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Obama and McCain Tell Us What “Rich” Means

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(Excerpt): John McCain’s idea of leadership is to cheer us on comfortably from the sidelines, while using his most familiar tool, the military, to force the outcomes he desires. Barack Obama will organize and galvanize us to take the necessary effective national actions on our problems. He will spend our tax money wisely, keep us out of costly wars, get us working to solve our problems, and get us where we need to go, together. Continue reading →

Black Styles, White Racism, and the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright Controversy

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(Excerpt): I was raised to think that fidgeting, shouting and mopping one’s brow when speaking in public was unrefined. My mom only meant to teach me how to act, but her instructions left me judgmental of other cultures and styles. I squirmed with her when Elvis Presley gyrated and grunted and sweated. Together we hated Hitler’s rants, and shrank in dismay from Khrushchev’s noisy shoe. Loud, angry, confrontive voices still do nothing for me. They feel rude and threatening. And I’m not alone in this.
Maybe it’s my Calvinist streak, but I like my leaders calm, cool, and collected, like my man Barack Obama…. Continue reading →

A Pre-Olympics Comparison of Human Rights Violations in China and the U.S.

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When my book club recently discussed a wonderful novel about China, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I noticed that, like many Americans, most of us tend to think of China as a much greater violator of human rights than the U.S.A. The hosting of the Olympic Games in Beijing has certainly raised our level of questioning, along with, too often, our cultural biases. Because the truth is, both countries have serious problems with human rights violations, and in some areas, our U.S. record is far weaker than China's…. Continue reading →

Obama, Like Kipling’s Kim, is a “Friend of All the World”

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I wonder if Barack Obama ever read Rudyard Kipling’s novel, Kim, about a half-British, half-Indian child growing up happily, as Barack did, in an amazingly diverse culture; Kim’s world was India, Barack’s Hawaii and Indonesia. Kim’s nickname was “little friend of all the world,” and he, like Barack, drew on his hard-won expertise in navigating a mysteriously multi-faceted childhood world to later become successful in “the great game” of politics. **********
Certainly, Kipling’s own memories of growing up in British Raj India influenced his own many adult contributions as a great communicator and cultural ambassador.**************
I thought about these many fascinating commonalities while reading Amanda Ripley’s story in today’s Time Magazine about Barack’s anthropologist mother. What adventures she and Barack shared living in the fascinating mélange that is Indonesia—17,500 islands, 230 million people, 300 languages, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Dutch/Christian traditions–and later in multicultural Hawaii, where Barack attended, on scholarship, a prestigious private high school. *******************
Among Barack’s many strengths as a Presidential candidate are his openness to different cultural and political perspectives, and his non-polarizing, accepting attitude toward people from all walks of life. No one is ever a stranger to this non-ideological, caring, international rock star. **********************
What a fascinating youth compelled Barack Obama, our own young “friend of all the world,” to overcome petty divisions and partisan distractions, offer leadership and service to his own nation, and bring the world together to resolve our most pressing common global problems—the ravages of disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and violence itself. Continue reading →

Obama Presidential, Hillary Polarizing, on Chinese Olympics, Petraeus

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In a prepared statement, Hillary Clinton urged President Bush to break his solemn oath to China's Premier that he would attend the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremonies. In this one swell foop, she managed not only to pander opportunistically to a xenophobic American public and carelessly mirror Bush’s light-weight cowboy-style diplomacy, but also offended one-fifth of the world’s population, permanently alienated Chinese leadership (as she recently insulted and dismissed Russian leadership off-handedly), and displayed a profound probity-deficit shocking for a Senator, let alone a Presidential candidate. *********************
Barack Obama, on the other hand, responded to an audience question on the same topic by respectfully highlighting a brief list of legitimate U.S. trade, intellectual property and human rights concerns (including Tibet and Sudan) while diplomatically offering measured support for China’s most-cherished long-term project, and reminding Americans, in his trademark non-polarizing way, that Olympic ideals bring the world closer together. He may even, in those few sentences, have brought his own adopted city of Chicago’s dream of hosting a 2016 Olympics one step nearer to reality. ***************
Now that is political genius. *************************
Another example: Hillary used her brief opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, to deliver a confrontational speech intimidating her perceived political opponents—Republicans of all stripes, war supporters, and others opposed to her Iraq agendas. Obama, on the other hand, listened to the answers to his questions, and then led Petraeus and Crocker so expertly to points of commonality that they were smiling and nodding like bobble-heads in Obama’s direction. Barack concluded by thoughtfully challenging everyone at the hearing to work diligently together to clearly define “success” in Iraq, so that the war could be ended quickly and positively, as desired by all.*********************
Hillary is a famously tenacious in-fighter, which is exactly what we don’t need today or tomorrow. Barack Obama’s whole life has also been about taking on huge challenges, persevering, thriving and prevailing against great odds, but his consensus-building problem-solving approaches to meeting those challenges don't create the blowback that Hillary’s belligerance does. The last thing we need is a paranoid President who bristles at perceived slights, sees enemies on every side, and creates new ones at every turn of events. **********************
We need a President capable of vanquishing America's enemies via the best (and only) permanent approach to conquest, by turning them into friends. Barack knows well that the best way to befriend anyone, whether Iraqi, Chinese, Republican or any other, is to generously support their most cherished projects and goals, and to always treat them with understanding and respect. Hillary knows how to talk tough, but we should all know by now where that will get us.********************************
Americans and others throughout the world need Obama’s statesmanlike vision, his wonderful people-skills and many leadership abilities, so that we can all come together to solve our common pressing global problems—disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and yes, violence itself. **************************
Hillary’s down-and-dirty-roll-up-your-sleeves-and-mud-wrestle approaches to resolving conflicts may have served in her old world, but in the new world of tomorrow, such competitive models will be sadly deficient. Unfortunately for Hillary, her street-fighting instincts so overwhelm her peacemaking ones that she can't even enter the brave new world of tomorrow–Barack’s world–not even in her dreams. Continue reading →

Lick ‘Em or Join ‘Em? Predictions and Warnings About Republican and Democratic Campaign Strategies for 2008

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(Excerpt:) I predict that unscrupulous and frightened campaign schemers and strategists within the Republican Party (such as Karl Rove) will convince their followers of the necessity of focusing the 2008 presidential campaign on xenophobia—fear of outsiders. Like all good fascists throughout history, they’ll find themselves “reluctantly forced” to flood the airways with compelling commercials, “information,” “news stories,” “facts” and “statistics,”convincing a nervous American public that the only thing standing between “us” and a fatal, up-close-and-personal, all-out collision with a horde of terrible “others” so not-like-us as to be sub-human, is to vote Republican. ((Excerpt:) Right-wing talk-show extremists—politicians, preachers, “experts,” business leaders—terrorists all—are already terrorizing the public with their visions of danger, scarcity, and death, hammering their variations on their single essential theme: “If you don’t vote Republican, you and your loved ones, sooner than you think, will be left alone to live and die, poor and horribly, because of “outsiders.’” Excerpt:) The great threats mankind faces today ignore borders, arising as they do from a sense of disunity. These threats, which cannot be solved competitively, but only through global cooperation, include nuclear proliferation, organized crime, poverty, infectious diseases and unsupportive health conditions and attitudes, environmental degradation, armed conflicts of all kinds, including wars both within and among nations, terrorism, the global arms trade, mass migrations, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, pornography, homelessness, hate, fear, anxiety, civic alienation, loss of morality, excessive taxation, crumbling infrastructures, more and more “enemies,” violence itself…. The list of threats without borders is long and continues to grow rapidly. (Excerpt): The only way to lick ‘em is to join ‘em. Instead of holding at arm’s length the world’s hungry, envious and angry, instead of arming dictators or beating enemies into submission, or bombing them flat, we can change the way we feel and act toward “others.” We can learn to view all people as our brothers and sisters, and to see all hostile actions as a cry for help. (Excerpt:)Yes, Virginia, there really are some very bad terrorists out there, and not a few of them are currently holding top positions in the Republican Party. Continue reading →

Some Sane Policy Strategies, Both Foreign and Domestic, for a Dazed-and-Confused America

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(Excerpt): The best strategy for insuring a reasonable share of post-war oil is for the U.S. to follow China’s admirable (and successful) approach to foreign relations: make friends with every country; don’t try to control events; don’t take sides with factions by using bribes and threats and offering weapons (all of which strategies only make more enemies, while making conflicts harder to resolve); offer apologies as necessary; and spread goodwill by generously supporting, in every country, only open, popular, peaceful initiatives of leaders with broad-based, loyal coalitions.
(Excerpt): We need to attend to the real “illegals” in American life—not the immigrants who daily seek respite and freedom from the world’s violence and injustice on our shores, but the thousands of prisoners rotting forgotten in illegal dungeons throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Cuba, and elsewhere. We must find a way to bring due process of law to these imprisoned and abandoned “illegals” who have been deprived of their most basic human rights, and end our inhumane criminalization of the inevitable south-to-north global migrants whose only crime is fleeing poverty and terror, finding hospitable ways to assimilate them into American life.
(Excerpt): All the strategies described above depend upon our growing awareness that nothing we may fear is more dangerous than fear itself, and no weapon more effective than love in all its forms—kindness, patience, understanding, acceptance…. It is not hate, but fear which builds up armies and stockpiles nuclear weapons; not hate, but fear which looses destruction upon hapless presumed enemies, and thus upon ourselves. The Golden Rule–treat others as you would be treated–works just as well in international relations as it does with individuals. Just as families and businesses must learn to accept, respect, and support others (just as they are) in order to be successful, so must all political leaders, their party members, and their followers—indeed, all citizens everywhere—learn and teach acceptance, respect, and support all our brothers everywhere, all God’s beloved children, every one—if we are to survive and thrive together on our tiny blue planet. Continue reading →

Battlefields, Monuments, Graveyards, and the Glorious Call to War!

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(Excerpt): We need our many battlefields, our monuments, and our gravesites to some day help us remember, above all else, the monstrous insanity that once was war. One person at a time, one conflict at a time, one battlefield at a time, we are all finally learning to rise above war, and to become builders of peace. Continue reading →

Bad Things That Could Happen If We Ignore the Rumors of a Coming Coup in Iraq

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(Excerpt): President Bush can still redeem himself in the eyes of history as the good old boy he means to be, but first he must stand up courageously and presidentially to his neocon friends and their misguided schemes. (Excerpt): If Mr. Bush wishes to be remembered as a force for good, rather than a dupe for a tiny manipulative clique, he should go to work immediately with Congress and cabinet to cut short any planned coups, and to plan a thoughtful withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases fromIraq.
(Excerpt): During his remaining years in office, he has an opportunity to devote the $2 billion/a day we currently spend on war, toward brokering a lasting Middle East peace agreement. Then he can offer generous support to those regional leaders willing to compromise, together rebuilding a peaceful Middle East to their mutual specifications, not ours.
(Excerpt): If President Bush wades deeper into an exploding Iraq now, to prop up a coup or to attend to certain blowback from it, he will waste his last two years, and all our money, not to mention vast swaths of American and Iraqi lives, on a futile, catastrophic, Vietnam-like last-gasp effort to impose narrow-minded changes upon a very distant, very old, and very dissimilar civilization.
(Excerpt): If the coup rumors are ignored, Americans will wake up someday soon to news that a coup has already taken place (or has been disastrously attempted); that American lives are in danger; and that a far-more massive American military force must be rushed immediately off to Iraq. In just this way have fourteen previous regime changes secretly been engineered by past Presidents and their administrative and corporate cronies, all to American discredit, all at shocking human and material cost.
(Excerpt): Once such jingoistic adventures get started on their mindless juggernauts, once demagogues begin feeding the public imagination with new reasons for new fighting, then an unending toll of new, unforeseen losses and enemies will make the widening conflicts almost impossible to stop. If a few right-wing zealots might welcome an “inevitable” Armageddon in the Middle East, the vast majority of Americans would not.
(Excerpt): It would be wonderful if James Baker could visualize the shape of an eventual compromise following such a catastrophe, and be so bold as to broker that same compromise right now, before any more bloodletting. Continue reading →

Let’s Trade in “Realpolitik” for More Realistic (Idealistic and Moral) Politics

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(Excerpt): I just read a hasty translation of the remarkable letter written to President Bush by Iran’s President Ahmadinajad, the neocons’ newest target for demonization. In his passionate letter, this bold spiritual leader outlines his perspectives about international relations in terms of spirituality, religion, philosophy, history, and politics, courteously pointing out the west’s moral inconsistencies and asking many hard questions, while offering specific suggestions and proposals for world peace and for resolving conflicts.
(Excerpt): I wonder whether President Bush will brush off his handlers’ warnings and actually dare read the letter? For just as Americans risk war by listening only to the current angry neocon drumbeat against Iran, so can Mr. Bush choose to risk peace by hearing out Mr. Ahmadinajad. Already the letter has been spun and skewed by war advocates as the usual self-serving drivel. I see it as a profound peace offering by a rising spiritual leader.
(Excerpt): I have no respect for the Bush-Cheney-Rice strategy for solving our energy crises by controlling the price and flow of oil through Mideast political and military coercion. It’s not nice, and has been far too pricey (not, of course, for oil companies) and has never really worked, especially when you count the whole cost of our lengthy dalliance with Saddam Hussein.
(Excerpt): I’m not alone in my distaste for global bullies, either. No one likes schoolyard bullies who throw their weight around, thinking only of themselves, not caring who gets hurt so long as they get what they want. Powerful bullies may prevail in the short run, may even gain opportunistic allies eager to share in the spoils of easy wars against weaker opponents. But soon enough, everyone on the playground finally gets sick of being pushed around, and all gang up to confront the bully.
And the bigger the bully, the harder he falls. (Excerpt): Far from offering Americans security and safety, belligerent approaches to international relations create only more enemies, drain our coffers, strain our political freedoms, distract our leaders from solving our real problems, demean our integrity, lower our national pride and morale, ruin our reputation, weaken our alliances, threaten our trade, and do nothing at all to make us safer than we were before. We can stand up for our traditional rights and freedoms without insisting that hard, practical considerations and the advancement of our own expansionist national interests are the sole principles of our interactions with others. Continue reading →