He may as well be a brother from another planet:
“Greetings; Take me as I am— not as you think I should be.”

The “new politics” of Barack Obama are leaving many Americans lost in his dust. Traditionally they may have been categorized— and understood themselves to be— “liberals,” “conservatives,” “progressives,” “Republicans,” “Democrats,” and “Independents.” Not so surprisingly, a sizable majority of MSM pundits also have no idea what Obama means by a “new politics.”

But it is proving altogether unsettling for these various sub-groups of the electorate, having been so thoroughly and completely indoctrinated in the “Left-Right-Centrist” Meme of politics as usual that they can’t see themselves defined any other way, to suddenly find Barack Obama is not following their calcified notions of what they think he should be, and how he should behave. A few weeks ago Karl Rove was all by his lonesome calling Obama “arrogant” and “elitist” (read: “uppity”); now the fickle mouth breathers of teh illiterate electorate are having to change their intellectual underwear almost every week, and they don’t like it one bit.

Yo Yo: What ever your old political notion was of Barack Obama, he is not definable that way, anymore.

It has nothing to do with the dissection of political decision making by attributing it to left, right, or center, and it never did. These crude demarcations of political ideology never really yielded a true picture of the real values that form the basis of the decisions of a Barack Obama, or any other politician. Obama’s recent decisions have the various segments of his supporters, and his opponents, attempting to hammer them into the increasingly meaningless meme of the old politics, by whining “He’s tacking teh the center,” “He’s betraying the left,” “He can’t be trusted,”  “He won’t go to Bagdad,” He’s just another liar,” “He’s a fundamentalist Christian!” blah, blah, blah— Because the MSM, and even some of the progressive blogosphere, still insist on seeing the political world through the grossly cynical but fading paradigm of the old politics. Thank you, Dick Bush; your legacy is upon us.

It is inevitable that a presidential candidate who actually has a living relationship with Christ will eventually make his way to the White House. The tacit and superficial toleration of the inconsequential religious lives of recent presidential candidates and presidents (save perhaps Jimmy Carter) is symptomatic of an even bigger problem, and it has left the electorate unprepared — even the secular and religiously educated intelligentsia— for what they might expect from an Obama presidency.

Many who were initially inspired by Obama’s leadership abilities and personal charisma haven’t really grokked what he’s been saying about his religious convictions, in his books or in his speeches. Those who have been paying attention, if they are agnostic secularists or even religious secularists, are flabbergasted and confused by his commitment to following the truth— as he sees it, not them or more specifically, their political creed— wherever it may take him. Why is anyone shocked they barely hesitate to turn and rend him, his pearls be damned.

There are numerous comments at places like Alternet and HufPo where one can read the whining superficial loyalty to Obama, now that he’s beginning to “refine” his opinions in ways that don’t nuzzle up to the secular left’s butt cheeks. A couple examples.

Liz Sidoti:

Obama also may be undercutting his claim to be a straight-shooting, new-politics candidate as he repeatedly breaks with his liberal base on various issues to aggressively move to appeal to the center of the electorate.

Liz can’t help but fall into the “center of the electorate” pit; it’s just too easy to assume Obama’s principles are as jello-like as any other politician’s; he can’t really believe his own decisions are based on real principles, can he??

I selected this comment from Susan of Texas at HufPo because she riffs on a “true believers” stereotype and father substitution, while throwing in a little personal peccadillo she harbors on authoritarianism:

He says everthing [sic] that is right, but what he actually does conforms with his authoritarian leanings. He is extremely competitive and ambitious; he wouldn’t be the nominee if he weren’t. He gew [sic] up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer. And we all know how dangerous they are.

Setting aside for the moment the lack of personal religious experience at the heart of so many of Obama’s critics both inside the democratic party and out, let’s focus on her notion that Obama says everything that’s “right, but. . .” Ask yourself why he says everything that’s right, if he really means none of it? The deeply ingrained cynicism of such a view is of course, lamentable, but ultimately it’s the insinuation that Obama is a shallow, lying deceiver just like Bush, Cheney, or Rove, that he has no real values at all, that smells up the place. Such a lack of discernment results from a completely debilitated ability to trust, and is the ultimate cost of cynicism.

“And we all know how dangerous they are.” Let the term “True believers” be defined here as anyone on the planet with a genuine spiritual awareness through their own personal religious experience. To every appearance, Obama is such a person. But “dangerous”? True believers in Jesus actually believe “Love your enemies” is a superior philosophy to “kill your enemies.” Hence, Obama’s commitment to withdraw from Iraq, and not launch American wars of choice.
And his recent decisions, which have caused a chorus of caterwauling among some of his supporters, probably the same ones who recoiled at the spiritual fervor Obama engendered in many of his other early supporters, are all positions that place the highest values of a truth-driven political prodigy right out there for all to marvel at, or complain about. Discuss.

“He g[r]ew up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer“

Non-religious minds can plop out such a thoughtless notion because it seems so logical. But anyone who truly knows God as a Father does so, not to fill the physical void of an absent or inadequate earthly father, but because they have already learned the value of such a divine Father through their experiences with an earthly father figure. Every child is wholly dependent on his parents and the home life for all his early concepts of everything intellectual, social, moral, and even spiritual; all that he can first know of either human or divine relationships comes from the family. Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, makes it reasonably clear that most of that guidance came from a loving Grandfather, Grandmother, Father, however briefly, Step-father, and Mother all of whom, to my mind, must have done a superb job, based on what little we can observe of Obama’s spiritual relationship with God as a Father.

America’s political ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established old-politics tradition, and has begun its perilous cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny. The only real question is, does America want Obama— a genuine religionist— the “real deal” at the helm, or McCain— a genuine fraud. As never before in our history, the soul of America had better carefully scrutinize the charts of our highest shared values, and therein find the trust the new captain will need from us if he is to steer us true.

Unity— Not Uniformity!!

Back in the day in America, we lived in a free country. In America, you could, if you wanted to, rake up a bunch of leaves and burn them, if you felt like it. Or you could burn trash and garbage in your very own trash barrel. You could fire up a chain saw and cut down a tree on your property if you had the urge to. You could shoot a bird or a squirrel with a gun; you could buy fireworks, or other dangerous chemicals, and blow things up in the yard, at your leisure.

So you might well imagine when the press reported that on May 9th, an American soldier took a Quran— the “Holy Bible” of the Muslim religion— to a shooting range and used it for target practice, that many Americans just yawned. Or laughed. Or muttered self righteously, “Fuck yeah”— echoing the two words found written in English on the Quran that was used for target practice. After all, wasn’t that U.S. soldier just exercising his freedumb to do whatever the hell he pleased? Uh, no.

And that was not the public reaction of President George Bush. In a regularly scheduled phone conversation with Prime minister Niouri al-Malaki, Bush quickly apologized for the incident.

One Sunni Arab lawmaker said: “It is a dangerous case. We had been silent and accepted the killing of our sons, the destruction of our homes and the theft of our money, but we do not accept insults to the holy Quran,” he said at a news conference.

And there it is. It is one thing for the Iraqis to be understandably insulted, humiliated, and angered by such a stunt; but why is it more outrageous than all the senseless slaughter of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children during the seven year invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Perhaps their culture places more value on the Holy Quran than Americans might on the Holy Bible, if the circumstances were reversed. But ask yourself: what kind of man recognizes and apologizes for the childish insult against the Quran a little more than ten days after it happens, but has yet to say a public word about the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings killed by our military and mercenary forces in Iraq??

There are good reasons why we as free Americans have evolved in our understanding of what constitutes the exercise of moral and ethically-sound freedom. Communities recognized that the freedom of every citizen to burn plastic and other garbage would produce enough toxic smoke and air pollution to quickly make their little slice of heaven uninhabitable. So too, the freedom to discharge a firearm whenever you wanted to get rid of a rodent in the yard, or let your child blow their hands off with dangerous fireworks.

Sound morals and ethics are essential to the responsible exercise of freedom— freedom that respects the rights of every human being. But the sacredness of every single human life cannot compare with the ignorant and thoughtless destruction of a religious symbol, even if it contains the revelatory word of God. Our Creator wants each of us to LIVE the truth; not treat it as a sacred symbol that is more important than the gift of life itself.

In between multiple plugs for natural gas, pharmaceutical companies who want to help me find free drugs, and Preparation H, Timeh the Russert potato-head opined on why the remaining super-delegates are not moved to give The Clint a reprieve on her life support.

The Clint
“If you want my guns you’ll have to pry them from my cold dead fingers.”

But there may be a more idealistic reason super-delegates want to get out of the emergency room, where The Clint must conduct her campaign from here on. The super-delegates hear Obama loud and clear when he talks about how “we” will end the old politics of division: “We will end it by telling the truth, forcefully, repeatedly, and confidently. . . even if it’s coming from an imperfect messenger.”

Rare though it might be, telling the truth isn’t entirely novel for politicians. We may have the attention of the 81% of Americans who believe we’re headed in the wrong direction, but it will still depend on just how much truth the American people truly want to hear.

The truth is powerful stuff; Jesus said knowing the truth would set you free. Can you imagine what kind of truth you’ll be hearing from John McCain in the next five months? Will it measure up to the truth you’ll be hearing from Barack Obama during that time?

Just the fact that Obama is perceptive enough to see that speaking the truth to power— which is really what he means— is essential to changing our nation’s direction, is practically revolutionary on its face, given the commonplace lying of politics today, and indicative of the “new politics” that must come to pervade our culture as true ethics for the twenty-first century.

The next five months will give Obama plenty of time to shape the new direction our country must head, and there will be plenty of time to contrast the truth of his vision for America with that of McCain, the self-proclaimed man of the twentieth century. The distinctions should be powerful and striking; McCain, if he can remain lucid, will be debating a man with a confident grasp on the morals and ethics for a new century; Obama will be debating a man with a death grip on the outworn ethics and corrupt morals of the past century.

Social and economic change will require many months, but the moral and spiritual changes that are quietly underpinning the swing of our ship of state in a new direction can be embraced immediately, even though the social repercussions of the Obama phenomena may be rippling across the social fabric of the United States for decades to come.

There is so little that is close and warm.
It is as if we were never children.
—Wallace Stevens

Those are some of the saddest lines in the whole of American literature, yet they also point to an aspect of America that’s most deeply joyful— the sense of real family, and in a larger sense real community. This is something some of us may never have experienced, but many of us have, and when we do experience it we know it’s good, and true, and beautiful, no matter how seemingly fragile and fleeting. As Krishnamurti once said, “Its fragility is proof that it is imperishable.” Without it the United States will certainly perish, though it might survive as a physical and political entity that has lost its soul, and therefore any reason for surviving.

The clearest example of America as a community I’ve ever seen was the two days or so after nine-eleven, which in a larger sense were also a revelation of the world community, united with us. It’s true that the veneer of civilization is very thin and can easily be stripped back to reveal the barbarity beneath it, which happened on that day, but the opposite happened immediately afterward. There was a deep oneness in grief in this country, born of unselfish caring for those who had died and their families. The leaders that America had just chosen (or not), though, who almost bragged about not doing “the vision thing,” didn’t have the awareness or inclination to call attention to this unity and thereby strengthen and extend it. “Where there is no vision the people perish.”

For two days following nine-eleven terrorism had already been defeated in a spiritual sense, by the unity of the world community, and needed only forward-looking leaders who could help people sustain that unity and expand on it, calling not only for the capture of the perpetrators but also for a truly reflective investigation into what had led people to want to do such a thing.

[Read more →]

PARAG KHANNA writes in “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony“. . .

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little.

And that is so because, not only did we not “reconnect with the United Nations,” but we remain clueless about the growing urgency of establishing the working rudiments of a genuine federation of all nations, bringing about a global government.

The cruel irony is, the nation of independent states who surrendered their sovereignty to a federal government and thereby created the strongest, freest nation on planet earth, has shown neither the moral insight or leadership ability to engineer the same workable model on a global scale. Instead, we have a moronic cowboy who takes democracy to other nations through war and occupation, killing a million or so of the natives in the process.

Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial counter-movements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.

Yep; the hegemony wielded by Imperial America has done just as much to grow an “alternate world order” than anything Europe or China has done. Nor does it serve America’s interests to do anything to inhibit their growth. Perhaps when we find the collective wisdom to use the power jointly in an effort to insure peace throughout the world, we can begin solving the grievances smaller nations have concerning their place in the “alternate world order.”

The Geopolitical Marketplace

At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership. So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three.

And we will continue to lose. . . unless we recognize we all sink or swim together. Each passing year brings new urgency to solve the increasingly complex problems our interdependent world brings; and these problems will persist as long as we continue to cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty.

The growth of political power must continue to encompass larger and larger segments of the total of mankind, until the stage is set for the final consummation of political growth— the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind.

Urantia [earth] will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—Leagues of Nations—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war.

You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.

Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail but not until then. —The Urantia Book