Why bother with America?

I've been considering lately the dialog regarding the stimulus package put together by the federal government. There have been and will be many commenting on the respective positions of the different parties and their arguments regarding why we should or should not be printing/spending the money and 'creating debt for our children's children'. I have to admit that I am actually more 'for' than 'against' the plan put forward. Against because it is a compromise built to satisfy too many different diverse POVs therefore not nearly enough to do the job right and for it because I honestly believe that doing nothing in relation to specific aspects of the problem would result in more harm than good.

But that's not what this is about. This is about a rationale that I have heard for not helping those Americans that are suffering during this real ‘financial crisis’ as it becomes a main focus of the public discourse. It appears that people are complaining about 'helping' their fellow Americans. Comments like "Why should I bail out my neighbor when I did everything right and they screwed up?" or "They're redistributing wealth and that’s socialism/communism/anti-American.".

All of these arguments ignore one very simple point. Helping the 'others' that are being disparaged is helping other AMERICANS. You know, your fellow citizens. These are some of the people that make up the country that we are all supposed to love and work to make better. It's amazing to me that this very simple fact seems to have been removed from the equation. Americans don't appear to look at each other as fellow citizens of "The Greatest Country on Earth" but as competitors for a shrinking piece of a dying relative’s fortune. Everyone for himself and damned those that fall to the wayside. We don't even appear to like one another.

Personally I find a grand contradiction in the assumption that not helping your fellow citizens is a manifestation of good citizenship. Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling anyone what they should do with their money that they earn through honest work and effort. If an individual embraces greed and couldn't care less about their fellow citizen’s pain and suffering, fine, everyone to their own. But I’m confused how someone can claim to be a good American while turning their backs on their fellow citizens when it's obvious that there is need. I hope that’s not what people consider ‘American’.

Now the questions. If that attitude is American then why should a society that would turn it’s back on those in need or who have made a mistake be saved as a nation? Why not let it fall apart and let those who survive do whatever they want with what’s left?

Obama's First News Conference

Not bad. I watched it on the local news here is LA and they did it without commercials. I was kind of surprised actually. I thought I was watching CNN until it was over.

Anyway, Obama gave substantive answers to hard questions. He didn't make any gaffs that I could detect and he held and used the bully pulpit as if he owned it. He used it to get his point across, "Pass my bill because it's needed and let's stop playing these silly games".

I like the fact that he appeared to be speaking to adults. He's not telling me how great America is, he's telling me that this is a time America has to show everyone why we're supposed to be great. Not a bad message to tell us after the last few decades.

I like the way he's not taking sides in the debate, simply expressing why he believes his ideas can work and challenging others to come up with 'good' ideas. He's not promising pie in the sky, he's saying that things will change and we need to manage it intelligently, something that we haven't been doing the last few years.

Granted, I didn't like the dodge when asked the question if he knew of a middle-eastern country with nuclear weapons. He knows that Israel has them but then I'm not expecting miracles with even this president so I didn't see him admitting it.

Heard a lady on CNN say it perfectly. Obama's being 'pragmatic'. That makes sense in these times so I guess he gets a passing grade. I don't like his foreign policy but can't really complain about this attempt at fixing the economy because I understand the strategy and see how it could work.

Now I guess we'll have to wait and see if Mr. Obama's plan will work. He definitely instilled more confidence in me for the chance of success, if we work at it, more than Bush ever did. But then that's not really saying much given what I thought of Bush. Low bars are easily jumped.

So What’s Changed?

Barak Obama is the first black president of the United States (I never bought into the talk that said it was Clinton) and that apparently is supposed to mean something’s changed. I’ve been asked what I ‘think’ about it. Whether it’s some kind of bell weather that going to change the dynamics of racism in the country? If this means that Dr. King’s dream as finally come true in America? Can white guys now say ‘the n-word’? Answer to those questions is “I don’t know.” I try not to speak for whole groups of people so I won’t even attempt to explain what I believe ‘black people’ think this means. I don’t give a lot of thought to what ‘black people’ as a group thinks about anyway. Never understood how I was supposed to have that insight.

At first I thought there was only one way Obama’s presidency mattered to me and that’s politically. I’ve never been impressed with any politician regardless of color and was only impressed with Obama’s oratory skills not his political policies and I was perfectly capable of separating the two. I’m too politically cynical to assume that just because the color of skin of the guy running things changes to mine there’s a relationship between that and my life improving. So politically for me it doesn’t change a lot. His politics and mine aren’t even close in foreign policy and his domestic policies were to ‘democratic’ for my tastes (note the small ‘d’). Even though I consider that side of the political coin more socially reasonable in relation to domestic social policy (but not by much) I consider their methods to be needlessly incremental to the harm of those they profess to be helping. Mr. Obama presented a face in the election that gave the impression that the change he wanted was the democratic definition and that only had appeal given McCain and republicans as the alternative.

But now he’s president and given that I watch a lot of news I’ve got to see him ‘be president’ for a couple of weeks now. Again, given that he’s just a progressive, middle of the road democrat he didn’t act in any way that I didn’t expect. He made some promises and he went about attempting to keep those that were ‘politically sound now that he is president’, just like past presidents had done. He was fitting into the slot of ‘politician president’ just fine. But then I noticed a ‘change’. Something was askew visually and audibly about the presentation.

But before I get into that I’d like to make a slight side step. My niece was by last night and in a conversation about how life in general was going and how the economy was negatively affecting the lives of people that we know a tangential conversation occurred in which I pointed out how one day while riding to work with a friend early in the election I said that there was no way that Barak Obama would become president of these United States. I believed it was an interesting phenomenon that was probably just another news charade to ‘entertain’ people while the fix was in for Hillary Clinton who would lose thus giving the whole thing away to the republicans again. Because, quite frankly, I also believed that her campaign had as much chance as Barak Obama’s.

I say that to point out how far I had to come from to get used to the concept of a black and/or woman president. Don’t get me wrong, I personally didn’t have any objection if the right one came around. My issue was that I didn’t think “America” was ready to make that happen and I saw nothing about these two that changed that perception in my mind.

So what’s changed for me because there’s a black president? I have to actually get used to ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ a black man do the job of president. When I look at the television set and see a person with brown skin speaking for ‘this’ country in an intelligent, commanding manner there is a visual dissonance that I have to adjust to. When I hear the words come out of his mouth in a cadence that is familiar in neighborhoods and homes I’ve visited my mind still has to say, ‘yeah, he’s president’ as if the affirmation was necessary for me to accept it. It’s as if I’m still making small mental adjustments to visual and audio that I never thought I would experience.

Just that, nothing else.

So basically I am being forced to change and accept something that I didn’t’ think could happen. My mind is being forced to wrap around something that it just wasn’t particularly prepared to accept.

I’m not particularly worried about it. I’ve had other epiphanies in my life that changed the way I had to think. At 5 or 6 years old I had the honestly held belief that the opposite sex had no value and associating with them could never come to any good. That was something that was the gospel. I had an experience that changed that thought process too but that’s an entirely different story.

Oh yeah. It also means that people can stop calling Clinton the first black president. I never did understand that.