I've seen families --and marriages-- go through crises, too, in which --after a time of great evil-- things somehow turn around and work themselves out, at least enough to get back into a more viable form. A kind of acceptable state gets restored withouth the dark realities that had surfaced ever really being worked through, without understanding having been achieved, without any dramatic experiences of personal transformation and enlightenment ever taking place.
And if I had to bet, this is what I would bet will happen in America in the aftermath of this Bushite regime. We'll never as a nation face the dark truth about this time, but the music from our part of the world --i.e. from places like NoneSoBlind, and other parts of America where the dark truth is being openly discussed-- will continue to play into people's minds and will to some degree get integrated into how people sense the meaning of this time. Some of the issues people like us have been raising will continue to operate on the national psyche, sometimes visibly and sometimes beneath the level that we can see.Since the evils are still out there, not nearly so confronted and defeated and discredited as I would so dearly love to see, the possibility remains that America's flabby defenses against fascism might still end up collapsing before the next onslaught.
But meanwhile, through a kind of muddling through, it is also possible that the forces of the good and the true and the beautiful will gradually reconstitute themselves in the American order, and that the heart and soul of America will gradually heal. Assuming we can get the fascists out of power next year, the longer the basic, pre-Bushite American order can keep on muddling without being overrun by the evil, the more chance the level of goodness has to rise.
It's like a well that's been pumped dry. (The American spirit and order represent the well, the water is the structures of goodness that are part of those things, and the pump is the evil Bushite regime that has been disposing of goodness in America as fast as it can.) If you stop the pump, by a gradual process of the groundwater seeping back into the well, the level of the water gradually rises to the level of the enduring water table.
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That's where I remained until late January, when I gradually came to see another way in which the forces of goodness might truly triumph over the forces of evil. It was a less confrontational way than the one that suited me best, the prophetic one that speaks moral truth to and about amoral power.
In a comment I posted on the late February thread of "Schmookler is Available for Conversation," I wrote about how Obama's way of dealing with the darkness attacking him might be not only a workable alternative, but possibly also --in view of the condition of the American body politic-- a more effective way than the one I'd been looking for in the presidential campaign, and had despaired when I didn't find it.
I wrote there, a propos how I would have responded to Hillary's mockery of Obama and how, by contrast, Obama himself had actually responded:
In some respects, I like my response better. But I suspect that his is more effective for this time and place...
Here's the essential point: I BELIEVE THAT AMERICA IS AFRAID TO GO TO BATTLE against the Bushites. That's what I think is behind the Lament of a True Patriot" panorama of failure in the American body politic that I described last fall. I don't really understand the fear, but I believe that IT IS POSSIBLE that Obama recognizes that fear, or perhaps that he's just by chance well-matched to the moment.
Americans, at any rate, are flocking to Obama, I am venturing, because he is doing two things: a) he's saying that the Good can win ("Yes We Can") and that b) we do not need to enter into the arena of battle for that victory.
Americans yearn for something better, and they are afraid to confront evil in order to achieve it. Hence, Obama taps into the yearning while calming the fears.
That's why his pattern of deflecting --his akido, his agreeableness, his willingness to find humor and good performance in Hillary's mocking of his inspirational summoning forth of hope-- is so well suited to the needs of this moment. And why he appears to be heading toward the presidency.
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