The Times They Are A-Changin'

Here’s a letter from Monday’s Star from an idiot in Indianapolis who apparently has quite the low (though obviously unfounded) opinion of Illinois Senator and potential 2008 Presidential candidate Barack Obama. He calls Obama a liberal as though this is some sort of revelation; and he also says that both of Obama’s books are filled with nothing but “fluff,” which goes to prove that he has not read either book.

(Well, maybe he has read the books, I can’t really say for sure as I have never had the misfortune of meeting him; but if he thinks all they contain is fluff then he has grossly misinterpreted them. The idiot also says that Obama has taken no noteworthy positions, although Obama’s second book reveals a number of positions he has taken - including opposing the Iraq war before it started, when he was not a U.S. Senator and so did not have to vote on it; voting against the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court; and voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement - a decidedly unliberal position to take.)

I usually write letters to the Star myself when I read something this idiotic, but I just don’t know if I have the heart or the energy at this point - my soul is weary at the moment. And it’s possible that you might be thinking - well, if he’s taking the time and trouble to write out this blog post about it, why not go ahead and write the letter?

Well, the simple answer to that is that I can say whatever I want to say in my blog posts and not have to worry about which parts of it will or will not see the light of day. That’s something that bothers me about writing letters to the Star - even when I pare down my letters to what I think is a nice, concise, somewhat brief response to whichever idiot has drawn my wrath, they manage to edit my letters even more...sometimes to the point of leaving out a whole paragraph or point I was trying to make.

Had this idiot read either one of Obama’s books, he would have discovered that the first, Dreams From My Father, is actually an excellent self-examination of Obama’s family history and how that has affected the man he has become and the things he has chosen to do with his life. I just finished reading it again, and enjoyed it even more the second time. The second book, just recently published, is The Audacity Of Hope and reads almost like the platform on which he will campaign when he runs for President - whether that be in 2008 or later. I’m in the middle - literally - of reading it for the first time.

And he may indeed run for President in 2008 - or at least take a run at the Democratic nomination. The field of Democrats is not top-heavy with big names at this point - Hillary Clinton is the obvious front-runner, but Obama is gaining steam and is incredibly popular. If he really wants to be President - and one of the things he has said for the record is that he will only continue to work in politics if he is able to do good work and actually make a difference - then he will have to give serious thought to running in 2008, while his popularity is high.

The reason is that a Democrat will be elected President in 2008, and if it is not Obama, it will be a long time before he can run again - presuming that the Democrat elected runs for re-election in 2012, it would be difficult for another Democrat to run for the nomination and would probably be political suicide if someone tried it.

I suppose a Republican could be elected in 2008, but I just can’t imagine that that would happen, based on what the preceding eight years of having a Republican President - granted, an astonishingly bad one - has done for this country; and there is also the fact that the two front-runners for the Republican nomination, John McCain and Rudy Guiliani, are far too liberal to be appealing to the ultra-conservative Republican base.

Naysayers like this idiot who wrote the letter in Monday’s Star will continue to trumpet the fact that Obama is a relative unknown with little experience in politics - and I am sure (shamefully so) that there will be many people in this country who will not like the idea of having a black man be our President.

But you know what? The times, they are a-changin’, and it’s time for the American people to wake up to this reality before it is too late. The ominous truth that scares the hell out of a lot of fat, lazy Americans is that the global economy is changing and it’s just about time for Americans to change with it or risk being left behind. Too many Americans seem to think that all of the hard work that has been done over the years since the American Revolution, to make this country free and prosperous, has rendered America a place where its citizens can do no wrong and don’t ever have to lift a finger again in order to keep hold of their remarkable freedoms and their (relatively) remarkable wealth.

People complain about and are afraid of outsourcing, offshoring, and globalization - because these things cost Americans jobs. On the other side of the coin, though, are the Indians and Chinese and Mexicans who are out there and who want good jobs themselves and are willing to work hard and learn new things in order to get and keep those jobs. The American free market economy and the global concept of free trade mean that American corporations can essentially staff out certain segments of their employment needs to the highest bidder - whether that be a factory in Mexico City, a textile plant in Beijing, or a Hewlett Packard help desk in Bangalore. These low-paying, relatively menial jobs are not there for Americans by right based on our past.

Americans have to learn a whole lot of new things to be able to be competitive in the 21st century - working on an assembly line, sewing shirts, and answering phones aren’t going to cut it anymore because there are other people in the world who will do those jobs for less money. We the people have grown far too complacent with our station in the world - and the rug is being pulled out from under us by people who are more motivated, more hard-working, and more focused than we are. The middle class in India numbers three hundred million - that’s the same as the population of the ENTIRE United States.

We can either fight this changing dynamic with fear and hatred, or we can sack up and admit that it’s time to redefine the American Dream just a little bit - and that means learning new skills and going with the flow when it comes to new ideas and new people...like a black man in the White House. Americans can no longer afford to believe that conservative values and conservative thinking will let us keep the status quo the way it is. The status quo is going to change whether conservatives want it to or not - and the real measure of America, more than any other measure that has been taken of this country since it was founded, will be whether or not we can rise up and meet that kind of challenge, or if we will just be swept under the rug by the people who are willing to work harder for what must now be thought of as the Global Dream.

(For a positive deluge of information about globalization, outsourcing, and offshoring - and why these things absolutely cannot be thought of as threats if the American way of life is to survive into the next century - check out The World Is Flat, by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.)