What's a Guy to Do?

Yoshifumi Takabe, 30, still living
with mother, burns down house
when she throws out his toys.

Note: Morialekafa is going away for three days to fraternize “Among the Gently Mad” (Nicholas A. Basbanes, Henry Holt and Co., 2002). That is, we’re going to the annual Seattle Library Book Sale, a two day event that requires a bit of effort and probably won’t be conducive to blogging until Sunday or Monday. In the meanwhile, at least try to be of good cheer, not so easy these days.

So what is a guy to do? Take the case of our current President, Barack Obama. Here is a White/Black man who is considered Black (black blood is so much more powerful than white blood that even a single drop converts a White man into Black, but excuse the digression). Where was I, oh, yeah, a Black/White man who is said to be, depending upon the speaker, or particular point of view, a Black socialist, fascist, communist, foreign-born, Atheist, Muslim, American, Christian, citizen, who secretly hates Whites, favors big banks and corporations, hasn’t done enough for Blacks, wants to take away everyone’s guns and give them universal health care, is an anti-war warmonger, a constitutional scholar who doesn’t understand the constitution, a pro-Gay rights believer who is opposed to Gay marriage, a non-partisan partisan, a terrorist appeasing wimp who has escalated our “wars,” and who, by way of some sophisticated confidence scheme, apparently hatched when he was born in Hawaii, and who we know very little about, inappropriately, illegally, and unconstitutionally became President of the United States. Ignore for the moment the fact that most of those who are so describing him have absolutely no idea what the hell they are talking about, it seems to me you have to admit these disparate views of him make it hard for him to govern. His supposed failure also seems to have something to do with the fact that he has not proven to be from the planet Krypton, has not walked on water, cannot leap tall buildings at a single bound, and is completely unable to work miracles. I suspect, however, it has much more to do with the Republican obsession with destroying him and blocking everything he has tried to do, along with the mostly unstated but underlying unpleasant racist attitude against him simply because he is Black.

Although there are policies Obama is continuing that I am passionately opposed to, such as the “war” in Afghanistan, his support for Israel and nuclear power, his failure to close Gitmo, and the continued use of rendition and torture (if, indeed, it is continuing), and most of all his failure to investigate Bush/Cheney war crimes, I still have to support him if for no other reason than because the alternative is completely unacceptable and even unthinkable. Of course there is a serious problem in our country now when it comes to believing anything at all, the Bush/Cheney administration made pathological incessant lying into such a normal part of government all credibility has been called into question. I know with some confidence that the Afghan “war” is continuing, and I’m reasonably certain that Obama will do nothing about the Bush/Cheney war crimes, but whether Obama is still allowing torture or not, or how strongly he supports Israel and nuclear energy I do not really know. Mostly I seem to go on living on hope, hope that under no circumstances will I ever see Sarah Palin or Christine O’Donnell or other Tea Partyers ever attain positions of power or influence, hope that Newt Gingrich will no longer be featured on the “news,” hope we might someday experience real news again, hope that we will avoid any terrorist attacks, further “wars,” and so on. You know, “the audacity of hope.”

LKBIQ:
“For books are more than just books. They are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”
Amy Lowell

TILT:
Bi Sheng, a Chinese inventor, created moveable type of earthenware circa 1045.