Obama as Pragmatist

my professor told us to read this article on Obama's speech.

Dionne does not understand what has taken place.

Charles Hugh Smith in a post on his site said that the young generation wasn't democrat or republican but pragmatist.

We are a generation raised by television and public school, and not by our parents.

Those venues of education are very apolitical.

Television and schools have no political preference.

But they do have problem solving, common sense, and pragmatism.

Barack Obama represents that:

I think he represents a new stage of political development and this article reveals that.

There are two main philosophers that came after the enlightenment

Burke and Marx

Burke represents the upper class:

He had an elitist view of humans, that people born upper class were somehow more awesome genetically than poor people.

That has be proven obviously false, just look at all the poor people after World War 2 who took the G.I. Bill and became well educated members of the middle and upper classes.

So if you give people a chance, meaning a peaceful situation and the possibility of education they will rise to the occasion.

But Burke had two good ideas:

That government should take its time: that huge disruptions in law and government create chaos, murder, stupid shit.

The other being that democracy is good because it takes time. It may take years, but through endless complaining, arguing, compromises will eventually be made that will have results that solve problems.

We learned from the soviets and fascists that life without democracy sucks. That if people do not own property, even if it be only an cell phone. It is better than everyone owning everything, which means if you break a plate you've broke everyone's plate. And they kill you or send you to the gulag.

Because if you own your own shit, when you brake a plate, you broke your shit and nobody cares.

But the point of Marx now that we don't care about fighting revolutions and creating utopias is, "THE MAN will fuck you in the ass, so never stop regulating and being up his."

I think Barack Obama represents the good parts of both of their theories, he discards Burke's elitism and Marx's want for instant change.

Dionne sites the line by Obama, "Their evidence included Obama's stout defense of old-fashioned values -- "honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."

"These things are old," Obama declared. "These things are true."

Dionne here talks about virtues:

Montesquieu said that democracies main psychological binding component is virtue. Despotism being fear and Aristocracy being honor.

Americans because they are democratic are supposed to have virtues.

What Obama is saying that we need to return to old virtues.

Because our virtues have gotten all fucked up:

Honesty: I think Obama was talking about the dishonesty of Bush. That there needs to be a new transparency in government.

Hard work:We have become obsessed with being entitled

People think they deserve shit

As Kunstler constantly bitches about, our obsession with gambling.

Gambling is an activity where a human believes they can get things for nothing.

Which is disgusting.

Courage: Bush kept telling everyone to be scared. He was obsessed with fear and irrational emotions. 9-11 happens, instead of Bush telling people not to be afraid, he is like go shopping and wins the next election by getting the media to make man on man kissing something that might cause rural children to stop riding four wheelers and put on dresses.

Fair play: This is totally Marxist and has never occurred in America. I'm not even sure if this possible with humans.

The reason Obama won was because he wasn't a democrat.

He beat out Hillary because he represented a human that wants to solve problems.

That the best democrat.

That doesn't make total sense because Hillary's health care plan was more intensive that his.

But everyone associated Hillary with the old school because of Bill.

The hard facts are irrelevant when it comes to getting elected.

Obama represents a shift in politics.

McCain and Bush didn't represent any new virtues, they represented their self-serving insanity.

Which many Americans enjoy in their personal lives, but hope for better in their politicians.

There is cynicism that Americans have been too self-obsessed and feeling entitled for too long, to just change.

I don't think this is true.

When the situation changes, humans change over time, slowly, so slowly they don't even notice it.

Their habits will change just a little bit everyday until they are sitting with their friends at a bar, and say, "remember when we did this."

My dad told me once, he's sixty five now, he told me that when he was young blacks and whites never spoke, never did anything together, especially didn't fuck and have kids. And he said that the television kept sending out images of blacks and whites together, giving names and personalities to black people. That he worked with more black people over the years. At first it seemed weird, but as time passed it didn't matter anymore.

And that was only within 25 years.

And now we have a black president.

This is probably a pretty boring view of human nature.

It doesn't involve a sweet view that god made humans awesome, that some humans are born better than other ones, that humans have a destiny to end up in a utopia.

Just that, overtime things change slowly and humans change with it slowly.

It is almost like it doens't matter if things change.

People will bitch about their lives getting worse.

About having to change how they use energy.

Of course it sucks.

But eventually you get used to it.

And sometimes it doesn't suck.

And you get used to that too.