Rick Monteverde wrote:
Synchronicity in action: At the very moment I read those words of yours above I was listening to the recording of Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw discussing how nobody knows where he really is philosophically and to some extent politically.
Obama resembles FDR in that he is personally enigmatic. He is a hard to know personally, and he has few friends. He is a tough Chicago politician. BUT his political philosophy is an open book! I know exactly what he thinks about dozens of different topics. I read his book and his web pages. (I do not agree with all of his policies, by any means.) Some commentators say that they were surprised at how conservative his speech sounded. Nothing in it surprised me. Furthermore, he sounds a lot like other black middle class Ivy League people in Atlanta and New York City.
I suggest that Mr. Rose and Mr. Brokaw have not done their homework. They should have reviewed his book. It may also be that they are unfamiliar with middle-class black American culture, and they find it somehow mysterious, difficult to understand or disconcerting. I do not.
One thing that some white commentators may not understand well is that the black experience gives people a different view of the proper exercise of Federal power, and the role of government. If the federal government had not put its foot down hard and sent troops into the South on numerous occasions, these people would still be slaves. Or they would still be going to wretched second class segregated schools, are not allowed to eat in restaurants. Not a day goes by when they forget that -- and neither do I. One of the people invited to the inauguration is an 84-year-old World War II vet. He remembers seeing on his grandfather's back the scars inflicted on him when he was a slave. This is not some distant memory of a forgotten age.
- Jed
