Woe to the Democratic Party in the United States.
Even as the George W. Bush presidency persists in laying the groundwork for selecting the next titular leader of the free world from the opposition party, that party itself (i.e. the members, leaders and candidates) has opened the door, and is in the process of perfectly machining and lubricating the hinges, that would give the Republicans twelve straight years in that white house.
"What do we want?" The first woman president! "When do we want it?" Now!
"What do we want?" The first black president! "When do we want it?" Now!
"What do we want?" A truly progressive president! "When do we want it?" Well, we really don't, and we're not even going to invite him to the debate in New Hampshire!
While the argument can be made that the Clinton and Obama campaigns will stop disemboweling each other as soon as one of them emerges as the official Democratic candidate, and the party can pray (to the extent that their liberal base allows prayer) that the loser will not feel a Liebermandate (with far worse odds than Joe had in Connecticut), it bodes unwell that many folks are focusing on first black and first woman rather than on who truly has what it takes (and yes, that deliberately avoids words like experience, hope, faith, savvy, political capital, commitment, strength, etc.) to both lead the country with integrity and clean up the diverse and inclusive mess that he or she will face.
And we haven't even mentioned the current New York City mayor yet.
Interim Apologia: In the interest of full disclosure and with a nod to gross simplemindedness, it may be easy to assume that a white guy like me can much more easily dismiss those two prospective firsts because all the presidents thus far have had sexual organs and skin pigmentation similar to mine (generally speaking, and as far as I know). Very few, if any, of them have shared my worldview, however, and if on February 5 and November 4 I believe that the best candidate for me, this country, the planet and the univation is a brownish-yellow transvestite with an eighth-grade education and an integral worldview, s/he is getting my vote. Admittedly, those specific characteristics are improbable, but I mean that metaphorically in the context of the last seven years.
Of course race and gender are essential issues. Our human world, however, is one in which brilliant intellects have consistently produced technology that the average value system and stage of moral reasoning is not yet ready to handle. Our ancestral tribes used rocks, slings, spears and arrows, and they depleted land with their hunting, foraging, and horticulture; our tribes today, be they nation-states, ethnic clans or fundamentalist believers, use bullets, bombs, chemicals, jets and nuclear weapons, and deplete natural resources with technological abandon, albeit with an ever-so-gradually emerging awareness. I don't care about the specifics of hair texture, eye shape, skin pigmentation or genitalia as long as a candidate recognizes the issues and courageously, strategically, and post-partisanally (new word!) addresses them.
What the Democrats face is the unhealthy version of the postmodern pluralism that literally made the civil rights and women's movements possible--a worldview that was not only "global" as the modern world was, especially for profit-based endeavors, but also "pluralistic" in that it recognized and honored all the lesser known stories that often did not make it into the Western male version of, well, everything. Alas, while pluralism in so doing takes a necessary evolutionary step, unless it takes the next step into universal pluralism--honoring all these stories as parts of a greater whole, it will produce the gender-, race- and ____-based (name your favorite) fragmentation that we see now with the Clinton and Obama campaigns.
Come on, you two kids, get it together. Rise above the fray. Schedule a joint press conference without your staffs, and honor each other. Then continue a robust campaign on the issues. Continue down the path you're on, and the beneficiary will be an independent or Republican candidate.
Oh, and fire whoever in your respective campaigns is responsible for fanning these divisive flames.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year's Questions
Happy New Year.
This time next year we'll be preparing to swear in (and at) a new leader of the free world, so to speak, and this begs the question, "Can a new temporary resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have any true impact on the damage done to and by this country during the past eight years?" Feel free to adjust that eight according to your own individual biases.
Whether this prospective tenant happens to be another white, Christian male, or a black or a woman, he or she will only get elected/selected/ appointed as a result of a perceived image that appeals to a majority of voters, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof, and this guarantees that he or she will either truly live on the cutting edge--able to speak to diverse cultures, ethnicities, income levels, genders, sexual orientations and developmental worldviews with integrity and in a language that each recognizes and understands, or that he or she literally embraces and lives in the worldview that the majority of Americans inhabit, as does the current tenant, who despite some requisite postmodern rhetoric, behaves through the mythic-rational perspective that has caused most of our major problems, and which is incapable of resolving them.
As our late, quintessential minority, Audre Lorde, so insightfully pointed out, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," or as virtually every developmental researcher discovers, each subsequent stage of development resolves some issues created by the preceding stage, and creates new issues of its own.
I've been asking myself too many questions for years now, and since I suffer from a belief that suggests that many issues become more pressing at real or imagined transition points such as the beginning of a new year or a change (or the appearance thereof) in leadership, I thought I'd share some of these questions with you.
Are you tired of all those programs that offer the secret to generating income beyond your wildest dreams, and is what you truly desire, as you move from one substitute gratification or substitute sacrifice to another, an experience that instead generates ongoing insight into who you truly are, whether or not you have or remember wild dreams?
How much do you identify with yourself as male or female; gay, straight, trans- or bisexual; tall, short, broad or narrow?
Are you defined by your skin pigmentation, hair texture, eye shape, or first language? Does your personality really exist, and if it does, are you aware of it?
Do you see yourself as a fundamentalist, moderate, liberal, agnostic or atheistic believer, and are you determined to convert the rest of us? Along these same lines, do you embrace Creation, Intelligent Design, Evolution or some politically correct, bland blend of them all, and if so, why? Do you believe literally, metaphorically, or allegorically, and can you see the value of each?
Do you learn best through a visual, auditory or kinesthetic approach? Are you hooked on phonics or whole language? An can you imbrase the long-turn value of invented speling?
Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool, dead-in-the-water, or temporarily tatooed Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Independent or Other, who is really the cause of all this suffering?
Do you feel that the answer to all our problems is for every child, woman and man to pull her- or himself up by the bootstraps or velcro fasteners and take responsibility for life; or is it the institutionalized racism, sexism, bigotry and poverty that keep us down, and that must themselves be taken down?
Were you victimized decades ago by a school system that recognized linguistic and rational-mathematical competence, but ignored your artistic gifts? Or have you been victimized more recently by progressive educators who let students discover their own gifts at their own pace, and never challenged your linguistic skills and rational abilities?
Do you think sustainability is a legitimate planetary issue? Is the globe warming? Are our natural resources polluted and on their way to depletion? Is fossil fuel finite? Is there a population crisis? Or are all these "issues" subtle strageties in an anti-capitalist plot?
In the feeling-thinking wars, where do you reside? Have you jettisoned your intellect in order to feel more fully? Do you think that feeling is just too touchy-feely in this post-9/11 world? What do you think about how you feel, and does it matter? How do you feel about your thoughts?
These will suffice now to scratch the surface of some general areas of concern as we count down to what may be the end or the continuation of the Project for the New American Century as our national worldview.
We get to choose. More questions to follow.
Happy New Year, again.
This time next year we'll be preparing to swear in (and at) a new leader of the free world, so to speak, and this begs the question, "Can a new temporary resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have any true impact on the damage done to and by this country during the past eight years?" Feel free to adjust that eight according to your own individual biases.
Whether this prospective tenant happens to be another white, Christian male, or a black or a woman, he or she will only get elected/selected/ appointed as a result of a perceived image that appeals to a majority of voters, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof, and this guarantees that he or she will either truly live on the cutting edge--able to speak to diverse cultures, ethnicities, income levels, genders, sexual orientations and developmental worldviews with integrity and in a language that each recognizes and understands, or that he or she literally embraces and lives in the worldview that the majority of Americans inhabit, as does the current tenant, who despite some requisite postmodern rhetoric, behaves through the mythic-rational perspective that has caused most of our major problems, and which is incapable of resolving them.
As our late, quintessential minority, Audre Lorde, so insightfully pointed out, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," or as virtually every developmental researcher discovers, each subsequent stage of development resolves some issues created by the preceding stage, and creates new issues of its own.
I've been asking myself too many questions for years now, and since I suffer from a belief that suggests that many issues become more pressing at real or imagined transition points such as the beginning of a new year or a change (or the appearance thereof) in leadership, I thought I'd share some of these questions with you.
Are you tired of all those programs that offer the secret to generating income beyond your wildest dreams, and is what you truly desire, as you move from one substitute gratification or substitute sacrifice to another, an experience that instead generates ongoing insight into who you truly are, whether or not you have or remember wild dreams?
How much do you identify with yourself as male or female; gay, straight, trans- or bisexual; tall, short, broad or narrow?
Are you defined by your skin pigmentation, hair texture, eye shape, or first language? Does your personality really exist, and if it does, are you aware of it?
Do you see yourself as a fundamentalist, moderate, liberal, agnostic or atheistic believer, and are you determined to convert the rest of us? Along these same lines, do you embrace Creation, Intelligent Design, Evolution or some politically correct, bland blend of them all, and if so, why? Do you believe literally, metaphorically, or allegorically, and can you see the value of each?
Do you learn best through a visual, auditory or kinesthetic approach? Are you hooked on phonics or whole language? An can you imbrase the long-turn value of invented speling?
Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool, dead-in-the-water, or temporarily tatooed Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Independent or Other, who is really the cause of all this suffering?
Do you feel that the answer to all our problems is for every child, woman and man to pull her- or himself up by the bootstraps or velcro fasteners and take responsibility for life; or is it the institutionalized racism, sexism, bigotry and poverty that keep us down, and that must themselves be taken down?
Were you victimized decades ago by a school system that recognized linguistic and rational-mathematical competence, but ignored your artistic gifts? Or have you been victimized more recently by progressive educators who let students discover their own gifts at their own pace, and never challenged your linguistic skills and rational abilities?
Do you think sustainability is a legitimate planetary issue? Is the globe warming? Are our natural resources polluted and on their way to depletion? Is fossil fuel finite? Is there a population crisis? Or are all these "issues" subtle strageties in an anti-capitalist plot?
In the feeling-thinking wars, where do you reside? Have you jettisoned your intellect in order to feel more fully? Do you think that feeling is just too touchy-feely in this post-9/11 world? What do you think about how you feel, and does it matter? How do you feel about your thoughts?
These will suffice now to scratch the surface of some general areas of concern as we count down to what may be the end or the continuation of the Project for the New American Century as our national worldview.
We get to choose. More questions to follow.
Happy New Year, again.
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