Politics, Media Missteps & the U.S. Elections
Technology in the form of the popular broadcast and Internet media has failed us all. The resounding questions in the Democratic party candidacy race right now should have less to do with power and charisma than they do with the primacy of fundamental needs so long ignored by the awful political engine currently mis-directing the United States. The question to ask is which Democratic or Republican candidate will educate the young, heal the sick and be a unifying force for peace in the world? Instead of focusing on issues, the popular media merely keep score and report who is winning (sometimes utterly inaccurately) and which public mis-statement is most likely to cost which candidate some delegate votes.
The United States is severely broken in so many places that I wouldn't be surprised to see a wide variety of influential citizens jumping ship en masse in the not too distant future. With Congress paralyzed, gun violence still out of control, tens of millions of people without even the vaguest shred of medical care, tens of millions more with medical coverage that is insanely inadequate (with no help in sight), and a horrifically expensive education system which fails on so many levels that it defies description, what U.S. citizens need is a true reformer who has some control in the trenches.
Apparently none of the conservative or mid-road Republicans have anything close to what’s needed. Somebody step up please. So the task, overall, falls to Clinton. What scares me most of all is that she is very smart – possibly the smartest person in the room. The scary part is that anyone with the brains to clearly see Scylla and Charybdis on either side should logically run in the opposite direction. Instead, like all well-founded power-seekers, she runs toward the confrontation. I just hope that Congress is truly ready for change. If not, the generation growing into full adulthood (the generation which includes your kids and mine by the way) may see the true beginning of the end of the American empire. I certainly hope I’m wrong.
Four generations of Americans have been raised with a growing inordinate self-aggrandizing sense of unbridled entitlement. The lessons of runaway greed and poverty brought on by the Depression, the failure in Vietnam, the humiliating laughing stock of medical care in the U.S. which the world gleefully derides, Presidents (Democrat and Republican alike) who lie repeatedly, the Iraq lie, the festering and murderous humiliation of New Orleans, echelons of thieving and avaricious civil servants, and the never-diminishing historical specter of insane white wealth wrought on the backs of black slaves have all served to convulse and paralyze the collective American psyche.
In an excellent article in the Washington Post columnist David Greenberg writes like some smart contemporaries of his - with what I feel they all believe to be a sense of the African-American consciousness and a corresponding but similarly misplaced kinship. Foolish them. The smart play for Americans collectively is to get on with the task of rebuilding an education systems, imposing British or Canadian-style universal health care, controlling guns, raising children in a peaceful nation, and raising taxes to pay for it all. But that Utopian ideal will never be realized in a country so overburdened with corporate and political avarice that it cannot even find a military-industrial economic balance that doesn't include unwarranted imperialistic transnational interference concerned only with protecting the perverse hegemony of corporate American power.
History will view the rise and fall of America with disdain and anger not so much at the failure of the rest of the world to rein in the nation, but at the failure of America to study and understand its own power and the degree to which it could have been put to the greatest good.
The technology of the Internet is in full play, managed by the political campaigners and strategists not to educate but rather to influence. Even in this urgent and desperately fought period of candidacy battles, the issues which plague America are merely pawns moved around the board to face front where they'll influence the greatest number of voting delegates. The democratic influence inherently present in the structure of the Internet imposes no substantive influence on the candidates, delegates or on most voters either for that matter.
Greenberg seems to cite "Obamamania" as a logical vehicle constructed from the candidate's own character, personality and history. Obama, like Clinton, is also smart enough to see the horrors lurking just around the corner of a successful run. He will, true to himself no doubt, likely tend to orate in the face of insurmountable odds. That is a tactic insufficient for future victory should he come to power. Clinton will not run from a fight either - not by a long shot. Rather than orate, she will organize and impose practical decisions and processes in an effort to solve problems. The question remains though - are Obama's careful mind and oratory signs that he can lead by force of will? If so, can such an inexperienced and legislatively undistinguished man rise above himself and take the risks inherent in the achievement of truly embracing and successful leadership? Can Clinton's demonstrable ability to organize, plan and take risks be presented in such a way that people will be inexorably drawn to her leadership? These are the questions that must be decided if the Democratic party battle ends up as the two-horse race that it appears to be now.
Greenberg's veiled assertion is that Clinton is the better play. In my view what's best for America is for its leaders to feed and educate the young, see to the health of everyone, and then let a strong and vibrant nation once again direct a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Lincoln was no dummy.
Technology does not create great leaders capable of galvanizing a citizenry and influencing enemies. A candidate's computer literacy or ability to make clever use of Ajax on a representative web site, or incorporate slick video messages in cool-looking streaming video interfaces is no measure of leadership. The technological vehicle of the Media and the Internet are mere megaphones. Great leaders shine light on new ideas so that we can clearly see and understand such things. In that light we can walk new paths to success, sure in the knowledge that our clearly visible goals are plainly beneficial and secured against all enemies not in the least because the light is so bright.
The United States is severely broken in so many places that I wouldn't be surprised to see a wide variety of influential citizens jumping ship en masse in the not too distant future. With Congress paralyzed, gun violence still out of control, tens of millions of people without even the vaguest shred of medical care, tens of millions more with medical coverage that is insanely inadequate (with no help in sight), and a horrifically expensive education system which fails on so many levels that it defies description, what U.S. citizens need is a true reformer who has some control in the trenches.
Apparently none of the conservative or mid-road Republicans have anything close to what’s needed. Somebody step up please. So the task, overall, falls to Clinton. What scares me most of all is that she is very smart – possibly the smartest person in the room. The scary part is that anyone with the brains to clearly see Scylla and Charybdis on either side should logically run in the opposite direction. Instead, like all well-founded power-seekers, she runs toward the confrontation. I just hope that Congress is truly ready for change. If not, the generation growing into full adulthood (the generation which includes your kids and mine by the way) may see the true beginning of the end of the American empire. I certainly hope I’m wrong.
Four generations of Americans have been raised with a growing inordinate self-aggrandizing sense of unbridled entitlement. The lessons of runaway greed and poverty brought on by the Depression, the failure in Vietnam, the humiliating laughing stock of medical care in the U.S. which the world gleefully derides, Presidents (Democrat and Republican alike) who lie repeatedly, the Iraq lie, the festering and murderous humiliation of New Orleans, echelons of thieving and avaricious civil servants, and the never-diminishing historical specter of insane white wealth wrought on the backs of black slaves have all served to convulse and paralyze the collective American psyche.
In an excellent article in the Washington Post columnist David Greenberg writes like some smart contemporaries of his - with what I feel they all believe to be a sense of the African-American consciousness and a corresponding but similarly misplaced kinship. Foolish them. The smart play for Americans collectively is to get on with the task of rebuilding an education systems, imposing British or Canadian-style universal health care, controlling guns, raising children in a peaceful nation, and raising taxes to pay for it all. But that Utopian ideal will never be realized in a country so overburdened with corporate and political avarice that it cannot even find a military-industrial economic balance that doesn't include unwarranted imperialistic transnational interference concerned only with protecting the perverse hegemony of corporate American power.
History will view the rise and fall of America with disdain and anger not so much at the failure of the rest of the world to rein in the nation, but at the failure of America to study and understand its own power and the degree to which it could have been put to the greatest good.
The technology of the Internet is in full play, managed by the political campaigners and strategists not to educate but rather to influence. Even in this urgent and desperately fought period of candidacy battles, the issues which plague America are merely pawns moved around the board to face front where they'll influence the greatest number of voting delegates. The democratic influence inherently present in the structure of the Internet imposes no substantive influence on the candidates, delegates or on most voters either for that matter.
Greenberg seems to cite "Obamamania" as a logical vehicle constructed from the candidate's own character, personality and history. Obama, like Clinton, is also smart enough to see the horrors lurking just around the corner of a successful run. He will, true to himself no doubt, likely tend to orate in the face of insurmountable odds. That is a tactic insufficient for future victory should he come to power. Clinton will not run from a fight either - not by a long shot. Rather than orate, she will organize and impose practical decisions and processes in an effort to solve problems. The question remains though - are Obama's careful mind and oratory signs that he can lead by force of will? If so, can such an inexperienced and legislatively undistinguished man rise above himself and take the risks inherent in the achievement of truly embracing and successful leadership? Can Clinton's demonstrable ability to organize, plan and take risks be presented in such a way that people will be inexorably drawn to her leadership? These are the questions that must be decided if the Democratic party battle ends up as the two-horse race that it appears to be now.
Greenberg's veiled assertion is that Clinton is the better play. In my view what's best for America is for its leaders to feed and educate the young, see to the health of everyone, and then let a strong and vibrant nation once again direct a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Lincoln was no dummy.
Technology does not create great leaders capable of galvanizing a citizenry and influencing enemies. A candidate's computer literacy or ability to make clever use of Ajax on a representative web site, or incorporate slick video messages in cool-looking streaming video interfaces is no measure of leadership. The technological vehicle of the Media and the Internet are mere megaphones. Great leaders shine light on new ideas so that we can clearly see and understand such things. In that light we can walk new paths to success, sure in the knowledge that our clearly visible goals are plainly beneficial and secured against all enemies not in the least because the light is so bright.
Labels: Barack Obama, Democrat, Hillary Clinton, Republican, U.S. primary
posted by Howard Carson, Managing Editor @ 9:41 PM
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