Rational Philosophy

UN Ambassador Andrew Young

I am sure that many have cried at some point since 11pm last night. My own tears caught me by surprise. I was emptying the dishwasher this morning as I listened to NPR. Ambassador Andrew Young, the first black ambassador to the UN, (who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr) was speaking in calm, measured praise of Obama and the weight of the history of Obama’s accomplishment. I’m not black, but in the upsurge of emotion that brought my tears I felt suddenly, immediately aware of what this moment meant historically in a country with such a poor record of racial discrimination, both overt and covert — it was a mixture of relief and joy.

This joy is in part the very pure philosophical joy of a good thing happening, a thing that will change the future. In Andrew Young’s words: “a victory of grace over greed, of vision over violence.”

Can change really happen and if so how?  This is the country that twice elected George W. Bush. Many who voted-in perhaps the worst president in the nation’s history, twice, must have decided to vote for Obama over McCain. So are we a conservative nation simply disillusioned by a lousy president, or are we a nation newly and differently inspired, a changed nation?

Barack Obama Victor

I can’t know the answer. I can only give an opinion based on what I see and hear.  Obama and his campaign team have wrought change by reaching out and engaging people with new ideas. These ideas have rubbed up against old, automated, reactive ways of thinking. Obama has spent the last couple of years asking people why we should see the intractable problems of the country as hopelessly intractable. He’s also stood and overtly and covertly challenged people to find him wanting because of the color of his skin, or the unamericanness of his name, or the power of his rational intellect.

Many failed to meet this challenge. After all 47% of America voted for McCain, or against Obama. That’s tens of millions of people who have proven themselves insusceptible to a force for powerful, positive change.

The world is now a different place. Obama’s skill and insight in his campaign promise great things for his presidency. Thank you, Barack.

John McCain on The Daily Show with John Stewart

Last night, as I watched a TiVo’d John Stewart skewering delegates on the last day of the Republican convention, I wondered what it is about small town values that the Republicans love (but can’t define) and that seems to keep America stuck in the mire of bad politics.

If you didn’t see it, Stewart’s convention crew walked around with microphones asking Republican delegates what ’small town values’ meant to them. With big smiles on their faces and earnest willingness to answer the delegates came up with such laughable answers as “real people, real values,” “traditional marriage,” “fishing,” “church.” (The video is posted on the Daily Show website - highly recommended.)

But even those of us who distrust and disagree with the sentiment with which republicans freight the term, we all seem to understand that the essence of ’small town values’ might mean something genuinely appealing and good. So what is this essence, and how has it become distorted and misused.

Block Island, Rhode Island

I spent the bulk of the summer on Block Island with my family. Block Island is essentially a small town with a lot of tourists. (And these are mostly east-coast tourists from New York and Connecticut.) It’s easy to distinguish the tourists from the islanders. The tourists are in a hurry. They’re often nervous and rude. They lock their cars. They expect to get screwed over. They complain about stuff. The islanders understand that there aren’t that many places to go on the island, and everywhere is pretty close. You can trust people because for the most part, there’s nowhere for them to escape to. You couldn’t steal a car and get it off the island (which is car-accessible only by ferry.)

Block Island is a great lens through which to observe that the essence of small town values means enforced responsibility through enforced community.

It’s a lot easier to be rude or unfair to someone if you don’t know them and if you’ll never see them again and don’t have to rely upon their personal contribution to the community you live in. In a small town, people do know one another and rely upon one another and society functions very much as it has done for millions of years. The inherent rules of small social groups therefore tend to operate without the need for too much overt oversight and enforcement. What’s not to like about that?

But this is the problem: The rest of the country is made up of places where that kind of reinforcement can’t be relied upon. And this is the other part of the problem: Conservative Republicans wrap a whole lot of crap into the concept of small town values that has nothing to do with the core function of a mutually-reliant community (such as traditional marriage, fishing and church.)

And this is why ’small town values’ have become the political ruin of America. So much hog-swill passes for the reasonable subject of informed debate under the auspices of what small town folk care about. Every Republican candidate dives in or gets sucked in to the vortex of endless political distraction of the conservative agenda. And this means the every Democratic candidate gets sucked in, too, for fear of committing political suicide.

Other advanced Western nations don’t waste political time endlessly rehashing abortion statutes, gun control, separation of church and state, the teaching of creationism. ‘Small town values’ are the concrete boots of American politics, and until we lose them we won’t have an effective political process that will allow the nation to move forward and solve the very real problems of war, alternative fuel sources, and climate change.

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