Thoughts on Obama?
I'm very glad he won the election.
I anticipated him being a centrist economically and understand my Anabaptist-like friends who are disillusioned with his emphasis on wealth-creation and what-not. I think such an emph is appropriate given his context as president.
I've also had dialogues with radicals that don't like Obama at all and are quite alienated from the system. With them, I emph my view that Obama is slowing down the US's long-standing slide into utter kleptocracy, or the "democracy of the dollar" or rule by the wealthy for the wealthy. This requires that he accomodates the system and the existing powers.
My diff is that I fear many may be putting too much of their hopes in Obama and not thinking about how to change the system apart from him. For this, I think there is reason to form local third parties that focus on contesting local elections and vote strategically together in less local state and national elections, while also practicing the politics of Gandhi/Jesus of changing hearts via their self-sacrificial advocacy for issues.
So that's where I'm at, reasonably optimistic that Obama has mitigated the severity of this down-turn and deserves his fairly widespread support, but certain that we're currently putting too many of our hopes on his shoulders in a misguided manner.
I also think that the potential for reform of the tax system is there, if there's a will for it, so that we'll take a bite out of the current deficits without causing serious harm to economic performance. So I think the tea-parties are sadly misguided populist fears of "big gov't" that miss the boat on the existence of a nexus between "big gov't" and "big business". This nexus is both inevitable and a serious source of turmoil for the lives of many. The potential of political/economic elites to cause others needlessly is why Christians must make our participation in Democratic rule/legal changes a critical part of how we strive to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
dlw
I anticipated him being a centrist economically and understand my Anabaptist-like friends who are disillusioned with his emphasis on wealth-creation and what-not. I think such an emph is appropriate given his context as president.
I've also had dialogues with radicals that don't like Obama at all and are quite alienated from the system. With them, I emph my view that Obama is slowing down the US's long-standing slide into utter kleptocracy, or the "democracy of the dollar" or rule by the wealthy for the wealthy. This requires that he accomodates the system and the existing powers.
My diff is that I fear many may be putting too much of their hopes in Obama and not thinking about how to change the system apart from him. For this, I think there is reason to form local third parties that focus on contesting local elections and vote strategically together in less local state and national elections, while also practicing the politics of Gandhi/Jesus of changing hearts via their self-sacrificial advocacy for issues.
So that's where I'm at, reasonably optimistic that Obama has mitigated the severity of this down-turn and deserves his fairly widespread support, but certain that we're currently putting too many of our hopes on his shoulders in a misguided manner.
I also think that the potential for reform of the tax system is there, if there's a will for it, so that we'll take a bite out of the current deficits without causing serious harm to economic performance. So I think the tea-parties are sadly misguided populist fears of "big gov't" that miss the boat on the existence of a nexus between "big gov't" and "big business". This nexus is both inevitable and a serious source of turmoil for the lives of many. The potential of political/economic elites to cause others needlessly is why Christians must make our participation in Democratic rule/legal changes a critical part of how we strive to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
dlw
© 2010 Created by J. Christopher LaTondresse.
