From the right come the false claims that Obama is driving our country to socialism or communism. And that's the more reasonable of the crazy right's lies! That doesn't even scratch the surface of the rube Republican's lies that he's the Anti-Christ, not born in America, on and on. In a pre-media age, pre-Fox News, pre-Rupert Murdoch age before fools were given megaphones and a national stage the impact of the outright nut cases and their ideas would be negligible. No more.
And from the left, what do we get? We get formerly promising websites that were once boldly claiming they'd soon replace traditional newspapers as sources of news now wallowing in t*ts and ass trash, celebrity gossip and commentary by such thinkers as critics who can't get past punch line sneering at the real and complicated world. To such Obama critics, their impatience is the key to their restless lack of steady support for our president. They wanted change and they wanted it --- now! They wanted Obama to be Jesus and fix everything --- now! They wanted his presidency to feel like election night euphoria forever. They can't stand the real sausage-making process of actual governance.
Meanwhile in the real world President Obama is trying to repair the damage done to America (and the planet) by George W. Bush; arguably the worst president in American history. Obama is also trying to lead an American public that has been failed by the right and the left and nowhere more glaringly than in the public's lack of education. Obama leads a nation that, somewhere along the line, has lost its common sense too.
Which brings up a fatful point: President Obama is smart and a huge chunk of America is woefully (even gleefully!) dumb. Can an extra-bright president lead an essentially uneducated, worse, an anti-education country?
I don't know.
I do know that the greatest threat to our national security is found in the textbook convergence of all that's most wrong about the American left and the American right: education.
Saving Education: the Ultimate Presidential Test
On the right... we have Americans who don't even believe in public schools and who have conducted a war against them, from their home school movement, to the Christian school movement, to their de-funding of any program they can de-fund on the weird anti-communitarian "principle" that all government is bad. And that doesn't even begin to describe the anti-education values preached by fundamentalist Christians (Palin's Real Americans who fear learning and sophistication) who are anti-science and anti-art and anti-facts and in favor of an evangelical mythology that ranges from creationism to lies about gays. (One lie: gays are choosing to be gay and are able to be healed and or cured of gayness if they would only love Jesus enough!)
On the left... we have a movement disgustingly co-opted by and in bed with, the teacher's union. This union seems to come from some educational hell defined by its defense of --- and commitment to mind-numbing mediocrity. And we have teacher training colleges that have churned out teachers trained in psychobabble yet who can barely speak the English language and are like many Americans a bland mix of anti-knowledge mediocrity, wherein everything is reduced to work sheets, books are replaced with computers on every desk (and other distractions welling from the heart of our entertainment-besotted culture) distracting students from the real business of education: the molding of human beings into creatures who love learning for its own sake because it's beautiful.
One of the great things about President Obama is that he is serious about educational reform. But as with the rest of his agenda he seems to me to be more and more like that proverbial Dutch boy in the old story about the boy who stands alone with his finger plugging the leak in the sea wall while protecting a sleeping and blissfully unaware population.
The Question Is: Where are the President's Reinforcements?
With the left and right united in their sniping at the President
though from differing angles where is the America that cares about
our future enough to speak up for him and thus for ourselves?
Americans that have the sense to understand just what is so great about Obama say those of us that listened to what he said when accepting the Nobel and get it need to be heard from. Who are we? We're Americans that believe in maintaining and creating public spaces. We're people not too proud to follow the man we voted for loyally until such time as he's had a chance to give it his best.
We understand the value of community. We understand the unusual moment we're in, when we are --- at last and maybe for the last time in the foreseeable future being led by a great man who brings realism and idealism to his task in equal measure in everything from foreign policy to health care reform.
If we blow this chance we have only ourselves to blame for a very bleak future.
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