Politics
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- ninjasavant0
A few minutes ago I signed up for a blog account on barackobama.com with the intent of writing the blog below, I'd like to get your thoughts on it. Not so much the Obama bit, more the demographic bit. Sorry for the length.
As a graphic designer I love the identity work that has gone into Obama's campaign. Everything from logos to posters has been exquisitely designed and I would be proud to be a part of a movement with such beautiful imagery alone. But the fortunate truth is that Barack Obama has come forward as a candidate of substance and resolve that has electrified the electorate and has delivered a message of hope that has appeal to a broad range of demographics. But its those same demographics that sparked some thoughts for me so I've decided to put them down here to hear what other like minded individuals think. I'm not even sure this will come out coherently but I figure I should try.
Earlier today, while I was clicking around barackobama.com, I came across the People page and started browsing the logos associated with each of the groups listed (great logos by the way, I love each and every one of them). By the time I got to the bottom of the list it occurred to me that I have no place on the people page. I'm not young or old, black or asian, a woman, gay, religious, disabled, an environmentalist or a republican, part of a union or a student, Jewish, native American, rural, a veteran, Latino or otherwise. I'm an almost 30, middle class, white guy with a steady job in technology who likes cartoons and in most situations I fall into the "other" majority.
When politicians and speech makers list off the roll call of special interest groups and supporters I'm generally content to be part of the "everybody else" sentiment. I grew up the outsider most of the time as the poor, inner-city kid in a largely middle class suburban religious school and have worked to climb out of that poverty and do what I can to give back. I support micro-finance, donate as much as I can afford, and generally try to live a life that does something to improve myself and mankind. And as far as I can tell, I'm not alone in this demographic. There seems to be a good number of well intentioned middle class white guys who don't think its fair that women don't make as much as men, that do judge others by the content of their character, and try their best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
The tricky part is that when there is public discussion and debate about the afflictions and difficulties of all of the different groups that make up this country it seems like the blame is indirectly, and quite possibly unintentionally, directed to the group that doesn't seem to have these problems in the public discourse: my group. This might even be entirely self assigned guilt: it's only in extreme cases that someone comes right out and says that its middle class white men causing all the suffering for others and I tend not to give much credence to extremism of any sort. I'm sure we all as groups of individuals have a hand in some form of prejudice that affects the broader social strata.
However, when I examine a policy like affirmative action I see the playing field being levelled for various groups that are not mine. This leads me to believe that in individual cases amounting to a federally mandated whole that a certain documentable advantage is given to groups that are not middle class white men. Frankly I think the whole situation making these federal mandates is deplorable. The fact that discrimination based on anything but fitness for the job exists is insane. The problem is that it does exist, and equal pay is still a goal and not a reality so I can appreciate the program for its intention but that still makes me think twice whenever I'm chosen for a job or have an application accepted. I have to wonder if I'm enjoying a privelege at someone else's expense. Or if I have been denied an application is it because I have room to improve or was I qualified but did I not fit a federal mandate.
So why am I writing this? Why even bring it up? Frankly its a tough situation to discuss without sounding elitist or racist. But I think I feel somewhat free to bring this up in this forum because we are all at some level like minded individuals. Part of the pride I feel for being part of this movement is that for the most part Mr. Obama and us his supporters seem to be a group of level headed people that are fed up with the current situation and can take a sober look at issues that may seem uncomfortable or unpopular and give them their intellectual due. Mr. Obama did just that with his historic speech on race and to me I feel this topic is part of that discussion. I say discussion because I don't have the answer to the problem, I wish I did. I'm writing this for two reasons:
1. To continue the dialog. I'm only one person and one point of view. I can only write honestly about the way I perceive the world around me and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you think its even something worthy of debate? Should middle class white men feel any sort of fault or blame for the plight of other groups? Are those feelings justified? Should the portion of us who feel a sense of responsibility to treat humans equally endure silently for the education of the ignorant and the betterment of society? Is there a better way to approach this situation? There's a littany of questions that come to mind, most of which I probably haven't even thought about. Basically I enjoy a lively debate, its a chance to learn.
2. The second reason is that I feel these sentiments might represent a certain portion of swing and moderate Republican voters. Those voters who don't agree with the policies of discrimination but don't necessarily feel directly responsible for it. I think if we can reach out to this class of voter we really can move beyond the devisiveness that has candidates pandering for fringe groups on wedge issues. I support Mr. Obama because if any candidate I've seen in my lifetime can and does show the ability to get beyond the politics of pandering, its him.
So that's my two cents, my two rambling, well meant two cents. Thanks for reading.
- SarahPalin0
54% McCain
48% ObamaGallup Poll
- oh 102% of americans....
can we get an intelligent troll please?lowimpakt
- oh 102% of americans....
- SarahPalin0
I'm not Gallup lowimpakt. Just reporting what they are reporting.
- link?lowimpakt
- Think you mixed a # up... its 48/45 http://www.gallup.co…nicnichols
- 54% Mccain and 44% Obama now.SarahPalin
- monkeyshine0
Ninja, well written and honest. A point about your comments regarding affirmative action...from what I've read, Obama's position is not so far off from your own. One of the reasons I am supporting him is that he wants to put the focus on class issues rather than race. I believe that a lot of what we classify as racism is really a class issue. If we dealt with our class problems, it would at the very least clarify our issues of race.
I'm not sure what I think about affirmative action. Obama has said he doesn't think his daughters should benefit from it...they have every opportunity in the world to succeed on their own merits. I appreciate his thoughtful responses...of course this isn't really winning him praise from affirmative action advocates like Tavis Smiley but I respect his will to stand up to them.
- SarahPalin0
Now they corrected it.
"The new poll, taken Friday though Sunday, shows McCain leading Obama by 54 percent to 44 percent among people most likely to vote and was conducted among 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points for both samples, the newspaper said."
- capsize0
- the Bush yearscapsize
- I am not even gonna post a 'Clinton years.."nicnichols
- surplus hard to visualize? or blowjobs ?capsize
- the latter...nicnichols
- nicnichols0
Ninja- finally somebody actually gave us something to think about and didn't just say 'if you are republican you're the devil'... well written. Too often the political rants on here just come down to name calling and insults, its nice to see someone actually think it out and express his views intelligently.
- be a republican fine but to deny the disaster the leaders have taken us is collusion at this point.capsize
- FFS.. I am not a republican. Again, back to the grade 5 name calling.. what next? you going to steal my lunch $?nicnichols
- Honestly, talking politics on here is like trying to teach a infant quantum physics...nicnichols
- No-one called you a republican, not I said the fly. It was implied. For the record: I do not expect to persuade you of anything.capsize
- Most Republicans I know are totally ashamed of what the Bush administration has done... they're hoping just as much as everyone else that McCain will be different and 1000x better.ismith
- everyone else that McCain will be different and 1000x better.ismith
- I am completely on the fence with this election, I was just complimenting ninja on his thoughts...nicnichols
- TheBlueOne0
Republicans: Devils.
- :)TheBlueOne
- hipster liberals : blind to the real worldnicnichols
- :)nicnichols
- I want to believe that they're not evil
but shit, they did some very fucked up things these past 7 yearsGeorges - I'm too old to be a hipster liberal.TheBlueOne
- haha ya so am I blue!nicnichols
- capsize0
" when something is falling down you should push it."
- um.. aren't you French?nicnichols
- oh.. that's just a fake profile!nicnichols
- OMGcapsize
- OMG what? If you are french, your quote shoud be...nicnichols
- "when something is running away screaming like a bitch, kick it."nicnichols
- is that Carla Bruni?capsize
- No, just all French in general.. seriously, if you are French, please exit thread left.nicnichols
- hooray for jingoism asshole (that'd be you nic)spifflink
- SarahPalin0
I love it when Europeans try to persuade Americans to vote on a President that would tank the country so that Europeans have a winning chance. It's just hysterical to me. Thankfully it makes everyone want to vote the other way.
- hahahahahah its so much better when the pakistanis do it!capsize
- TheBlueOne0
"The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is "more communist than China right now" but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday.
"America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich... it's just bailing out financial institutions," Rogers said.
"This is madness, this is insanity, they have more than doubled the American national debt in one weekend for a bunch of crooks and incompetents. I'm not quite sure why I or anybody else should be paying for this," Rogers told "Squawk Box Europe."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26603489
Republican management...UnAmerican since day one. But you know, rally around the flag, grab your gun, pray to Jesus and don't forget your flag pin.
Suckers is the word that comes to mind.
- capsize0
1.00 EUR
=
1.41992 USD- capsize knows little about economics obviously.SarahPalin
- US recovery
exports and tourism?capsize - just like any banana republiccapsize
- Georges0
I respect the rights of others to believe whatever they wish to believe,
But if Palin is elected president, she will burn lots of books and soulsvideo from Palin's church in Wasilla, they scare the shit out of me
- Obama's racist, anti-semitic church....still wins.designbot
- you lose,
you used antisemitic, meaning you understand shit in religionGeorges - I agree with you on that one.. that stuff scares the crap out of me too...nicnichols
- You do know what antisemitic means right? Do you want video proof?designbot
- if this church and the church of McCain says some harshest thing would you call them AS?Georges
- SarahPalin0
http://www.forbes.com/global/200…
Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy
Paul Johnson, 07.21.03, 12:00 AM ETAnti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes.
• First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. The right of voters to elect more than 80,000 public officials, the length and thoroughness of electoral campaigns, the pervasiveness of the media and the almost daily reports by opinion polls ensure that government and electorate do not diverge for long and that Washington generally reflects the majority opinion in its actions.
It is this feature that intellectuals--especially in Europe--find embittering. They know they must genuflect to democracy as a system. They cannot openly admit that an entire people--especially one comprising nearly 300 million, who enjoy all the freedoms--can be mistaken. But in their hearts these intellectuals do not accept the principle of one person, one vote. They scornfully, if privately, reject the notion that a farmer in Kansas, a miner in Pennsylvania or an auto assembler in Michigan can carry as much social and moral weight as they do. In fact, they have a special derogatory word for anyone who acts on this assumption: "populist." A populist is someone who accepts the people's verdict, even--and especially--when it runs counter to the intellectual consensus (as with capital punishment, for example). In the jargon of intellectual persiflage, populism is almost as bad as fascism--indeed, it's a step toward it. Hence, the argument goes, the U.S. is not so much an "educated democracy" as it is a media-swayed and interest-group-controlled populist regime.
The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.
• Second, anti-Americanism is a function of cultural racism. An astonishingly high proportion of European elites know very little about U.S. history or culture and even deny that they have a separate existence apart from their European roots. It is strange that those seeking to bring about a European federal state or union have at no stage sought to study the lessons Americans learned during the creation of the U.S. in the 1780s. After all, the U.S. Constitution (suitably amended) has lasted for more than 200 years, and within its framework the country has emerged as the richest and most powerful society in world history. You might think, therefore, that European elites would seek to learn something from such a successful process. Not at all: The view is that sophisticated, civilized Europe has nothing to learn from "adolescent" America. What these Euro-elites particularly abhor is the way in which the framers of the Constitution made every effort to involve the population through the process of public debates, town meetings and ratification votes--and this at a time when Europe was still governed (for the most part) by the absolute sovereigns of the ancien régime.
This cultural racism is particularly directed at the supposedly "know-nothing" President George W. Bush and his "gung ho" Texas background. The European intelligentsia gets its notion of America chiefly from Hollywood, TV soaps like Dallas and fiction. Few of them have any experience of America, outside of three or four big cities. Middle America is unexplored territory. The fact that the U.S. has proved a highly efficient crucible for melding different peoples into a human sum greater than its constituent parts is seen as a misfortune in Europe because it produces a cultural stew that lacks purity of any kind and is therefore at the mercy of commercial forces.
• Third, European elites tend to look at Americans as a subcivilized mass, whose function is to be obedient consumers in a system run by big business. The role of competition in U.S. economic life--and in every other aspect of life--is ignored, because competition is something Continental Europeans like to keep to a minimum and under careful control.
Although Americans are seen as highly materialistic consumers, they are also despised and feared for their spiritual interests, their participation in religious worship and their subscription to creeds of morality. Europeans see no inconsistency in their condemnation of the U.S. for being at one and the same time paganly unethical and morally zealous.
The truth is, any accusation that comes to hand is used without scruple by the Old World intelligentsia. Anti-Americanism is factually absurd, contradictory, racist, crude, childish, self-defeating and, at bottom, nonsensical. It is based on the powerful but irrational impulse of envy--an envy of American wealth, power, success and determination. It is an envy made all the more poisonous because of a fearful European conviction that America's strength is rising while Europe's is falling.
Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author, Lee Kuan Yew, senior minister of Singapore, and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, in addition to Forbes Chairman Caspar W. Weinberger, are now periodically writing this column. To see past Current Events columns go to www.forbes.com/currentevents.
- Weinberger participated in the transfer of United States TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran during the Iran-Contra Affair.capsize
- Georges0
I've had enough of this bullshit about Obama's church,
its weird that he got 3 months of constant bashing because he was muslim, when they got tired with it, they brought the bs about his pastor beeing an A-hole, ok, so he's not moozlim anymore but a bad christian that belong to a bad church....its sad that noone has talked about pastor Hagee (I guess he's not antisemitic, right designbot, I guess palin's pastor saying "to make the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide." isn't antisemitic??
please get your fact straight and stop calling everyone that disagree with Jews antisemitic- It is a very real issue. Jeremiah Wright was Obama's spiritual mentor for over 20 years and the guy is a nut job.designbot
- Some very bad theology and ideals that Obama sat under without any problems for years...until he realized it was hurting his campaign.designbot
- was hurting his campaign. Let's face it, that is the only reason he distanced himself after 20 yrsdesignbot
- have you watched the video?
I saw the entire speech of J.W and don't see what he said thatGeorges - wasn't true
you can keep putting your head in the send and think everythingGeorges - There's more than one video, and transcripts as well.designbot
- is fine, but remember, the fall isn't important its the landing that killsGeorges
- believing one make-up religion story over another is like choosing a movie at the multiplexcapsize
- Georges, don't worry I'm not voting for McCain either :)designbot
- janne760
qbn,
can we has ignore feature back pls.
- capsize0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau…)
Admired by conservatives in the United States and elsewhere, he is strongly anti-communist[15]. Johnson has defended Richard Nixon[16] in the Watergate scandal, finding his cover-up considerably less heinous than Bill Clinton's perjury, and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra Affair. In his Spectator column he has defended his friend Jonathan Aitken[17] and has expressed admiration for General Franco.[18] He has, on the other hand, criticized European countries, in particular France, for being undemocratic [19].
- nicnichols0
Reminds me of when I was in London, during the May Day "Protests" of 2002.. my friend who lives there told us to be careful, as there would be alot of Anti-Americanism that day- Starbucks and McDonalds were boarded up, as they were bastions of "Globalization"...
..So we walk around all day, and there are thousands of kids sitting in the streets with anti-globalization signs, and they are all wearing their Ben Shermans, drinking mass produced beer. So I ask one of them, whats the difference between your mass produced Beer, and a Starbucks. Their answer? Starbucks is American. McDonalds was American. So again, its ok to a large corporation, as long as you are not based in the States. Then you are the devil.- so trueGeorges
- they are alking about globalism it seems only natural to target agressive foreign companiesKwesiJ
- speaking out against 'large corporations' in general would be more mislead considering...at least they have some ideasKwesiJ
- ...some ideas.KwesiJ
- that's entertainmentcapsize
- it was fun as hell until the drunk bastards went nuts.. then we got to actually be in the 'riot' part...nicnichols
- Mimio0
Somebody should ask Supply-side Jesus what to do with the Freddie and Fannie. Pray-Vote-Pray
