Obama or McCain? Myth, Reason and Context

Victimization in the Greatest Country on Earth

In undue fairness to George W. Bush, the United States of America began its downward slide to second-rate (that may be generous) nation status a good number of years before he took office. As a president with no vision, manipulated by the authors of the Project for the New American Century—portions of which became the essence of his National Defense Strategy, oblivious to the unmistakable directionality of an evolving humanity, and with an ignorant arrogance common, but not universal, among those born into privilege, he simply accelerated, exacerbated and guaranteed the slide. The difficulties he faced in his family of origin notwithstanding—he had both privilege and pressure, he’s responsible for a lot and his lot: he ran for President, won twice, and found himself in way over his head, a poster boy for Robert Kegan’s research and book.

Some folks still embrace the idea that this country is the “greatest country on earth,” and not without good reason. I’m glad I was born here, grateful for what came with that birth—and despite its imperfections, still believe in the possibilities of this democracy. While the evidence is in that in specific areas like education, national emergency management, healthcare and national security we do not hold “first-rate” status, most people I know, Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian and Independent, are, in fact “pro-American,” and despite their disagreements on large and small issues, are happy to be here. Caveat: there are lots of people that I don’t know.

Other folks suffer a frightening, visceral, negative reaction when they hear or read that “greatest nation” idea, also not without good reason. I’ve been embarrassed by and lots of people have suffered at the hands of our elected officials: national security lapses leading up to September 11, 2001, essentially unilateral pre-emptive war in Iraq, the inability to respond to Hurricane Katrina, voter disenfranchisement, incomprehensible national debt, growing trade deficit, and the current unraveling of economy (along with the socialized rescue plan by the very government whose debt is incomprehensible, and which would never socialize healthcare—more on this below) would seem to indicate that “greatest” may be a bit hyperbolic. These folks, whether Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian or Independent, tend to feel victimized and tend to blame the other party(ies) for their woes.

As we prepare to elect the person who is foolish or brave enough to take over this mess, and if we are willing to listen carefully as we prepare, we can hear a not-so-subtle message of “American-citizen-as-victim” pervading the candidates’ statements—John McCain began the third debate with this language, and Sarah Palin bludgeoned us with it throughout the vice presidential debate, the news reports, and the pundits’ opinions: the average American is a victim of corporate greed; the banks and Wall Street are the victims (creators too?) of the economic unraveling; Democrats are the victims of eight years of this Republican administration (as are many Republicans, according to John McCain and Sarah Palin); and all of us are the victims of too much government intervention in our lives (but so many of us now clamor for government intervention to end this).

Some hard-working, honest, intelligent and good people have fallen victim (i.e. suffered through no fault of their own and due to the negligence, incompetence or dishonesty of some individual or group), and have every right to feel wronged. But here’s the problem: inherent in accepting and playing the role of victim is the belief that some authority figure somewhere is going to save you and make things right—regardless of who or what that figure is. This is a child’s, and not an adult’s worldview. Children are often literally powerless in the world that adults give them, and they have the right to trust that the adults who made the mess will also clean it up. Chronological adults who are still waiting for the government or God to fix everything are simply contributing to the mess.

More to the point, I believe in both government and God, but before any reader can understand what I mean by this, he or she has to understand how I hold my belief, and what I mean by those two “g-words.” Despite attempts to use “socialism” as a scare word during the current campaign, any government, regardless of its technical identity, has a socialistic component. Government—our elected officials and those appointed by them—are charged with doing for the people what it doesn’t make sense for, or what would be impossible for, individuals to do for themselves. Interstate highways systems and the military come to mind as two examples, among many, that are socialized in the United States. The people give money to the government through taxes, albeit begrudgingly, and everyone gets to drive on the interstates that get built, and be protected by the armed forces. We call this infrastructure and national defense; when we attempt to provide a similar system for healthcare, opponents call it socialism, as though it’s a bad thing. Every functional family and community I know of is socialistic in some areas, and capitalistic in others. Regarding the other “g-word,” that’s an exposition for another posting.

Conservative/Regressive – Liberal/Progressive: What’s a Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, Green or Independent to Do?

Okay, quick overview of how I’ll use those first four words, and done well, I’ll alienate almost anyone who overly identifies with any one of them. To be conservative is to desire and/or act in a way that attempts to keep things consistent—with the comfort of familiarity and the safety of predictability—the way things are, the way they have been, and the way we want them to stay. To be regressive is to desire a return to the way things used to be—inevitably in a way that serves fewer people well. To be liberal is to desire and/or act in a way that attempts to liberate us from the status quo—the way things are, and attempt to improve things. To be progressive is to liberate in such a way that history proves the liberation did, in fact, improve things.

Of course, these brief definitions do not get into the nuances of the words. One can be liberal and/or conservative depending on the issue (e.g. a social liberal and fiscal conservative). Both “liberal” and “conservative” have mythic dimensions to them, and are used by the “other” as the worst possible insult (e.g. “bleeding heart” or “tax and spend” liberal). Readers are invited to apply the definitions above to their issues of choice. I don’t use either word as an insult.

Thesis: if we’re honest, in varying degrees, each of us is conservative, and each of us is liberal on a variety of issues, and we define conservatism and liberalism based on how we value things from our unique worldview: the moderate/modern Democrat or Republican is too liberal from the traditional Republican perspective and too conservative from the postmodern Democratic perspective. The labels have relevance only in the context of the worldview of the person using them. Neither hard-core conservatives nor hard-core liberals can see this. Those italicized words don’t come from some middle point between conservatism and liberalism, but from a emerging integral process-perspective that has transcended them both while including the essential (not stereotypical) value of each.

A difficult truth for conservatism (trust that the difficulties for liberalism are in the next paragraph): in most cases, the conservative agenda of today is the liberal agenda of yesteryear. Disagree? In the 1700’s liberal North American colonists from Great Britain attempted to liberate themselves from the status quo rule of England. We now call this the American Revolution, and those left-wing, pro-freedom-of-religion crazies (among other issues on their table), our “Founding Fathers.” In the years leading up to 1920, the liberal agenda fought for women’s suffrage—attempting to liberate women from the status quo that denied them the right to vote, while conservatives tried to keep things the way they were—woman should not vote. In the early 1960s, liberals attempted to pass and succeeded at passing the Civil Rights Act, while conservatives opposed it. Do any conservatives today oppose the core results of these three issues in the 21st-Century U.S.A.? That’s a question for another posting.

A difficult truth for liberalism (as promised): not all attempts to “liberate” are, in fact, progressive (i.e. a historically borne-out improvement on the way things were—as were the three examples in the above paragraph). Try this one on: the English, Spanish and Portuguese explorers, among others, who decided to colonize what we now call North, Central and South America, attempted to liberate—sometimes with prayer and sometimes with dismemberment, rape and slaughter—the native peoples from their “savage” and “pagan” ways. The colonizers believed that their national and religious myths were more advanced than what they perceived as the magic beliefs of the civilizations and tribes they encountered here. While the language gets slippery here, 20th- and 21st-century attempts to impose what both Democrats and Republicans call “liberal democracy” on Vietnam and Iraq by liberating the Vietnamese from Communism and the Iraqis from secular dictatorship and theocratic tribalism have resulted in lots and lots of dead people on all sides, but mostly on the sides of the alleged beneficiaries of the liberations.

In fairness to some liberals, not everyone who is called a liberal is, in fact, one. During the protests against the Vietnam war, while some of the protestors were, in fact, progressive, and attempting to “liberate” the U.S. government from it’s fear-based attempt to spread democracy and self-determination at gunpoint, many were in fact, not even conservative—not trying to maintain the status quo and keep what works, but rather, were simply self-centered pre-adolescents (regardless of chronological age) who said to their government, “you can’t tell me what to do.” That’s not liberalism or conservatism. That’s immature, impulsive, opportunistic whining based in a pre-mythic, magical worldview.

History bears this out: neither conservatism nor liberalism always gets it right (duh), but when liberalism gets it right, some years or decades or centuries later, conservatism is trying to protect and keep it safe, whatever “it” is. True progress, real development, that which stands the test of time (as do those far out ideals like racial and gender equity), is directional, evolutionary (gulp), and ongoing—the Big Bang is still banging and Creation is still creating. We (i.e. life on earth) are a creative process that didn’t take a nanosecond and end some 13.6 billion years ago, or take six days and end ____ years ago (fill it in if you dare, but don’t let your local geologist, archeologist or cosmologist see it).

Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed did their respective things centuries before “modern,” “rational,” “scientific” worldviews emerged, and reason transcended and included myth. Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, et al. all did their things before the interpretative, contextual postmodern perspectives emerged and exposed modernity’s own “myth of the given,” both transcending and including the great gifts that modernity brought. And right now, postmodernity’s own flaws (and gifts) are dancing within the illuminating spotlight of an emerging integral perspective that is able to see, understand and appreciate the “dignities and disasters” of each of these and other preceding worldviews—all the while knowing it will be transcended and included by the next emergent worldview.

For those of you who are offended by the religious allusions above, the odds are that you’ve confused the mythic level (stage) of religious belief with religion itself. Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris make some good arguments, many of which are essential and with which I agree. Each of them mistakes mythical worldviews on religion and spirituality with religion and spirituality themselves. Ken Wilber calls this a level/line fallacy—confusing a single developmental level of something (in this case, religious belief) with the entire line or category (religion). To use an oversimplified example from the Judeo-Christian tradition, the mythic level of belief reads the Bible as a literally true story. Modern and postmodern levels of belief read the same stories as parables: metaphor and allegory.

Regardless of labels, humans have grown, are growing and do grow toward increasingly more complex and inclusive worldviews. If you doubt that, and just as one, simple, significant and somewhat superficial (in the big picture) example, look at the skin pigmentations and genders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives today, and contrast them with those same two characteristics forty years ago. And that’s just the growth in forty years. Trace it back on a global scale 100 years, 500 years, 1000 years and more, and take a look at the ongoing liberation from limited, self- and ethno- centric ways of being.

Cut to the Chase: Obama or McCain? Myth, Reason and Context

With good reason, the economy has everyone’s attention right now. Some of us (that’s “us” as in U.S. citizens regardless of political party) will vote based on where we think we’ll get the best tax status, healthcare, job or educational opportunities. In other words, what’s best for me and my family right now? Some of us will vote on military issues, especially, but not only concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (realizing that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent there and on the consequent medical and psychological care (when the latter is provided) of tens of thousands of maimed and traumatized veterans is money that will not be available to create jobs, educate children, repair infrastructure, etc.). Some of us will vote based on where we think the country will be led in relation to local, national and international/planetary issues by the new President—including, but not limited to, the economy.

None of these reasons for voting is right or wrong, but each is different from the other, and as stated above move from less complex and inclusive to more complex and inclusive. The first wants to know what’s in it for “me,” especially right now, financially—self-centered and short term, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, especially when that “me” is suffering and struggling. The second is taking a slightly larger look, seeing how one type of spending actually puts lives at risk around the world, and takes money away from other domestic issues. The third takes in a longer term, larger, and ultimately more complex view. Here’s the difficulty: it makes sense to take care of oneself and those closest to you; sometimes the best way to do that is to pay more attention to the bigger picture—how everyone fares, and for how long. Not everyone is able to do this—to make this leap.

All right, here’s the apologia—the context-provider. I’m a second generation New York (now living in Connecticut), Catholic Italian-American, heterosexual male, which, for good or ill, qualifies me in some circles as a “white guy.” I’m married to (gulp) an immigrant (i.e. someone who did what my grandparents did, but from the Dominican Republic rather than from Italy, and like them, came here with no English), who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, who votes, and who earned her Associate’s, Bachelor’s Master’s and Doctoral degrees since 1997—reading, writing and speaking her second language, English, throughout this educational process. She, her parents, and her siblings have very different perspectives than many U.S. citizens on the Spanish decimation of the native Taíno culture in the Caribbean after Columbus arrived, and of the two 20th-century U.S. military invasions of the Dominican Republic (kind of like how U.S. citizens feel about Pearl Harbor and September 11). Her post-Columbus ancestors were a mix of African slaves, Spanish colonizers and Native Taínos.

What I’m getting at here is that despite the tricky camera work and careful selection of mainstage performers, the vast majority of folks accusing Barack Obama of befriending a terrorist, using his middle name to instill fear in the hearts of those who are old enough to vote but incapable of critical thought, and agreeing with select Republicans that conservative U.S. citizens are pro-American and progressive citizens are something other than that, are white, conservative, Christian and scared. I know. I know. You’re reading this, you support McCain-Palin and you’re not those three things: read the sentence again, especially the parts about “vast majority” and “critical thought.” It's not that there are no white guys (like me) supporting Obama—there are plenty, it's that there are very, very, very few brown, black and yellow faces in those crowds screaming with glee when McCain-Palin supporters smear Obama with deliberately misleading allusions to his middle name, absolute lies about his religious background (all the more despicable because the lies suggest that something would be wrong were he a Muslim and not a Christian), and his ties to a guy who protested U.S. policy when Obama was eight years old.

The species is evolving. Granted, our technology is evolving faster than our moral, values and ethical development, so it’s possible (and common) for tribal, ethnocentric and nationalistic hooligans to get their hands on sophisticated tools of destruction and create lots of suffering—whether those tools are machetes, handguns, automatic weapons, atomic bombs, jet planes, or water, dogs, electrical wires, hoods, humiliation and fear (in the presence of a digital camera).

The current president joked to his “base”—which he described as the “haves and have mores,” on camera, at a white-tie fundraiser, about not being able to find those WMDs. John McCain joked, upon hearing himself say the words, “bomb Iran” in an attempt to parody the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”—bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb bomb Iran. And while I still think Bill Clinton needs a boot in the ass for his arrogantly stupid sexual exploits in the Oval Office, allowing his opponents to make that idiocy the focal point of much of his second term, if I had to choose between the next president having inappropriate oral sex in the Oval Office or joking publicly about issues the essence of which is killing and maiming men, women and children, as both George W. Bush and John McCain have done, I prefer that the leader of the free world practice sexual rather than slaughter idiocy. Neither, of course, would be best.

Barack Obama grasps and speaks about a much more complex and inclusive America and world than does John McCain. The straight-talk, Maverick, Main Street, folksy approach is alluring, but nostalgic at best. Some people who voted for the current president said they felt he was the type of guy they could sit down and have a beer with, and that’s fine. My guess is that I might enjoy the beer with George as long as the conversation stayed away from politics and he has no authority over anything outside his family.

The good ol’ boy from CT and TX is a swaggering, straight-talking, no-nonsense, right-and- wrong, good-and-evil kinda guy—a complete stranger to complexity, nuance and any real practice of inclusion—despite his own upbringing, one in which he himself was often excluded. What has happened in and to the United States on his watch is staggering. Arrogant in good times, lost and inarticulate under pressure in bad, he is proof that we need a president who brings more to the table than family history or “regular- guy” charisma.

Barack Obama has shown calm and focus while under attack; he should not be punished for being eloquent; and as with any elected official, I’m sure that once he’s in office, I’m going to disagree with some of his decisions and policies. But beyond even the hope and change of which he often speaks, trust and worldview are the key ingredients for me in his bid for the White House. He shows evidence of understanding the complexity of that for which he is asking, through both his language and his demeanor. John McCain does not.

Barack Obama was confident enough to ask a veteran member of the Senate with extensive foreign policy experience far beyond his own to be his running mate. John McCain selected a running mate who has
only limited local and state governing experience. We don’t need any more interesting characters running the country. We need men and women with character.

Vote Obama on November 4.