmination of all the lives to come before us, the catalyst to Make A Difference, whatever that means. It's just words.
It's not just a matter of optimism versus pessimism, or hope versus nihilism. It's a matter of simple, unquestionable fact versus blind self-delusion. People will always be people. They think shallow thoughts that their parents and grandparents thought before them, each generation reinventing the same tired old selfish ideas. They rebel against the previous generation in some meaningless, ill-conceived, ineffectual way, just like that generation did against the generation before them. They learn to love and hate, they work to support families, they grow old and die, and their children repeat the cycle.
Humans are animals too. We have the same sort of circle of life thing going on as lions and tigers and bears. Bears aren't suddenly going to become aquatic animals, and people aren't going to stop murdering, raping, and hating each other.
Change is an empty word. Honestly, if people could change in the way people like Obama talk about, I'd be more afraid of that than anything; I don't trust people to change in a way that's actually better than what they already are.
People don't change, and I've never been one of those that believed that some golden era in years past was somehow a better time with better people.
No, the nature of humanity remains constant.
But that really isn't the question, nor is it what the 'Change' in Obama's campaign is about, to my mind.
People are people, be it in America, Africa, or Afghanistan. Good and bad, usually more of the latter than the former.
But the key point here is that while people may not change, their standard of living does change to a great amount.
I can tell you from personal experience, the nature of a population and the nature of culture (which can vary dramatically from place to place aside) notwithstanding, the standard of living afforded by people in different parts of the world are not constant.
So while the abstract nature of the human race may not change, the circumstances of individuals among us can vary dramatically.
Superficial differences? There are people living in Afghanistan and in places in Africa today that would disagree. As a matter of fact, the notion that leadership, policy and opportunity do not influence lives, to those that have been left bereft of such things, would likely be insulting.
So yes, people don't change. But it isn't the people that Obama claims to change. It is the policies that govern the lives of those people, the equity with which those policies are meant to be applied, and the quality of decisionmaking that affect the lives of thousands... yes, that can change.
Further, while I'm not particularly a fan of the human race, it is difficult to deny that from time to time there are individuals that rise above the mass and stand as examples of the greatness that the human spirit is capable of. History is replete with accounts of selfless individuals that have made very hard choices and lived hard lives, in the furtherance of an ideal or a goal, often noble by many standards.
There have been people like Gandhi, and people like Dr. King, and countless others, that stood for humanity.
And the difference people such as these have made in the world is tangible, undeniable, however much those changes remain only superficially imprinted on the fabric of society.
Change? Yes, we can.
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