These are the closing paragraphs of Obama’s speech today for those who haven’t read the whole thing:
So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.
And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.
And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.
And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope – but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.
Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.
So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.
This is so important. We can’t effectively deal with the issues until the public mood changes. The current public mood is dominated by the enervating effect of the divide-and-conquer, Libertarian mentality that has been the seductive ideology propagated by the the nation’s wealth and power elites. We are all in this together, and any hope for the future begins with getting over this idea that the common good lies in each of us pursuing our own individual private interests.
The alternative is not state socialism, as paranoid conservative
pundits on talk radio and everywhere else want to make us think. It’s not either/or. It’s not either radical individualism or
submission of the individual to the state–this is an absurdly simplistic dichotomy, and
the latter would never be a possibility in this country, given its
history and habits of mind. It’s about regaining a balance between the freedom of the creative, individual subject–which is a sacred value–and that individual’s interdependent, empathic relationship with the whole.
The problem with moving forward lies in that most people are comfortable in this fragmenting, radically individualistic mindset, and as long as their lifestyles don’t appear to be threatened, they are not interested in moving in another direction. This is where the empathy deficit that Obama talks about in the first part of the speech comes in. So many of us are so self-absorbed, so incapable of relating to the problems of those who are not us or the people in our social circles, that we become incapable of grasping how the social fabric of this country is unraveling in ways that will eventually reach us.
Clinton will be the candidate for those who are described in the previous paragraph. They are smart enough to see what a disaster the Republicans have been, and they will congratulate themselves for electing the first woman president, but they are essentially electing someone who is comfortable with the current arrangements, and who promotes herself as someone who is an experience expert in the Washington bureaucracy and promises that she will tinker with it to get a few things done.
Well if you are satisfied with tinkering. If you think that’s all the country needs. Vote for Clinton. But if you "get" that the problems are far more serious and that tinkering is the equivalent of fiddling as the Titantic sinks, then, while there are no guarantees, at least there’s a shot of things moving in a more healthy direction if Obama is elected. He understands what has to happen at a fundamental level, and he more than any other candidate has the potential to at least get things moving in the right direction.
Do you really believe that if Clinton is elected she has the capacity to break the Washington partisan stalemate? Do you think she will have even twenty-four hours of honeymoon before things pick up where they left off when her husband’s term was over? It’s going to be ugly and we all know it. And she simply does not have what it takes to deal with that effectively.
I’m not saying Obama won’t have big problems, but I do think he’ll get a fairer shake from the media than Clinton ever will. He represents something new, and the media will be fascinated by him, at least for a while. Clinton represents politics as usual, so the media will continue in its habitual stupidity about Democrats and Republicans–as if both had an equal claims to credibility. They’ll be stupid with Obama, too, but they will give him more room to maneuver.
There is significant opportunity being offered the country at this moment. The country is sick of GOP mean-spirited stupidity, and I believe it will respond to someone who offers a genuine alternative to that. Clinton doesn’t represent that alternative. The country will respond to someone who can articulate a healing message that can get us moving forward once again. Even if she wanted to, Clinton simply cannot do that. It would be like asking Bob Dole to be Ronald Reagan or Michael Dukakis to be JFK. This country needs to be restored after this eight-year nightmare. We need to be reminded what it means to be an American in the best sense. Clinton simply cannot do that. At best she’ll apply a nice fresh coat of paing on the walls of Jericho; Obama gets that those walls have to come crumbling down if we are to connect with one another the way we so desperately need to do if anything is to get done.
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