Pogue Mahone
Legalize it.
Obama should have known that telling the opposition that he won so their place was at the back of the bus was no way to move forward with the post racial, post partisan America he promised us when he was campaigning for the job of our leader. Things could have turned out a lot differently if he had tried a different tack when dealing with his diminished but still relevant rivals in congress. He came in to this job wanting to fundamanetally change America, yet even though he is widely hailed as a constitutional scholar he didn't seem to understand that our system of government was specifically designed so that such radical transformation could never come about because of the vision of one man.
We are a nation divided, in part because of the tactical political approach of people like our president and his mentors. Splitting America into aggreived parties and then forming alliances among the different groups with the intent of crushing, humiliating and forcing your will upon those portions of this country that do not fit in to those groups might win you elections but it won't win you the hearts and minds of America. We've done fundamental transformation in the past, even amidst fierce ideological differences. We did so when we formed our constitution over two hundred years ago. We used compromise and consensus to include, if not fully realize, the visions of people with diverse perspectives and came up with a structure that integrated the collective will of the people over the long term without buckling under the short term whims of the most dominant segments of the mob at any given moment.
We have before been a nation divided, and reached points in our history when radical change was needed to grow as a society despite our differences. When we reached this crossroads we were not in the same place as a people as we were four score and seven years earlier, when we were able to come together and unite as a nation with a common goal. The results were much different. We pitted brother against brother in an epic struggle not just of wills but of flesh, blood and bone. In the end our differences were resolved, but instead of uniting against a common enemy and emerging victorious fromn the ashes as one people, one side of our divided nation crushed and ground the other side of this nation under its heel, and dictated terms. Some of the changes that came from this were right and necessary, others were more controversial and questionable, but the changes were made, our future path was forged.
It could be argued that we are again at a point in our history where major decisions have to be made about the direction we will travel moving forward. Our current president certainly seems to think so. So do his political colleagues and political rivals alike. Yet at the same time both sides are so ingrained in a system that had been twisted and perverted to cater to their own small agendas that the points where they are in agreement are not the points that lead to a new vision for our nation. They are instead the points where the benefits are only to themselves, to the exclusion of the people they were elected to represent. They use the differences between us to once again pit us against one another, toss crumbs to one group of Americans with the purpose of fattening them up so they can more enthusiastically go for the throats of another group of Americans. They even try to lure in non-Americans with the hope that they can manipulate them into their own alliances.
Obama, in all his narcissistic glory, sets himself up as the man who would take the reigns of this country at this cusp of history and lead us in a new direction, a direction that is a result of his vision for our future. A vision that is a product of an upbringing where the nation he seeks to continue to lead was often seen as a menace, an oppressor, an unfair Darwinian monster that must be tamed. The people who helped him shape his vision are among the most radical dissenters of the last generation, counting among them domestic terrorists, architects of divisional politics and bitter, race baiting religious leaders. Is this the sort of man who is more suited to take the helm of a nation that is headed towards the unity of two hundred years ago, or is his brand of leadership more likely to lead us towards the dark times we had to suffer through one hundred and fifty years ago?
We are a nation divided, in part because of the tactical political approach of people like our president and his mentors. Splitting America into aggreived parties and then forming alliances among the different groups with the intent of crushing, humiliating and forcing your will upon those portions of this country that do not fit in to those groups might win you elections but it won't win you the hearts and minds of America. We've done fundamental transformation in the past, even amidst fierce ideological differences. We did so when we formed our constitution over two hundred years ago. We used compromise and consensus to include, if not fully realize, the visions of people with diverse perspectives and came up with a structure that integrated the collective will of the people over the long term without buckling under the short term whims of the most dominant segments of the mob at any given moment.
We have before been a nation divided, and reached points in our history when radical change was needed to grow as a society despite our differences. When we reached this crossroads we were not in the same place as a people as we were four score and seven years earlier, when we were able to come together and unite as a nation with a common goal. The results were much different. We pitted brother against brother in an epic struggle not just of wills but of flesh, blood and bone. In the end our differences were resolved, but instead of uniting against a common enemy and emerging victorious fromn the ashes as one people, one side of our divided nation crushed and ground the other side of this nation under its heel, and dictated terms. Some of the changes that came from this were right and necessary, others were more controversial and questionable, but the changes were made, our future path was forged.
It could be argued that we are again at a point in our history where major decisions have to be made about the direction we will travel moving forward. Our current president certainly seems to think so. So do his political colleagues and political rivals alike. Yet at the same time both sides are so ingrained in a system that had been twisted and perverted to cater to their own small agendas that the points where they are in agreement are not the points that lead to a new vision for our nation. They are instead the points where the benefits are only to themselves, to the exclusion of the people they were elected to represent. They use the differences between us to once again pit us against one another, toss crumbs to one group of Americans with the purpose of fattening them up so they can more enthusiastically go for the throats of another group of Americans. They even try to lure in non-Americans with the hope that they can manipulate them into their own alliances.
Obama, in all his narcissistic glory, sets himself up as the man who would take the reigns of this country at this cusp of history and lead us in a new direction, a direction that is a result of his vision for our future. A vision that is a product of an upbringing where the nation he seeks to continue to lead was often seen as a menace, an oppressor, an unfair Darwinian monster that must be tamed. The people who helped him shape his vision are among the most radical dissenters of the last generation, counting among them domestic terrorists, architects of divisional politics and bitter, race baiting religious leaders. Is this the sort of man who is more suited to take the helm of a nation that is headed towards the unity of two hundred years ago, or is his brand of leadership more likely to lead us towards the dark times we had to suffer through one hundred and fifty years ago?
