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for what it's worth, i don't particularly think obama to be terribly promising as an Answer to much of anything--an alternative to another period of disastrous republican control--perhaps more curious and flexible than mc-cain would be in addressing what i take to be quite deep structural problems that will play out over the next few years. some of the initiatives he has outlined seem to me little more than necessary--doing something to make the american health care system less barbaric---but mostly, he offers a relatively bland variant on the same.
i don't know if i am right in my understanding of the shoals toward which the boat we float in is heading--i think i can see some aspects of the problems, but am sure i don't see others. i try to remain a bit optimistic, which is why i point to moves like beginning to dismantle the national security state as a way to counter at least the administrative and politial center of the soft authoritarian system into which we have drifted or been pushed, depending on your view of the history of the last 30 years. (personally, i think it's been a combination of the two.)
obama isn't even a social democrat. the issues you raise are mainstream social-democratic questions and your approach to them is as well--if the states was a pluralist context, this would be part of the actual debate rather than a position advanced in messageboards. because of the tightly controlled debate, because of its narrowness, because of the poverty of information that circulates within the mainstream infotainment empire, because soft authoritarian rule relies upon opinion management that uses the trappings of exchange to consolidate and extend its narrowly pitched worldview, it seems that we approach structural problems from a crippled position. the "choices" between candidates reflects this.
but i nonetheless would maintain the obvious: obama is infinitely preferable to another period of republican domination.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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