Obama Thread

[Shea]

Discuss thoughts, new policies, etc.

EXAMPLE:

The new admin directed the EPA to review, and probably reverse, the denial for an auto emissions waiver in the state of California. Basically, we are starting to see the trappings of a uniform emissions policy come into play, where the federal government works with the states rather than against them.

Good shit.

[Jason]

CHANGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[alex]

I havent worked up a detailed response to the emissions idea in my brain yet, my initial respose is that it doesnt sound like a bad thing...

I do have some other obama related things to discuss. Basically every time my mom mentions him she sounds like she's talking about hilter or stalin or someone, she just sounds totally pissed off. I dont get it, she was in love with hilary during the primaries, and really the only difference between the two is the skin color of the penis. She hates obama's pledge to return to clinton era tax brackets, brackets that hilary supported and that my mom supported during the clinton administration. The similarities between the two far outweigh the differences, but that doesnt seem to matter. When she talks to me about him, she talks like its given that i hate his guts as well, now i may not be totally in love with the guy, but im also not cursing the day he was born.

I was telling tyler today that i was trying to think of reasons why I like him and tend to defend him to my mom. It was pretty easy to come up with some reasons that i didnt like him (not liberal/left enough, many of his cabinet choices pissed me off, ect), but it took me a bit to figure out what i liked about him. I came up with: he has a certain pragmatic, rational approach that the last adminstration totally lacked. The bush years were marked by a complete refusal to acknowledge opposing viewpoints and admit that there may be more than one way to solve problems, reason took a back seat to ideology (the postmodern philosopher in mean knows that even the idea that reason should take precedent over ideology is a kind of ideology, but im going to let that go for the sake of argument).

Now there have been times when ive tried to dig a little deeper into what is pissing my mom off about Obama, every time i invariably run into walls like 'well his a muslim, hes to close to the muslims' (honestly she said this to me), and its this kind of irrationality that is driving me crazy. During the bush years me and her used to talk about how we both favored an approach closer to the nordic/swedish model of government, where there are much high taxes, as well as much higher access to government services. She was all about this, and i could really always count on her to be kind of a leftist shoulder to cry on when todd would go off on one his reactionary rants. Now she sounds more and more like him...and i just dont get it. I know part of it has to do with a kind of cognitive dissonance between the idea that 'yes government services like nationalized health care, paid for by higher taxes might be a good thing' and the realization that 'hey, if this would actually happen here, i would be in very real danger of losing my current socio-economic standing'. At the same time, this dissonance is being expressed in completely irrational and, in my opinion, scary quasi-racist sentiment.

Thoughts?

[Shea]

race is the supreme issue here. me and some of my friends were talking about how we dont get the fact that obama is being labeled as the first black president. that's what drove the historic nature of the innauguration, and people still seems to be clinging to that, rather than policy or the fact that we need to start getting shit done. yes, the man's skin is black, but he is mixed. that argument in itself is trite, in that the election of a person like obama is supposed to be, first and foremost (with regards to race), to facilitate the beginnings of a nation with less focus on race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/etc.

my explanation for those unwilling to move past it is that they have a deeply embedded, normative structure of belief. that trend seems to exist mostly in generations before ours, in that chronologically speaking, they haven't seen or dealt with as much or grown up in a postmodern (with regards to race) society. i think maybe there is the element of racial/social ecology for us too, given that we all grew up in a more multicultural setting than our parents may have. urbanism has worked it's way into the commuter ring within our lifetime more than it has in there's.

there's a great deal of reluctance to accept that, and i know its cliche, times are changing.

the campaign/pre-results mind frame is still buzzing around too. the uncertainty about obama (which i will maintain for this argument) exists in race and "qualifications" as a sort of hidden trigger word for race. there was a total lack of marginal thinking during the election, people figured the results would be "all or nothing", and that malingering still exists. it's INSANELY EARLY in the man's term, give him a chance. i think any rational person would be just as willing to give obama or mccain the chance to prove themselves. but the logic that mccain was bush and obama was the devil/unqualified (clever way of saying negro) still swirls around. but were talking about now, now. there is what people think should be, and there is what is. people are going to be bitter for a while, but at some point you have to concede the point-if only on a level of admitting a matter of fact, and not with regards to vehement ideological stubbornness/fear of the unknown. i can't say when that will be or when i think it should be but for god's sake, it's only been 2 weeks. lighten up

conclusion-my thoughts essentially add up to the same things
1. irrational thought
2. latent racial tendencies

[alex]

are you telling me to lighten up or the anti-obama crowd? If me, then i think you're way off base, since im really not the one running around crying about how the sky is falling and the country is coming apart.

[Shea]

i don't remember typing anything that could be interpreted as the former, but then again, interpretation is simply that.

no, I agree with you

the point i was trying to make, in terms of the apocalypse crowds, is that is probably fair to say that there are just as many Obama supporters who would've gone nuts about McCain winning for the same reasons the McCain supporters felt about Obama: 4 years of doom

something just seems to tell me that Obama supporters, and the rational McCain supporters were/are simply more pragmatic and broad-minded than the super right/left batshit crazy supporters who were looking at the election on an all or nothing basis

it wasn't like the election was obama vs mccain vs SWIFT DEATH TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE

[alex]

lolol i just wasnt sure what that last sentence meant

[Shea]

well the people who think that obama is the messiah need to take a pill too, the ones who figure that the country will be incontrovertibly better off solely because obama is the president. it's not entirely a one man job, and some of his cabinet picks are pretty iffy/are a cause for concern.

[Sponsored content]