Vegblog 1/19/09: We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,
posted January 19, 2009 - 11:12amsince those dark days of 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but because of voting “irregularities”, the choice of winner was given to the Supreme Court, who made the wrong call, throwing our country and the world into eight years of hell that will take many more years to escape.
President Obama is a good choice to pull the U.S. out of its black hole: young, smart, charismatic, biracial and cosmopolitan. He’s a Christian with Swahili first and last names and an Arab middle name, so he instantly defuses the treasured right-wing myth that turns anything Arab, even just a name, into Muslim extremism and terrorism.
As for his remarkable life, we all know the drill by now: He was born in Hawaii of a Kansan white woman and a Kenyan black man. Some of his childhood was spent in Indonesia with his Asian stepfather before he returned to Honolulu to live with his white grandparents. He had an East Coast college education and chose Illinois for his academic and political career. He’s a post-modern gypsy in the best sense.
As a far left liberal I am less than thrilled with Obama’s centrist politics. He seems to be setting up an administration overly eager to compromise with the right, and I wonder just how much he’ll accomplish with his “post-partisan” methodology. It seems naïve of him to imagine that he can erase centuries of partisanship in four or eight years. On the other hand, judging by the enormous, diverse crowds he attracts, I believe he has already begun to be a unifier of the American people, unlike George Bush, who claimed to be one but did nothing but divide the country.
Obama’s staff picks are all over the map politically, but one of his choices gives me great hope. Cass Sunstein has been appointed to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He will be known as the regulatory czar, responsible for the administration of every regulatory governmental agency, including the FDA and EPA. As an attorney, he’s admired by both sides for his balanced views in the legal arena, but what I like about him is that he’s an ethical vegetarian who is sympathetic to the suffering of animals and the animal rights movement. In fact, he’s written a book about it called “Animal Rights: Current Debate and New Directions”. Sunstein appears to be in favor of stricter regulation of all animal exploitation industries, including factory farming, clothing, entertainment and biomedical research, and even advocates giving animals legal representation in court. How much he can accomplish for the animals remains to be seen, however.
But back to Obama. I’m old enough to remember when a biracial couple walking down the street, even in my home town in New York, was shocking. I witnessed the career and later mourned the murder of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate today. The fact that Barack Obama was able to run successfully as a candidate who just happened to be black rather than as a black man is almost miraculous to anyone who has lived through some of the darkest days of racism in our country (which are not over yet, and may never be, despite Obama’s ascendancy).
I was an adolescent when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated. The giddiness and hopefulness about this president matches the excitement JFK generated so many years ago. I only hope that, unlike Kennedy, whose term in office was limited to a thousand days, Barack Obama will have enough time to fulfill his campaign promises. I don’t entertain any illusions that he will achieve the moral stature of his mentor Abraham Lincoln, but if he accomplishes even half as much as the country lawyer who grew up in a log cabin, that will be big.
A long way indeed!
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Agreed about Kerry, wHATUP, but . . .
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