I'm mad as hell...

On several occasions throughout this political campaign Senator Barack Obama has implicitly referenced and explicitly cited the writings and philosophy of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly his work Moral Man and Immoral Society. Niebuhr writes in the introduction to his argument that “…the world of history, particularly in man’s collective behavior, will never be conquered by reason, unless reason uses tools, and is itself driven by forces which are not rational.” Is it this maxim, this cynical world view, which guides the seemingly intellectual (and optimistic?) Obama to willfully and repeatedly lie and obfuscate his and Senator John McCain’s positions and record? It is the best way have thus far been able to rationalize his campaign; others digress.

I have found at dinner party that the unanimous rejoinder to any critique of the truth content of Obama’s campaign is to dismiss his less than honest behavior as a necessary evil to compete in American politics. This is then almost always followed with a regressive argument that details how the Republicans lied first and more often. Please, this callow playground mentality fails because it offers no moral backing for the Machiavellian shortchanging of the American public. Is Obama the best of the binary options presented to the American public? Yes. I applaud his general latitudinarian views and see little, if any, redeeming tenants left on the right. (Where are the ideas of Burke, Mills, Strauss, Bloom, Hayek, et al?) And are the McCain campaign’s political machinations more odious? Sure.

None of this, however, means that I have to be content with the candidates and the discourse they have offered. I am mad as hell over the troglodytic, dishonest, and superficial political conversation in America, and I am not going to take it anymore. (I’ll get around to the media when I have the energy)

This is nothing new to American politics. It assuredly is not change either. It is more of the same. So, let us call a spade a spade: Obama is a politician through and through; he lies and obfuscates (did he really believe that McCain wanted to fight the Iraq war for 100 years? No.); he offers platitudes and clichés (…not red states, or blue states…but the United States – this fixes partisan politics how?); he cherry-picks his personal narrative (he speaks at length about his Midwest, Kansas values, yet omits his decades split between Morningside Heights, Cambridge and Hyde Park); et cetera. So let us hold off on sanctifying him until he starts treating us like reasoning adults.