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AND NOW IT’S ONLY FAIR to revisit the phenomenon (because I’ve long felt he is one) of Barack Obama and how I feel about his run.

Now, I hardly think it matters in a larger sense. If Bill Richardson is not going to affect people’s feeling or voting too much with his endorsement, what the hell does it matter what I think? So this post is not about that. It’s about the fact that I’ve been behind his candidacy, especially in the framework of the primary battles, and while I didn’t quite expect it, found myself drawn deeply in support of his campaign. Great and abiding love and trust for the Democratic brand has never been a feature of this blog, and yet I made the very first donation to a Presidential candidate ever to the Obama campaign. It was small, but you know how that goes. So what’s up now?

Let me dish out the veggies first and then I’ll come back for the meat, but here’s the neck bone right up front: I am no longer inspired in the sense that I was by him. Although to be honest, this has been a gradual feeling.

Let me explain what this means in various ways. To me.

I do still feel he is gifted and brilliant, and I still feel fine about supporting his winning the nomination over Clinton. A reader took issue with my making a distinction of one evil over another…but without distinctions even as fine as fishscale, I wouldn’t know how to navigate this world. So I stand by them for now, though I do agree that the Two Party System in general is a trick.

I do have hope that Barack Obama is just doing the dance I often justified he had to do. But I can no longer personally continue to do that justifying. I leave it to people more knowledgeable with politics. To me it looks like he’s just a bit more game:heart than heart:game. At least in comparisons to earlier perception. And in my world, that matters.

Now, when large groups of people side with or against anything, it becomes difficult to introduce your own particular nuance. That’s why I made it a point to ask you to hold on up there a couple paragraphs. When huge tides of approval or disapproval map out the public dialogue, the lay of the land almost dictates that you fall into a pre-ordained position. That’s annoying. It reminds me of when I’m hesitant to tell people that I really like Box of Rain or Sugar Magnolia (especially in certain locales) because to them, it instantly signifies that I am a “Deadhead.” Whoa, there.

When I say I’m no longer inspired it does NOT mean that I need another Obama hit to start getting huggy. It is not a lull in FeelGood that has detached me from a previous level of support (I get that from sniffing Mr. Clean). Nor does it mean that I now side with the people who once condemned me for getting behind someone they were SUUUUURE had “played the race card on Bill and Hill” and Destroyed Their Standing With the Black Community. No, I do not. Because honestly, one of the things that drew me in so deeply to his run was when I saw racial dynamics playing out in the social dialogue.

The primaries brought out some ugly. Some out of me, some out of others. I’m not here to cling to it or highlight it for the sake of being angry. If you know me, you know I go OUT of my way to avoid holding on to or stoking anger.

The primaries also brought out some truth.

When all this shit started to flare up, I was totally taken by surprise that people I had once thought were friends were lumping me in hatefully with some borg-like entity I never met or joined. I am not talking about mental intent. I’m talking about the power of language. It drove me away from sites, one of them I had guest-posting privileges on.

IT STRIKES ME that so many people who last year giddily lumped in all the Republicans under one ugly idea or umbrella of derision are just as ready to do it to people on their own “side,” the moment there is a contest. That’s a part of why I don’t trust labels. Or “sides.” Before, the hate was (ostensibly) for Republithugs or Repukes or some other such nasty name. But see how easily it can change to “Obamanut” or “Obamanite” or “Glassy Eyed Kool Aid Sippin Obamabot.”

—3 de Marzo, 2008 - The Giddy and Greasy Gatlin 

The heat is over, and no Kumbaya from this corner. And not so much because even when I wasn’t taking a concrete stand for Obama, but against racism and against having the Fear card played on me anymore I was still being attacked with that intense anti-Obama venom. But rather because the primaries drew stark a divide in racial awareness and point of view that remains in effect. And I do not have the urge to chill with people who see things so very differently in certain matters. (Stick a tack in that thought, because we’ll be back to it when I present my documentary on YearlyKos 07, the one that I attended in Chicago as one of the “Chicago 17.”) I just don’t. When people are still running around claiming that somehow the media and Obama are responsible for an “RFK smear” and thereby devaluing millions of black americans and other people of color and their perceptions—their own perceptions—of what HRC said and how that figures into our collective image pool and recollection and experience, I want to laugh. Well, first I want to trip them so they fall down and skin their flailing elbows. And then I want to laugh. And I don’t find feelings like that conducive to friendship. So I’ll stay away from certain places and conversations with certain people.

Nuance Alert: This doesn’t mean you’ll see me at an Oregon Obama campaign office, either. Or that I “hate” those RFKSmeery people or even that I “dislike” them. It doesn’t mean that. Some I still “like.” Then again, I like Halvah as well as eating Jalepeños raw like a strawberry, so go figure my tastes.

On Clinton? I’ve never been full of this supposed vitriol and I’m not now! Maybe Scarborough and Matthews were, I don’t know. I don’t watch TV programming, they are not me, they never have spoken for me. I don’t deny they are misogynists, asses, and pompous overpaid idiots. But thousands, millions of people make it possible for those men to be have jobs with support. Either way, I have no interest in defending the MSM or anyone else who dislikes the Clintons for their own reasons. I simply don’t like her family’s tactics or record. Period. I don’t care if Clinton and Obama take a trip to Great Adventure and go down the slippy-slide sharing a straw and a strawberry soda and big ole sweet sappy smile-for-two. I think Clinton ran a dinosaur of a campaign full of Republican moves and pandering and it was clumsy and rude and I don’t hate her and I don’t love her any differently than I did when she turned me off big time by moving to the cushy part of New York (I’ve spent, cumulatively, well over a decade living in NY) and then becoming Senator of a state she had nothing to do with. Years ago. This year, she essentially showed me that she changed in no substantial way.

So there’s another element.

Let’s get to the breast over here. Oh, sorry. Still thinking about talking turkey, you know. I did give you the neckbone right up front, remember? So let’s dig in.

Obama.

I’ll add here that nothing has really changed as far as my political beliefs. Until a month ago or so, and only so I could vote in Oregon’s primary, I have been registered as an Undeclared or Unaffiliated, etc, on my voting registration (wording differs from state to state). So I’ve not ever been some hardcore “Democrat.” I’m certainly not a Republican. But I don’t just choose affiliation on what I’m not. I don’t work that way. And yes, I’ve voted Green party before and been vilified for it. Do I care? I’ll let you guess.

My feelings on Obama began as mostly positive. Well, when I heard his speech in 2006, they were very positive. Though from the start I never cared for certain conservative sounding notions of his:

I don’t care for his nonsense about the 60s and 70s. Saying that they were too “Divisive” is a terribly naive view. It does push the rest of what he is saying into some silly sort of idea, as if nobody should fight. Ever. The divisiveness was caused by war. And a generation trying to foist fear and violence on the rest of the world and the youth of America. (Hear it? Four dead in Ohio!) Obama should use this in his idea of “Hope.” Again, we cannot live ruled by fear!

—Change and Sway

But okay, I was willing to roll with that and see where he went. Because weighed into the entire package, it could be okay. Intelligent and original thinkers can bring new ways of seeing things that can lead to new ways of doing things that can reframe your feelings on ideas or events you had previously seen a certain way. So with someone who can do like he do, I give some room. And despite the great efforts from the Clinton campaign to paint Barack Obama as nothing more than a fancy sound, his speech was not “just a speech.” Anyone with any sort of operating mind knows that. That speech was—as many people noted at the time—indicative of a brilliant mind and a person destined to lead.

And I still think that while he is scaring everyone by rejecting the apparatus of the Democratic party, well. If it were not corrupt and unreliable, rejecting it might not be the reasonable choice of a healthy intellect. But it is. And for a power to be enduring, it must rewrite the rules of ascending to power on its way to realization. All true.

But he was not my first choice in these 2008 primaries. Nor my second. Why? 

In that trip to Chicago I mentioned before, when I met up with a few people and we dallied with national politics and bloggers who dig national politics, I met a young guy named Matt Ortega. We roomed together and did a little chilling together. He’s a good guy from what I know. I’m about 15 years older than him? Something like that. And yet, I’m less sedate. Yet, I’m less practical and more of a dreamer. Why do I claim such things???!!! Well, relax. I mean no implication on worth.

I’ll just give you Matt’s words after we spoke for a time. 

I’m a reformist. You’re a revolutionist.

 

Or maybe it was I’m a reformer and you are a revolutionary or I believe in reform and you believe in revolution. Either way, none are 100% accurate, but you get the gist. He feels the system can be changed enough from within and fast enough that it matters, and I’ve long felt the system was entrenched and enthralled and entrapped by forces that won’t allow the kind of change that will do enough good to matter. Does this mean molotovs in the street? Maybe. But that is not what I propose. To me, and relating to our current discussion, I think it means that the only kind of person running for office that I can really get behind is someone who means to take on the system boldly, unwaveringly, and balls-out…or ovaries-out. Ew. Let’s back off of that metaphor. But you get me.

This is how I saw Obama’s run in the primaries. And I said as much. I stated clearly that THAT is what I can support, and that only.

Dear Barack Obama, just so it is clear, I do not rely upon you to change my life or change my heart. Never once have I considered that the job of a politician. I do not think you areThe One anymore than The One repeats and reappears wherever my eyes will fall, because I, too, am The One, and she is The One, and the one is everywhere and the One is all. I would not join even an Obama fan club let alone a cult, and I will still help or not help in my everyday and local life whether or not you are in the White House. This letter is not about blind adoration nor my personal capitulation of anything. I will remark upon and reinforce such a message and motion that you speak of and for wherever I see it occurring. On the corner, in the street, in a classroom, in an auditorium, by a river, in a valley, in a penthouse. (Especially in a penthouse.) It doesn’t have to be you. But the message needs to be true.

—8 de Marzo, 2008 - Dear Barack (and Kevin),

It needs to be true. Not mudded up with appeals to various voter groups, not made vague by strategic blur. 

Of course, even a statement worded as carefully and specifically as this doesnt mean they won’t stamp your arm Obamaton when you try to leave the DMV. No…not the disciple of a man, but to a stand. 

And of course, his stand has become a bit less than ideal, now, hasn’t it? It has become softened and manipulated somewhat rearranged in places for a different phase of the political game. Introducing nuance now where it has, to my way of thinking, no place. Stands on FISA, war, abortion, immigration.

I was never under the impression that Senator Obama was radical. But I felt it was radical that he was rejecting certain ways of politicking and certain ways of raising money. I saw his organizational genius. I can appreciate that. But I don’t really appreciate so much this same-old same-old political calculus scene.

People say That is How You Do. People say The Way Politicians Run Never Corresponds to How They Lead. People say other things, and hey—they all might be true. And as I told a reader recently, I still have hope for Obama making very big positive changes! But it’s a hope I wear loosely. Like a red scarf in the wind. It won’t impede my own movement. For now, it matches my own garments and if it gets in my way of seeing or moving, I’ll cast it away. (On that note, if you do support Obama and you do hold out great hope for him, I recommend following Al Giordano’s reporting. It lacks that  tabloid flavor so much reporting on him seems to carry, and is grounded in experience and wisdom.)

But for me, that sort of talk (and I did my share of justifying his moves as I have always kept in mind what it means that a perceived-as-black man is vying for this seat for one thing) is simply not inspiring, whatever else it is. It may be practical, but it doesn’t move me. It doesn’t move me to follow closely and it doesn’t move me to throw in my money, and it doesn’t move me to be vocally loud in my support. I’m not saying you have to be that way or vote this way or feel that way. I’m just telling you who I am. Don’t be upset, Democrats! I exist in a demographic nobody is going to court these days anyway! I’m not a Republican turned “Progressive” nor a” “centrist” nor a Lefty desiring Unity (Peace doesn’t mean this Unity) nor a recent convert to “Liberal thought.” I’m a hard core izquierdist radical-minded vato who has been that way all his conscious life, who believes that most blogging is a social activity for upper middle class types, that most schools are a system of indoctrination and control, that feet in the street is how la gente bring the heat, that the government has no business at all in my private conversations or mail, that today’s wars in the Middle East are a byproduct of fear and greed and part of a class war and a racist imperative that runs a continuum from bombs falling on Baghdad to the cruelty given and profit made from migrants in our own land, and lots of other things that Obama would undoubtedly reject AND denounce.

And while I am a forthright and direct sort, I understand the value of strategy and misdirection. And while I understand the value of these things, there is also a bright line where I’ll stop excusing strategy. And just as Obama has always made his intent clear to destroy the definitions of Democrat and Republican, as per his hero Abraham Lincoln’s way of bringing diverse minds together, I have always made my feelings clear in this way, as well.

But there’s a fine line when it comes to compromise in the name of power. It’s a dangerous game. And I understand why he’d have to play it a little, and why Hillary would have to play it a little. And why Richardson would have to play it a bit. And I have held out hope. Because Obama is offering hope to spare. Hell, even the notion of a black man in the White House absolutely resonates with hope! But let’s not mistake that particular nugget of inspiring change with another huge change that, honestly, is more important to make. Let’s not sublimate our hope. Let’s not accept one fantastic advance in the place of a scarier and more crucial one. … [H]onestly—the need for that specific change is not what is bleeding us right now.

Edwards offers me more hope as it stands with his balls-out confrontational positions. Because the real change we need to make right now is that of correcting the changes made in the last administration, and our general course regarding law and the People’s rights, and corporate rape of our culture, and crimes perpetrated against other nations in the name of Terror. Those changes are the ones my eyes are on.

—Obama and Huckleberry Dominate Iowa Caucus

Well, we know Edwards is gone. And on how much Obama’s strategies for the November election will be balanced with eventual justice, the outcome remains to be seen.

But as I’ve said,  

American politics to me is a sham and a failed system

And one of the reasons why is that there is just too damn much political vacillation and strategy and not enough direct challenge and fearless stands for what is true.

I don’t know if it’s the media people and the business people who decide who gets to rise to the point Obama is at now, but I know that the choices are very narrowed! Do you really feel like you get a real choice in ideologies and platforms? Really? I don’t. To me it’s assumed it’s a game. that only allows players to enter who will support the parameters of the current game. I don’t need to understand who is gaming things to know that. 

However…I have to admit that in this paradigm, it is entirely possible to carry the thought further to posit that a player might opt to pose as such a person just to enter the sanctum untouched. And that the smartest strategists would do just that. This is what some claim Obama’s entire methodology is. But on this, I cannot rest any more faith.

Either way, hey. I’ll engage the process with feeling because even life is a “game”!

Anyway, as the microgame of “Choose Your Leader” unwound, we made the choices we could, as gradually, the Contestants were buzzed out. (We sure had fun with Gravel, didn’t we? Love that gato.) But again, how exciting is it really that you end up elbow to elbow with so many people and in a line when the damn hallway is built so narrow at one end? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a separate issue.

For me the primary fever became about an environment where certain social and ideological issues warred and drew me in due simply to my great emotional investment in those issues. I look at my passion there as mostly a result of that. That, and the promise of something bold and new and fearless in its idealism; something beautiful and Strange I Can Believe In. It wasn’t as if the whole while I wasn’t aware that I was being held fast by a certain momentum and compulsion. For that, I feel a little ashamed! But hey. You clean up, get some food in you, take out the empty bottles and move on. Ultimately, I’m hardly sorry. Because it is also my nature that when a host of talkers begin calling a perceived-as-black man ascending to power “uppity” or equate their own chances of success with the fear that lurks in almost every black americans’ mind, I will speak up.

Which is precisely why I cannot write off a violent difference in views over things like Hillary’s assassination remark. To one person, it is and will remain nothing but a “spoof,” and to that, I reply that we live in very different worlds, between which the dividing line is dangerously blurred by Equality-Bestowing Internet Glow.

One time for those who need it direct: I in no way and in no circumstances think McCain is comparable to Obama. I know for certain that Obama would be better for the nation than McCain. (Do I really? Yes. No. Of course! Did I mention that we are awaiting responses, still, to our survey on (38) Latino concerns?) And I hold out hope that Barack Obama will, once in office, shake up the system hard enough to rain down love and comfort and strong(er) arms upon all welfare mothers and hungry children and homeless elderly, stack the prison system with every offender from the last eight years of the political murder machine, end the Iraq Occupation and the Afghanistan Decimation, fill to overflowing the aforementioned Empathy Deficit, and finally help the people see that the 12 million immigrants living in fear and without protection and who make our food and economic system possible are human beings with rights and feelings and families and needs just like ours.

Meanwhile, I’ve come back to areas more accessible to me, more immediately understandable to me, and that inspire me. This is where I am right now. This may change in a week, or in a day, or in five minutes. I will never promise to be predictable or even consistent.

But what will remain the same then as now is that I believe we all must act on what is true to each of us and at every moment. The Obama I got behind for a few good months would agree to this. And if not, well, it’s like the man said. That’s ok.

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