So apparently this is what restoring hope in America looks like, 200,000+ people showing up to hear Barack Obama speak, in front of the Victory Tower in Berlin. You know, I've always loved my country, and I've always been very proud of it, but over the last 6 years I've become quite beleaguered. Something happened after 9/11. I felt this hurt and was sad all day long. And I saw the world rallying around America, ready to stand with us and help. But then President Bush started using 9/11 as an instrument of fear and not reconciliation. He used the threat of terrorists as his justification to pass his laws. The Bush administration lied to us to get us into a war with Iraq by telling us they had nuclear weapons. And as Bush's attention was focused on foreign policy the economy inside America fell apart. And now we are left with a broken economy, a military that is stretched far too thin, and we've lost all our standing in the world. So I've been very sad about the state of our country. It no longer stood for the ideals and things it once did. But now, now is our chance to take it all back. To turn things around. To stop using fear and 9/11 to scare up votes, to stop torturing people, to stop polluting the world at such a dangerous rate, and to finally get this economy back in balance so that the little man isn't working for peanuts while the rich man is sitting on millions. I want my Goddamn country back! The world wants America back. And to quote Barack from his speech today, "People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time!"
Full speech after the jump: A World That Stands As One
31 comments:
Could Barak be the anti-Christ?
OH Shit! NYT's David Brooks called Obama "Disney!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25brooks.html?ref=opinion
I had the same thought that Barack Obama is way more likely to be the Anti-Christ than any other political candidate in recent memory. His father was a goat herder for Pete's sake!
Funny you bring up the Anti Christ, because that's an email I've seen floating around the last couple of months. Uses scripture and quotes from Nostradamus to say he's the Anti Christ. And the really sad thing? People fucking believe it. I've meet these people, we've all meet these people I'm sure. They're in our families and our communities. And no matter how much you explain to them the facts they still don't believe it.
Could Barack get 200,000 Americans together in one place for a speech?
He got 100,000 together in Portland, Oregon to hear him and opening act The Decemberists. So that's halfway there. Maybe he can pull 200 for his inaguration should he win.
word of advice: please don't attempt to combat allegations as ludicrous as these with supposed "facts." save facts for the fact crowd. its drastically counterproductive and insulting to the like.
i think the Rimbaud character in I'm Not There said, "Don't ever say something the person in front of you cannot understand."
make them smile. breed confidence. direct all threats NORTH!
To effectively explain "politics" to the conservative believer/ignorant you have to be a "good" politician yourself. Excellent point, Nathanael, though I'm sure Brad is quite the light of liberal thought given that he's in a hotbed of Carolina. Tough crowd, eh?
10-15 years ago North Carolina was a tough sell for a Democrat. But as Jesse Helms lost power and all these young college kids from around the country started to put down roots here after they finished school, it's really changed the political landscape here. My hometown of Durham has always been a very Democratic city, I mean it is "Black Wallstreet", but now the rest of the state I believe is ready to get on board. Sure there's some rural more older voters that will never vote for Obama because he's black, a secret muslim, the antichrist, too popular overseas, whatever there reasoning may be. But I think that if Obama can turn up the black vote and the young vote here that he can turn Carolina blue.
I am going to start contributing to this blog as well: http://www.barackobamaantichrist.blogspot.com/
Seriously, though, if there is an Anti-Christ, then it is definitely Barack Obama.
Actually, I think Rimbaud, the poet himself, said it even better...
"Idiots abound, and epileptics
You'd avoid in the streets; blind men
Led by dogs through the squares
Nose through crumbling missals.
And all of then, drooling a dumb beggars' faith,
Recite an endless litany to a yellow Jesus
Who dreams on high amidst stained glass,
Far from gaunt throublemakers and miserable gluttons"
Has humanity really changed that much in 140 years? Will it ever change? I am not so optimistic.
well if The Almighty Darkness chooses American Politics to rear his ugly head, consider me underwhelmed.
i'm not so sure humanity is subject to change. Death or a ceased existence, sure, but where has "change" bore relevance in the "humane" quality or the natural ongoing of said humanity?
i think Obama is a master of game, further blurring the lingual, or representational limits of disconnected, otherwise irrelevant ideas. when we intellectualize communication to such a degree, by what means do we have to communicate intellectually? kinda seems like we're breeding mules here . . .
granted, these complaints can only pinch the beast, but does the beast not yearn to tap its own hurdle?
Change is a Good Word.
You're right, change is a good word. And I agree that on it's on it's meaningless, ect ect. But I've noticed that campaigns seem to run on two levels. You have the intellectual arguments for the voters that look at issues and facts, and then you have the tagline and slogan voters which is unfortunately the voters that swing election. They vote for or against folk because of catch phrases like Flip Floper, get the evil doers, with us or against us, Obama's a secret muslim, ect ect. So Barack has to offer the tagline, Change, but I think he does a great job of offering the highbrow intellectual part as well. I personally believe in his brand of Change but I think his change is more Tiger than Arnold, more Jordan than Dr J. I don't think Obama can change the way Washington is run, parts of it yes but the fundamental institution no. But what he can do is be a "master of the game" as you said. Dr J took the game to the air, and Arnold just changed the way golf was played. But with Jordan and Tiger they took all the instruments of the game, fine tuned them, and then did them better than anyone. And that I believe is where the magic in Obama lies.
Except there is absolutely zero evidence that he is capable of doing any of that. Just a bunch of rhetoric. He has a history of reforming absolutely nothing.
Oh contrare monfrare. Starting out as a community organizer he worked with ordinary folks to get asbestos removed from several apartment buildings, he helped set up a job program to get thousands of residents back to work, went on to become head of the Harvard Law Review, was a standout law professor focusing on rights, race, and gender while everyone else was focusing economic analysis, reformed the death penalty in Chicago, got healthcare passed for poor kids, passed the largest ethics reform since Watergate in the Senate, passed a bill and worked with Dick Luger to secure loose nukes in Russia and around the world, he gave one of the greatest convention speeches ever, and defeated the strongest political machine (The Clintons) in over 50 years. I'd say this man has proven that he is a winner on every level.
great article - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25925202/
OK, I don't want to be too big of a rain cloud, but...
You're saying that Barack Obama won't be able to change the flawed fundamental institutions of American politics, but that Barack's such a "master of the game" that he'll be able to use those flawed institutions to betterm all of mankind. Then, to back up the idea that he's a "master of the game" you cite that:
1) He was the Ty Pennington for the extreme home make over of a shitty apartment building.
2) He worked at a magazine.
3) He taught law and specifically avoided economic issues such as the ones the country faces today.
4) He voted on bills while he was a state senator / senator.
5) He gave a good speech.
6) He beat up a girl.
There's just as much evidence that Barry represents more of the same, or worse, the forces of Evil.
1) He supports corn ethanol because he's from a farming state, even though most experts agree that it's inefficient, bad for the environment and partly responsible for rising food prices around the world.
2) He reversed his position on school vouchers so that he could win the support of teachers unions.
3) In South Carolina he told voters he wanted to be "an instrument of God," and needed their help building a "Kingdom, right here on Earth."
4) He wants to create a "civilian national security force," essentially a non-military public service corps "just as powerful, just as strong," and "just as well-funded" as the military. The force may be supplemented by the newly dead, risen from their graves to do his bidding.
5) And perhaps most damning of all, he's reversed his position on decriminalizing marijuana and stabbed his old high school toking buddies in the back.
It's all the same old politics and it sucks that the Democrats picked the polished speaker with the flashy graphic design team rather than the polished politician with the experienced foreign policy and economics team.
As November creeps closer and closer I get more and more worried that McCain's got it in the bag. And if he wins, we deserve it.
i once heard bill clinton say something along the lines of, "if you agree on everything with someone, you're not thinking." to do that one would be lyting to themselves. our ultimate goal has been unity for a long time now. that's what i care about most and i will vote accordingly.
I agree, Lucas, but I just wish people would realize that this election, like the last election and the one before it and the one before it and the one before it ad infinitum is again about the lesser of two evils. There is no such thing as change!
Ryan Williams for President!
Ryan, I can't believe you're so anti-antichrist, Mr. Barak Obama!
I do love the back and forth between you and Brad, but as John Stossel would say, "Gimme a break!" Obama, I believe will be a great leader for this country, a country that could use someone of his finesse and intelligence. Someone who WOULD make a change in American politics, and WOULD help improve our devastated reputation across the world. The alternative? MCCAIN IN THE MEMBRANE?!
GIMME A BREAK!
I'm not sure what you mean by humanity is not subject to change?
"We didn't start the fire, it's been burning since the world's been turning..."
Ryan, where is your HOPE? I think you need a Barak Obama button.
I AM feeling pretty hopeless. I've been reading "The Dark Side" - a book by The New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer chronicling how the Bush administration set basic human decency back several thousand years and how they justified it to themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c57NnbBgxaU
"I'm not sure what you mean by humanity is not subject to change?"
to be honest, i'm not entirely — wait, i can do this . . .
the confusion i was trying to explain was indebted to the same confusion and failures i see in popular communication. granted, confusion is hard to explain.
i found the question "will humanity ever change?" to be deeply conflicted in its longing, as with its less than optimistic suspicions. i'd imagine "change" represents a certain peace, equality, or some degree of a singular social conscience — kinda like a back page utopia, too unimpassioned to bother envisioning its own self. this is the same emotional chemistry i see blown through the ObamaChangeTrain and all the other ways we deem ourselves "happy." ipods, new cars, text messages, or in this case, pessimism. tune in, drop out. its the same wrong idea dressed up pretty again — colors we do NOT find in the natural world.
how can we truly ask, or even expect ourselves to disassemble the weighted world and unite beneath a sole intellect? when has this worked? when has it even remotely been accomplished? does the current and past state of humanity not mirror the very dichotomy of life itself? surely we, as a collected species, do not hold something as superior as "life" subject, do we? i think its dangerous to blur the limits of otherwise incompatible ideas. it threatens our reliance on effective communication and invalidates civilization's greatest invention.
so, will humanity ever change? i think the question was written for the answer. she always has and she always will, and when she dies it will not have mattered, for change was always beneath her — a mere byproduct of her natural proceedings. and as we all know, we're a product buying people, so i'd imagine this is why i figured humanity was not subject to change.
now, do i claim to have realized a clearly founded philosophy with such a statement? no. but, i do find it to be rather insightful when responding to the same misdirected focus i find myself desperately wishing to be associatively freed from.
we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking we care about just one man.
I agree that we've always been humans, which much has been accredited and excused to, but I think the proof is in the pudding assumming everyone here is on the evolution bandwagon. I Nat kind of alluded to it.
There's so many of us that just don't really buy into the construction, like - look what we can be. I personally have always been a skeptical person in general, which many of you can attest to, but thank god I'm still not the dumb shit I was a short time ago and thank god I was him and could evolve into something better.
I guess the more evolution and progression side of it was the change my question was directed at. I don't buy the change that is being sold because it's a little sneaky, and somewhat empty (aren't we already supposed to be those people, aren't I already him, are we taking baby steps).
our country was set uP for the dick in charge to be the man as he does retain the most Power. we know the difference between the johnny come lately bandwagoners and the ones that have BEEn bitter and want reform. we care about this man-women because that Prez Posish is the most direct and somewhat immediate tool to change the world. now, will it haPPen in 4 to 8 years, no. it takes baby stePs. we are long overdue and it's ashame it's taken this long. in the blink of an eyes time that we walk the world in this universe, no wonder we are imPatient fucks.
Lucas, I disagree 100%. Our country was set up so that no individual would have the power to make sweeping changes: balance of power, checks and balances, three branches, etc. It's silly and frightening to think we need Barack Obama to act like some sort of benevolent king to grant us back the freedoms and prestige flushed away by the W administration's abuse of post-9/11 clouded judgement.
Granted, if the American people elect Obama it will make quite a statement about rejecting the policies of the Bush administration, but it will ultimately be up to the American people to decide. And we'll still be the same America that reelected W out of fear; we'll just have succumbed to a different type of fear - fear of how bad it could get.
And it's not like John McCain is George W. Bush, Jr. The man has tumors with more honor and judgement than GWB.
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