WTF ACU

Once he got into office, however, Hitler, like Mussolini proceeded to destroy the democratic system he used to win the office. He pushed through the Reichstag an “Enabling Act” that gave him four years of executive power without needing to get the backing of the Legislature. In other words, Hitler used democracy to destroy democracy. One is reminded of Lenin’s quip: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Would you believe that something alarmingly analogous is about to happen in our country?

Um, no. I wouldn't.

If I posted the by line "Rush Limbaugh" under this I'm sure no one would be surprised. Probably not even Rush. But it would be wrong, because the byline is:

Arlie J. Hoover is a professor of history at Abilene Christian University.

I don't know Professor Hoover. And I'm not going to argue with him. But I do want to post just a few of the comments that this article has spawned on the Abilene Reporter News site, which take note of Prof. Hoover's institutional affiliation, explicitly mentioned in his byline.

*Arlie I will never send any child to ACU. Any school that supports the type of history you apparantly teach can be up to no good at all.

*Is this smuck really a professor? Now I see why my college age students laughed when I asked them to stay in town to finish their education. Can you imagine what he preach if he were a minister....

*ACU must be proud. Thank God I took my classes at HSU.

*Its easy to see where this man is coming from.
ACU+Professor= The Far Right. I know you folks have to be smart enough to see that this "Professor" is nothing more than a far right bible wielding Limbaugh loving Foxx watching Republican.
geez

*Remember back before the election when Sadler used to post regularly? Sadler=ACU + Professor=Left winger.

So your Hoover=ACU + Professor=Right wing does not work. You really cannot assume that all professors at ACU think alike.

What I take from these two examples is that ACU + Professor=Academic Freedom and Diversity of thought.

Note that the one not-negative comment referencing ACU, the last one, is a rather weak defense that not every professor is a paranoid right wing pigeon from outer space. Every other comment characterizes the institution on the basis of its representation here by the good professor.

Should Dr. Hoover have not written his op-ed at all? No--I shoot my mouth off irresponsibly here on my little blog all the time, so it's not like I can seriously start telling people they should shut the hell up for their own good or because it's smart or prudent or whatever. What pisses me off is that ACU--an institution I love and am proud to affiliated with--is being represented by this article. Professor Hoover, print your wacky half-baked historical analogies in any venue that will take them (and Abilene Reporter News, you might re-think your publication-of-crap policy, BTW) but please, leave my alma mater out of it. You're not speaking for ACU. So sign your name. Use your title if you want to feel cool. But leave my school alone.

bipartisan?

Politifact.org: "barely true."

real health care

Here's an article about the work that my sister and others at Mission Lazarus are doing to provide real health care for people who need it and don't have it. What they're doing is amazing.

I can't help but think of the difference between the Christian principles being lived out by Mission Lazarus folk and the outcry against healthcare reform in our own country--an outcry which, in its myopic focus on the bottom line (and that's skipping the idiocy of unfounded clinging to false rumors about ridiculous things like "death panels"--I mean, really? hey, did you know the Metal Ones are also coming for you? anytime now, and they'll be funded by Obama's health care death panel) forgets that the bottom line is not money, it's sick people. I can't help but wonder if some of the same people who support Mission Lazarus and efforts like it are protesting health care reform for the American poor, even while they applaud my sister and her coworkers for taking care of the poor and the sick--somewhere else. I can't help but wonder if pointing out the irony will force a reconsideration of the Christian principles at stake here.

But then, not that many people read this blog. And those that do probably aren't afraid of the Metal Ones anymore. :)

The American Way of Life, Obama, and a short list that ends with poop

Here's a short list of the easiest things I've done over the years to green up my lifestyle and household:

1. Buy the squiggly light bulbs. Duh.
2. Tack the city's recycling info sheet on the fridge right next to the trash can. I've been amazed at how many items I've automatically gone to the trash with, and then stopped when I realized that they were recyclable and I just hadn't made the connection.
3. Washing in cold water only. It really does get clothes just as clean, so unless there's a reason to sanitize in hot water, I don't.
   
4. Buying a CSA share. We loved our first summer at Honey Brook, but the year after waited too long and couldn't get a share. After that we were too transitional to figure it out. This year we're splitting a boxed share from Honey Brook with our neighbors (who, if you're a Calvary person, you of course know, but I like to be careful with putting people's names on this blog unless I have permission, or know them well enough to not care if they hate it.) If you're not local, you can check out localharvest.org to find a CSA near you.
   
5. Cloth napkins. Brent's mom finds a reliable abundant supply of these at estate sales, so they are free (to us), washable of course, a lot nicer to look at than paper, and do a better job of getting Clare's hands and face clean.
   
6. Hanging the tote bags for the grocery store on the door handle. It's the only thing that cured my constant forgetfulness when I was trying to cultivate the habit. Now it's a habit, and the tote bags live in a less intrusive place. They are so much easier than either paper or plastic, IMO, because they hold a ton more stuff and there is no worry about breakage. I can almost always bring the groceries in from the car to the kitchen in one trip. Nice when I'm generally also herding Clare into the house at the same time.
   
7. Sigg bottles. Thank you Sylva's Nana! I love mine, Brent loves his, Clare loves hers. We have lessened our demand for wasteful plastic bottles and are better hydrated to boot.
   
8. Always printing on both sides of the (recycled) printer paper, or, if using less than a full page for multiple copies of something, squishing it down and using half sheets to hand out. Joe's made fun of my CCfB handouts for this (but in a mostly nice way. I think.)
9. Using and loving Method products. Like the wood floor cleaner and the mop with the reusable cloth you toss in the wash. And the dishwasher pellets. And laundry detergent. And rediscovering how awesome baking soda is for kitchen and bathroom cleaning, and laundry.
   
10. Breastfeeding. Think about it. No bottle, no formula packages...
11. The Diva Cup!!!! I can't tell you how happy I am with this. Been using it for 2 years now. How many tampons have I not used in that time? No idea, but what I really love about it is the luxury of actually forgetting I am on my period for hours at a time. Seriously. Comfortable, simple, easy.
    
12. Putting the poop in the potty before putting the diaper in the pail. Yep, Clare's not pooping direct yet, but her poop goes in the potty. Turns out this is 'sposed to be how you handle all 'sposies.
    

So, I was thinking about this in the shower (perhaps washing with the Holy Cross Monastery's blackberry sage soap inspired my holier-than-thou thoughts?) and this was my short list. It's not really meant as self-congratulatory at all, because all of these things are very small things. Not like getting rid of the family car, or something. Plus, one thing I really wish I could list, but can't: cloth diapers. We didn't do it because of our living situation (communal laundry seemed an insuperable stumbling block), but it would have saved us tons of money, Clare would perhaps be potty trained already, and of course, no enormous bags of stinky disposable diapers piling up week after week.

I would love to hear back from some of you if there are other easy, simple things you've done that you would include on your own list.

But there's a larger point lurking here as well, and that is, these little things represent a deliberate modification of what we might label "JTB's Way of Life." I may have bitched about this phrase, "way of life," on this blog before--I don't remember. I don't remember because I bitch about it so often that I'm like one of those absentminded professors, or preachers, who keeps telling the same anecdotes to an audience who's heard it all before. Because I hate it. I especially hate it in the specific version we hear so often, "The American Way of Life." My automatic reaction to this phrase at this point is to snort derisively and mutter, "and WTF does that mean anyway?"

And then, damn it, Obama went and used it in his inauguration speech. And worse, defended it. And worse, said we won't apologize for it. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would have bugged out and there would have been funny sound effects accompanying my "whaaaaaa?" headshake.

Because "The American Way of Life" is never defined, simply invoked--whenever we need an ironclad, ask-no-more-questions reason for doing, you know, X (fill in the blank: go to war, torture people, enact a law or amend the constitution or...you get it.) Our American Way of Life may be a blank concept, but it's a sacred blank concept, and one that you can properly consider the possibility of consigning your eternal soul to hell for defending, if that's what it takes.

But here's the thing. While Obama's inauguration speech overtly praised and promised to defend Our Sacred American Way of Life, it also more subtly made a case for the ways in which we must redefine that way of life and the reasons why. So...I'm on board with that, and kudos to the man once again for some kick-ass rhetorical strategy. Once we have a collective way of life that doesn't require apologizing for, I'm all for defending it without apology.

It seems to me that there's an assumption that making any kind of real change to how we live means massive inconvenience and difficulty, and so people avoid even contemplating it. Let's just not think about it, because if we did, then we would have to change, and that would just be too much to ask...I mean, really, that would be asking us to Change Our Way of Life. But my point is that redefining The American Way of Life doesn't have to be scary or too difficult to bother contemplating. There's not a single thing in my opening list that has made the quality of my life worse by doing it. There's not a single thing on that list that even qualifies as inconvenient. Sure, it takes a little work to remember the tote bags. But they work better. For me, and for everyone else too.

and so it begins

The mantra seems to be that we as a people have again affirmed the American Dream narrative in a new and rather more significant way: that anyone can indeed become anything, whatever they want, in this country. Well, that plays well. An oldie but a goodie, and everyone knows how to dance to that tune, so I reckon we should just go with it.

But for me personally, the major achievement represented by the election of a man named Barack Hussein Obama is somewhat different than the above. I just heard an exchange on MSNBC with some guy named Tucker Carlson who kept insisting that celebrating the election as "historic" (meaning, it's important that we have elected our first African-American president) tends toward the implication that all those who didn't vote for Obama now find themselves on "the wrong side of history" (an interesting new euphemism employed in this conversation to avoid using the blunt label, "racist"--because despite it all, we still cannot discuss race and racism in this country without euphemisms). Carlson insisted on also at the same time interpreting the election in pragmatic terms--that many people did not self-consciously cast "a historic vote" but simply a vote for the candidate that they agreed with, whose policies they judged to be right for the country, so that people "on the wrong side of history" aren't made to feel like racists.

I think he's right at the same time that he's wrong.

The real achievement of this election is that people did cast a pragmatic vote for the candidate they agreed with, whose policies they judged to be better for the country--and that this judgment could be made across multiple demographics without necessary reference to the identity category of "African-American." To separate the pragmatic from the historic vote is a mistake, because it misses the point that up till now, a black man was always black first, and then whatever else second. Now we have proven--not just to the world, but to ourselves as a country--that we can put aside the category, the label, the box, and make a judgment based on more than that.

This is the real achievement of the campaign itself, and it would have stood as monumental even with a loss at the end of it, though it would have been harder to see, and harder to celebrate, without the final vindication of a win.

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter that Obama is the son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan. It does--but it doesn't matter in the same way that it would matter in the old, constricting framework of identity politics as usual. He didn't win because he was black. Neither did he win despite being black. I think enough Americans experienced the breakthrough that this fact of his biography did not preclude a common vision, did not mean that he could never see from a white person's point of view, that a white person could never see from a black, or Hispanic-, or Asian-American, or even international point of view. We can, at least in part, if we choose to try. We can relocate our gaze, in a gesture of kinship. This is the change that has become real, because we finally believed enough in the possibility to choose it.

I voted...Clare will be proud of her mama.

reasons to hope?

Out of 15 calls made to PA women voters (though I actually spoke to a couple of spouses who seemed willing to engage in conversation):

hangups: 1
polite excuses to hang up: 2
wrong numbers: 2
messages left: 3
Obama supporters: 5 + 1 probable
McCain supporters: 1

The one McCain supporter actually was the most interesting conversation of the night: a Philly resident, he readily identified the NRA/guns as the number one issue that pushed him away from Obama (this was volunteered without prompting) as "Philadelphia isn't really safe and Obama doesn't understand this issue" and, with prompting for any more important issues in deciding his vote, pro-life. He listened very politely while I offered my own pro-life rationale for my Obama support though he didn't want to engage on it. But it was a nice experience for my one phone encounter with a McCain supporter. Interestingly, he identified himself as a Democrat voting for McCain b/c of those issues. Also very interestingly, though perhaps not really relevant, is that his wife initially hung up on me, and he called me back.

But 6 out of 7 actual people on the phone more or less immediately identified themselves as Obama supporters. That's pretty hopeful. Right?

what I wish he'd said

"Religion must always maintain a position from which to speak truth to power. Reverend Wright is speaking the truth as he sees it and as he sees fit; this is his call as a prophetic leader of a religious community in this country. It's his job. A prophet's words are often harsh, and condemning, sometimes hyperbolic, and always unwelcome. But that's his job. It's not my job. As a Senator and a candidate for the presidency, I am...power. And my job is to listen to those prophets, however unwelcome their words, to that truth that they see fit to deliver to those who hold political power. The mistake is in assuming that either I must echo these unwelcome words or refuse to hear them...the truth is that I, we, must stop and listen. This is a democracy where all voices must be heard."

Now why didn't someone write that down on a post-it and hand it to the man?

lame live blogging

preliminaries and thank yous...I hate that old joke about "marrying up" and the success of a man due to his wife being a great asset. Boo.

"our problems are bigger than the smallness of our politics"...etc. Is this an apology for the tit-for-tat recently?

It's all about McCain...that's interesting. And consistent with the implicit apology and rhetorical move to refocus the campaign on its original message.

WE. The man loves the first person plural.

(And the chanting. Yes, we can.)

Lobbyists. Interesting, because Clinton made a big deal--mentioned it twice--about being "outspent 3 to 1" in PA...as if posturing as the financial underdog were at all plausible. Seriously.

80% reporting, 55% Clinton, 45% Obama. Sigh.

We can be the party that does where everyone has to agree...or we can be the hybrid cyborg party (a free JTB paraphrase): "we are not as divided as our politics suggest." It's still a good line.

"I'm not a perfect man, I won't be a perfect president." That's a far cry from Clinton's "being president is the hardest job in the world.....I'm ready on Day 1." just a bit arrogant, yes? Particularly in contrast.

mankind? I really wish people would ge with it and start amending to "humankind." It's not that hard.

All in all...no mention of "losing" while Clinton was all "neener neener neener." Gotta love the High Road.

mommy's precious little political pundit

Well, Clare didn't make the cut, but CNN ran a story on the incredible number of Obama baby videos on youtube nowadays...apparently enough to constitute their own "genre." And the number of hits on Clare's video have spiked--now almost 1500 views and a few more comments as well, some of which seem really engaged in figuring out if the baby videos are just mimicking sounds or these babies actually mean something. This is apparently turning into a real discussion.

Now, of course MY baby is a total verbal genius but I think it's hilarious that people would take seriously the "issue" of what these babies mean. CNN got a speech development expert to point out that "ba" and "ma" are the two most commonly babbled sounds a baby makes (in almost any language, I would add) and therefore "Obama" is just a baby-friendly name that's fun and easy to repeat. Ummm...DUH. (That's also a baby-friendly syllable fun and easy to repeat. Let's say it again: DUH.) And anyhow, if someone were to disagree with that obvious point...would we really therefore be contending that these babies and toddlers are somehow expressing some kind of considered political opinion? Clearly if there is any pre-opinion being expressed it's a matter of picking up cues from the folks. The little monkeys are pretty good at that, after all.

So what's the point, if it's not that these babies are geniuses, or that they're really endorsing a candidate?

It's just damn cute, for one thing.

And it says to the world, not "hey world I'm a genius toddler and I'm voting for Obama" but "hey people, I have a proud mommy and daddy who think I'm cute and who support Obama for President." Now that means something.

the cyborg candidate

Disclaimers:

1. This is not a post about the governor of California.


2. I'm no conspiracy theorist. Calling Obama the cyborg candidate doesn't mean I think he's remote controlled through a chip in his brain by extremists. (Although I expect that rumor's already circulating somewhere; last week I received a forward that Obama is the Anti-Christ. Which, as Scott Freeman points out, doesn't really tell you whether the Left Behind-ists will vote for or against him...)

So, now that the crazy options are out of the way you may be wondering just what the heck I do mean. Well, while I sincerely try to avoid discussing my dissertation topic when in polite company, I do occasionally vent my enthusiasm for the posthuman here on the blog.

But this cyborg stuff isn't all academic. In the beginning, the cyborg was political, not academic. And while this aspect of the cyborg may indeed have gotten "lost" along the way, it's not been lost on me; and the bottom line, evident in Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, (or you may prefer the comic version), is that the cyborg is about dropping essentialisms and identity politics so we can get together and finally get some things done.

Now, does that sound familiar, anyone?

Before I go any further, let me unpack a bit. What is a cyborg? A cyborg is a creature that breaks down the ontological boundary between organism and machine: part organic, part mechanical. The word was coined in 1960 by a couple of scientists dreaming up ways to explore space; it seemed like a lot of trouble to engineer a mobile life-sustaining environment to meet all of the needs of the earth-bound human body...so they thought, why not engineer the body to dispense with those needs, or meet them some other way? Of course we haven't quite achieved this yet, although the cutting edge technology in things like prostheses and silicon chips that allow quadriplegics to manipulate computer cursors is pretty damn amazing. But that's not really the point. The point is, the cyborg represents a form of life that refuses to fit neatly into our conceptual categories: person/thing, alive/inanimate, human/machine, etc. The cyborg has a foot in both worlds, and to ignore that fact means pretending it doesn't exist, refusing to see it as it is.

Writers in postcolonial theology muse on cultural/social/racial hybridity in a parallel way: neither one category or the other, they forge identity out of between-ness, the both/and, the neither/nor. And this brings us to Obama, who is hybrid in a way similar to these postcolonial theorists: the son of a white mother and a black father.

The disappointing thing to me about the Rev. Wright stuff is not really in what the man said, or even how what he said was twisted around and used against, not him, but someone else...as if, should Joe Hays ever do/say something crazy prophetic, it would somehow reflect on me personally. (Joe, I know you're crazy prophetic all the time. Keep on.) No, what's disappointing to me is that this in effect reintroduces, with a vengeance, into the campaign discourse the very thing Obama has been seeking to transcend: identity politics. If he stands with Rev. Wright, then he's too black and scary for comfortable white folks, too revolutionary, too angry to be trusted...If he disowns Rev. Wright, then he's too white and scared for righteously angry black folks who understand the truth in the Reverend's prophetic utterances. It's all about trying to make Obama declare himself: are you white, or are you black? Are you or aren't you running as a black candidate, to become the first black President?

The fact that Obama's response to this provocation was a speech on race in America indicates to me that he gets it. It's not really enough to claim a hybrid pedigree personally, although I think it's evident that growing up with a sense of not knowing to which category you belong--and constantly being recategorized as the Other by everyone you come across--shapes your experience in a way that makes the limitations of those categories painfully obvious. Obama's not simply the cyborg candidate because he's the offspring of a black-white hybrid family. He's the cyborg candidate because, like Haraway, he realizes that it's not desirable or even possible to dream of uniting people on the basis of common identity anymore. That's not what we want. That's not the goal. It doesn't work. Haraway's point about the cyborg is that there's nothing basic, essential, on which we can unite. Haraway realized this in 1985, reflecting on the fragmentation of the feminist movement in the U.S. Even white women in America, who briefly came together and united on the basis of a fabricated common identity as Woman, found out the hard way that oops, we're actually a bunch of women who are all different...and that was before we learned the even harder lesson that we shouldn't have left out the black women, the Latina women, the Chinese- and Japanese- and Korean-American women (not Asian-American! Asia's a continent not an ethnicity!), all the women in other global contexts who have something to tell us about their own experiences and needs and hopes.

Obama articulates the same realization when he urges us to unite in order to work towards common goals despite differences in color, creed, and experience. What's so impressive about his candidacy is that he has somehow managed to do this--every CNN retrospective breakdown of every primary, you see votes busted up: the white vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the women vote, the white male vote. And despite the fact that these categories are so taken for granted in America today that we receive this kind of categorical analysis as normal and coherent, what we see is that Obama's candidacy makes these taken-for-granted lines, drawn and redrawn in every political analysis, obsolete. Perhaps a better word than "unity," which seems to indicate a seamless whole, is Haraway's "coalition," a word Obama also employs; coalition doesn't imply melting into one another and merging into a whole that obliterates the differences between us that are real and important--those differences that make us, for better or worse, who we are. Instead it's through those differences, the recognition and communication and comprehension of them, that we come together; that is coalition. Haraway talks about it as chosen affinity, a matter of conscious alignment with one another; sometimes she talks about it as kinship--but not the kinship of blood relation, more like the kinship of adoption. A chosen affinity, a coalition of difference...but not, for that reason, any less real or potent.

In fact, for that very reason, all the more so. This is what I, very hopefully, see in Obama's candidacy. An option for coming together that skips the necessity of me being like you.

Now, if we could just learn this lesson theologically and ecclesially, maybe Jesus could come back already. Because Obama's right on something else, too: the most segregated hour in this nation happens on Sunday mornings. But if Jesus' speaking to adulterous women and traitorous tax collectors and dirty Samaritans hasn't somehow hammered the lesson that "me being like you" is not a prereq for unity, then the reiteration of that message from a political candidate, even a cyborg candidate, may fall on deaf ears; those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Clare says, "O-ba-ma!"

I did not, I promise, coach this. She spontaneously exclaimed "Obama!" earlier in the song, I grabbed the camera, and waited for the magic to happen again.

You can find the new Obama video here. Thanks for the link, Tracy.

buffering, please wait...

Not quite live blogging the debate here. We don't get MSNBC, and going to msnbc.com on Brent's computer resulted in unflattering frozen expressions, multiple reboots with requisite annoying commercials, and a lot of time sitting and staring at the words...

buffering, please wait...









Oh, we're back. So my first thought on the debate is, MSNBC sucks. Thanks a lot for taking an event of national political import, something which could potentially affect an enormous amount of people, and refusing to make it as widely available as possible to all people in multiple venues in favor of keeping the broadcasting rights all to yourself. Lovely! What does this say about the intersection of capitalism and American political process? Sure, NPR will broadcast the debate...starting at 11 pm. Gee, that's convenient.

So mainly, I'm hoping that nothing really important happened because despite intentions and a decent amount of effort, I didn't get to see it.

Yes We Can

Watching the Obama SC victory speech, I couldn't believe, even while experiencing it, that the Bob-the-Builder slogan chanting was so powerfully moving. What is it about "yes we can" that works?

When I blogged about that speech later, I ended with a halfhearted sense that maybe I would think more about the theological anthropology of "yes we can." I have been pondering this on and off since then but I don't think I can blog about it. For one thing, I've got some other deadlines to meet (thank you AAR for extending the Feb 25 deadline to Mar 1!) and for another, I'm now officially sick as a dog.

But I have noticed that my own speech has changed as a result of this slogan. When Clare gets frustrated with the buckle on her high chair--a relatively new fine-motor-skill achievement for her--I don't say, "Mommy help," I say, "Yes you can."

In fact, I chant it. I'm waiting for Clare to start joining in. I want "Yes We Can" to be something she learns so early on that she never wonders IF she can be a part of making the world the better place we all wish it was. When she catches on--and I've no doubt she will, my little verbal genius--move over, James Brown. "Baby baby baby" is cute, but "Yes We Can" is hope.

super fat tuesday

Okay, so I'm glued to the TV and here in a minute we'll be breaking out the scotch.

***

I just realized what it is that I like so much about Obama. He's the cyborg candidate.

Oh, I don't mean he's a wired up cyborg or even that he's more technologically savvy than anyone else (although Katie Couric's been talking all about how well Facebook has been working for the Obama campaign). I mean it in Haraway's political sense. Hybridity defying categorical identity, and therefore offering a promise of potential unity on the basis of something other than "natural identity." On the basis of something like common sense. Or even hope.

But you've got to think that it's possible. And that's the other aspect of cyborg thought that Obama embodies so well. Haraway's cyborg is all about agency. Yes, we can.

***

I'm a bit afraid that Clinton, despite how much I like her, were she to get the nom, would fall prey to the temptation to play the Men's Game bigger and better. Fall prey to the temptation to prove that she is "strong" and a legitimate leader. And I don't think that we can survive any more political pissing matches.

***

My gut says that if Clinton gets the nomination, we can kiss the South good-bye. I think there are a lot of people who might vote for Obama instead of voting Republican but who would never vote for Clinton. My mother is one of them. I think there are a lot more.

***

verdict: Laphroiag is a lot smokier and complex than Glenlivet.

voted

Yes, we can.

cynicism sucks. I'm on board.

(Mom, this post is for you. Hope you're still "considering.")

I'm listening to the SC victory speech on youtube right now. And if I hadn't been for Obama before, I would be now.

Personally, I've been cynical for so long that I've found it difficult to shake. There's security in it; if you're cynical about all political process and all political candidates and all political rhetoric, then you're never going to be disappointed, you're never going to feel betrayed. You never expected anything better. And I experience Obama as a temptation. A temptation toward resuscitated hope and optimism and a trust in personal agency. And despite my like for him as a candidate, there's been a part of me that's resisted getting totally on board. I've been cynical too long. I don't want to contemplate what it may mean to trade it in for what still feels like a naive idealism, the kind that inevitably gets crushed by the implacable momentum of indifferent reality.

What's so powerful about this speech, to me, is that--whatever else is in there--Obama recognizes this.

"We're up against forces that feed the habits that prevent us from being who we
want to be as a nation...a politics that tells us we have to think, act and even
vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us... But
we're not just up against the ingrained and destructive habits of
Washington. We're also up against our own doubts, our own fears, our own
cynicism. The change we seek has always required great struggle and great
sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and our own minds
about what kind of country we want, and how hard we're willing to work for it."

The message to me, and to those like me, is to take the risk. Of climbing out of the security of cynicism and daring the vulnerability of hoping, and working toward the America we wish we lived in. Of making our citizenship something we can legitimately take some pride in, instead of adopting fake Australian accents when overseas.

And the chorus: "yes, we can." On the theological anthropology behind this speech, maybe another post.