Tonight I was reading/looking at The Washington Post's coverage of the Walter Reed Army Medical facilities that follows injured and traumatized soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan for treatment. Shockingly, many families languish there as their wounded loved one 'recovers' in substandard conditions--sometimes being crowded into one small room--and then face an excruciating road home.
It's horrifying to see how alone and neglected many of them are at a time when they should be the recipients of an outpouring of love and support as they struggle to regain their lives--especially as some of them who have just come to the untimely end of their careers. (You definitely must check out the stories/photos--they're very eye-opening: Walter Reed and Beyond)
Then it hit me: why aren't all of us Americans who are against the war doing something about our shamefully neglected war vets? Wouldn't it be an awesome statement if the various Obama volunteer groups started up programs to help them out? Instead of just railing about how wrong the war is, we could be doing what the pro-war administration is failing to do. (I hate to say it, but I've seen more right-wing conservatives do more to care for soldiers than we have...I'm speaking generally, but this is what I've observed.)
While we may not be able to give all they need, we could come up with all kinds of ways to show that we care. We could help with home repairs, or material needs a struggling family might have due to injury. We could even do small but meaningful things like make care packages or sponsor outings to sports events or other entertainment. We're creative; there are so many ways we could show that we genuinely care.
All this to say, I just want to encourage everyone--especially if you're a part of an Obama support group--to consider finding out where wounded soldiers (or even families whose loved one is currently in Iraq) are in your community and ask what you could do to help. How great would that be if we were able to back up our words about this "war that should never have been authorized and never should have been waged" by caring for the men and women who have sacrificed so much of their lives to do their duty.
Btw...Here are some great Obama-related volunteer networks that have started up recently:http://www.whyobamaworks.com/home.htmlhttp://www.obamabrigade.com/http://www.obamavolunteercorps.org/http://www.democratswork.org/ This is the sort of thing that shows how Barack has already sparked a movement. You could put it like this:Hillary believes in herself, her lobbyists, and her big corporate donors. . McCain believes in his lucky rubber band and a hundred-year war. Barack believes in us.
Btw...Here are some great Obama-related volunteer networks that have started up recently:
http://www.whyobamaworks.com/home.htmlhttp://www.obamabrigade.com/http://www.obamavolunteercorps.org/http://www.democratswork.org/
This is the sort of thing that shows how Barack has already sparked a movement. You could put it like this:
Hillary believes in herself, her lobbyists, and her big corporate donors. .
McCain believes in his lucky rubber band and a hundred-year war.
Barack believes in us.
Honestly, I'm disappointed by this letter from this Planned Parenthood spokesperson. I understand the importance of what she’s saying, but I’m bothered by her language--I, a pro-life Democrat, use the word "pro-choice" because that is the most respectful term, and I would like to be respected as well. Calling pro-life people "anti-choice" is so narrow-minded and unfair. We are not anti-choice. Women’s rights are so, so much broader than ‘reproductive rights,’ and women who believe differently than PP’s values have just as much right to be heard. To someone from a ethnic group that has faced genocide, my idea of women’s reproductive rights are very different. I often question whether the organization really DOES care most about women in a holistic way (based on my friends' experiences of abortion through PP, insultingly manipulative polls they have sent me, and their strong-arming within the Democratic party and demonizing of pro-life Democrat leaders. Being pro-life does not inherently contradict the values of the party.
But this is why I support Obama rather than a pro-life candidate who would not be a good leader. I believe that being pro-life is not just about abortion--it's about human rights, justice, erasing poverty, dealing with the AIDS emergency. But I also support him because I believe he understands that not all pro-life Americans are angry, spewing, "Go to hell" protesters who harass and kill abortion doctors. (See this incredibly insightful speech he gave in 2006—look at the last few paragraphs: Call to Renewal Keynote Address)
I believe he understands what pro-choice and pro-life Americans can agree on (such as the 95-10 Initiative)--finding ways to reduce abortions for healthier women, healthier families, and healthier communities. I believe he can work 'across the aisle' to help bridge the deep divide that has made this issue more political than it should ever have become. And I believe that he understands that not all pro-life Americans believe overturning Roe v. Wade is the answer at this point like some of the Republican candidates do (I think that chaos would ensue!).
Pro-life is not necessarily Anti-choice
I believe that being pro-life is SO not anti-choice. In fact, I advocate for greater choice. The problem with the polarizing of this issue is that both 'sides' seem to yell for either-or. What I really advocate for is that women receive better unbiased information so that they can make a more educated choice. As it is, groups like NARAL and businesses like PP are often quite biased (make the choice—choose us!) and don't give enough information for women who are already often in a tough situation. You would not believe how many people (especially younger women and teens) I have heard tell me that they really were not informed about what abortion is--they were given only very vague details about the procedure and only found out afterward. They felt pressured on all sides. They were not cared for in the aftermath. They felt like they were numbers with cash. There are so many womens' voices that are not being heard. And I won’t blame that on one side—many extreme pro-life groups have worsened the situation by being so obnoxious that no one wants to listen to the women in the middle.
All this to say, there are MANY of us who are pro-life and support Barack. (In fact, listen to what a few of us are saying in the Pro-life for Obama group--we're not Neocon weirdos! :) Open-mindedness on the subject should be something to be proud of. While I understand the need to clarify his position on pro-choice votes that have been twisted, I just want to say that many of us believe that “a vote for Obama is a vote for women” for other reasons.
Here's my letter to the Democratic Party about Bill Clinton's recent divisive actions. They can be contacted at http://www.democrats.org/page/s/contact
Hello, I'm writing to express concern over the divisive tactics that have recently been employed by former president Bill Clinton as well as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Yes, I understand that they want to win and get back into the White House, but I worry that the cost of their tactics is dividing our party. Furthermore, while this campaign has seen droves of revitalized Democratic voters coming out to be involved, we have also had plenty of Independents and Republicans register due to their support for a Democratic candidate they want to vote for.
The troubling thing is that I have heard this statement SO many times lately: "I am a loyal party member. I'm not voting for Clinton now, even thogh I thought I would vote for her if she got the nomination before. But now I absolutely will not. If this happens, I will either not vote at all or vote for McCain if he's the other nominee even though I disagree with some of his policies."
If I just heard this once, it would be one thing. But I have heard this sentiment voiced over and over again--countless times in the past two months. Please consider asking the Clintons to consider the affect they are having on our party. Thank you for your time.
What I still don't understand is why is seems that no one is talking about the limited demographic pollsters actually reach. The majority of my friends and acquaintances under 35--both married and single--don't have landlines; just cellphones. I have a landline for my phone and DSL as a weird archaic non-cellphone/non-cable TV user, but I have caller ID, like most middle-class folks under 70 in 2008 (who own a phone less than 8 years old)--and I only answer the phone when I recognize the caller due to the number of telemarketers who call me every day. (If I don't, and the caller is someone I actually want to talk to, when they start leaving a message, I pick up. A pollster would not leave a message.) But I don't know many people who would answer a random call if they do have caller ID. On top of that, pollsters call at a time when a certain demographic is more unlikely to be home. That's 3 strikes against many, many people. So would it not be more accurate to say that polls reflect a demographic that 1) owns a landline, 2) either do not have caller ID or, if they do, actually answer calls from unknown callers, or 3) are home at the time pollsters call? Looking at recent demographic figures [http://www.pollster.com/blogs/polling_on_the_dark_side_of_th.php], this would make a lot of sense--someone who fits the bill with these three tenuous requirements would be my 94-year-old neighbor (who doesn't have a high school education, in reference to the mentioned article's categories). She's still undecided within her party, but according to these figures, it would seem that she, who is in the demographic that pollsters would actually reach, fits into the category most likely to vote for Hillary. Doesn't that tell us something?
All this to say, it seems that the polls can only be credited for accurately representing People Home in the Evening Who Have Landlines and Answer Calls from Unknown Callers.
Maybe I'm in the dark, here, but why don't we talk about this more?
This past weekend I saw a relative I hadn't seen for awhile, and she said she was voting for Hillary. Mostly because she'd met Hill back when she was campaigning for New York, but she said, "Wouldn't it be great to have a woman president? It's about time, isn't it?" Then I read someone in Time magazine (Nora Roberts, that romance writer...woo hoo) saying the same thing. That got me thinking...a true feminist would NEVER vote for the woman candidate merely because 'it's about time' that we had a woman president. A true egalitarian would rather see a woman candidate as no different than a male and judge according to her attributes and performance, not her gender.
I wholeheartedly agree that it's about time we had a woman running, but that doesn't make Hillary the right woman.
Hopefully all us women can address this sentiment--this valid desire to see a woman become president--in our friends and gently help them realize that blind voting isn't going to help women in the long run. At all.
God bless him, CNN Contributor Roland Martin has finally pointed out that Hillary's math is completely...weird.
I keep wondering why no one from the Clinton camp claims (just to be consistent) that Laura and Barbara Bush have all this experience that would've made them capable of being the best senators ever. Why is actually working on ground level with normal non-elite-type people (in other words, real Americans) for years and years without much credit and then working with the nitty-gritty of state government not as important as attending bruncheons with gold-rimmed china and flying in private jets and engineering failed health care plans? The math says that Barack has been in government office 4 years longer than Hill. If she denies that state government counts as Experience, she's saying Bill didn't really have enough experience to be president of the US of A.
Of course, I personally count Obama's unsung years of experience as a community organizer as being just as important as his years in Congress, and I'm glad that he does, too. What other candidate has had the generally invisible experience of working in the trenches with a community, for a community? None. That's why they have no clue what its value is--the value of rolling with the punches day in and day out, trying to unify people who think they're enemies, learning step by step to empower a unique group of individuals to find solutions and bring about the change they need for themselves. But really, would it be so risky for us to have a president who actually has lived like a normal American and worked for communities without any other motive than to actually (gasp!) empower a community to bring about change for themselves...all without even looking for a photo op?! Heaven forbid!
Next thing we know, Hillary will be claiming to be the Second Black President of the United States just because she's eaten junkfood and McDonald's with Bill and listened to him playing the sax (you know, since Maya Angelou claimed that those were the prerequisites for being a bona fide black person).
I console myself by assuming that the voices who are regurgitating the whole Experience Mantra have just not had the chance to really hear from Obama beyond the usual sound bytes. (Or sit down and do the math.)
And then there's the whole I Have the Most Foreign Policy Experience contest. Rudy Guiliani already revealed the pointlessness of this dehydrated peeing contest by claiming the title for himself due to his Ground Zero photo ops that put him in close vicinity to the 9-11 terrorists. Perhaps this whole Most Experience thing without the missing, ever-important qualifier (i.e. what kind of Experience?) is just the Wrong Question, period. After all, everyone knows that John McCain has more notches on his belt in terms of years in this category than Hill or Rudy or Barack.
So...new question: Who has the Most ______Experience?
I choose "Insanely Practical" as the qualifier.
Does someone who's only visited other countries in the context of staged tours or talks with a country's elite really know the outside world better than someone who has lived as an integrated foreigner outside the US--and has lots of family members living on other continents?
Here's a little example. My boss recently visited a country I once lived in. It was a staged tour and she met with elite-government types who wanted to give certain impressions of their country. This wasn't at all an invalid experience. In fact, she got more experience than I did within the realm of Powerful People with Agendas--who are also a very real part of the country. This can be genuinely helpful experience. But did she get a broad picture of the public and their worldview or culture? Does she understand how the common person in that country thinks? She'd have to go back for another visit to get a taste of that.
As for me, my experience was limited, too. I was a younger adult then, and I didn't live there long enough to start thinking like the average citizen even though I was immersed in their culture; I was, of course, always going to be a foreigner. But I lived in a non-expat mixed-income neighborhood (the mix all being on the low side)--and had close relationships with my neighbors. I knew what it was like to not enjoy civil liberties that the country claims are given and, while I was a foreigner with more freedoms than others, I had friends who had to deal with human rights abuses on a daily basis. Did my boss see any of that--did this tour allow any of those real life issues to be pondered or understood close-up? We both had limited experience, but I don't think anyone would say, "Oh yeah, your boss' week-long trip gave her a better understanding of the country's culture and needs and worldview."
In this sense, I give Hillary's claims way less credit and Barack's WAY more.
People who are saying to Obama's statement (about his family and his childhood years in Indonesia outranking his senate trips), "Oh puh-leeze, I visited Paris, and that doesn't make me a foreign policy genius" don't get his point only because, like most Americans, they haven't really lived outside the country in an integrated way (i.e. not the same thing as study-abroad, yo.). Having grown up outside America in yet another part of the world, I know that living somewhere before the formative age of ten is absolutely huge in shaping your worldview, and everyone I know who, as a child, has had to be a cultural outsider trying to fit in another culture gets this. (And sorry, being an insulated military dependent doesn't compare to Obama's childhood experience, as has been ignorantly suggested. The kid was in put local schools, for goddness' sake!)
No matter what sort of cultural dissonance you struggle with as a child, your appendages stuck in different worlds like a seemingly impossible Twister pose, you learn to respect people different from you--and learning real respect like this as a child gives you priceless experience that shapes the rest of your life. You learn to recognize that not everyone thinks like you and that they deserve to be understood within their own context--just as you'd want them to try to understand you. For that matter, a Third-Culture Kid's intimate knowledge that more than one valid context (not just your own) actually exists is, in and of itself, experience that a majority of Americans have the luxury of avoiding. But as deceptively simple as this kind of experience may appear to the kind of American that Hillary was shaped to be, we'd all have to agree that this is way more experience than our last few decades of presidents could hope to claim.
At the end of the day, all this talk of Experience alone will continue to be pointless (and weird) unless we--average Americans that we are--start caring more about the missing fill-in-the-blank qualifiers preceding this ever-needful quality. And at the end of the day, the kind of experience we choose in a leader will largely determine what kind of experience we will have of the world outside our borders--and the kind of experience that outside world will have of us.
Barack Obama has made some “irresponsible and frankly naïve” statements. At least, that’s the buzz I’m hearing in response to his statement in the CNN-YouTube debates that, were he to be elected, his hope and intent would include dialog without precondition with some of America’s worst fans. Including “dictators.” Particularly those who play around with nuclear power or don’t let us control their oil (or both).
Clinton’s people and Obama’s right-wing opponents set out from the beginning to paint him as an idealistic greenhorn (hence, “Obambi”). And for voters just beginning to get acquainted with him, it’s not hard to assume that Hill has way more of the experience that actually counts, seeing that she’s already lived at the White House for longer than twice Obama’s time in Congress—and, of course, she would theoretically have the most important friends on her myspace page (well, minus David Geffen, of course). And, she’s BFF with none other than America’s First Black President.
It’s undeniable: Hill has experience.
But I wonder what kind of experience is most desperately needed at this point in our nation’s history. I wonder if, perhaps, there might just be wisdom in a simpler, less seemingly tried-and-true (sorry, I meant “tried-and-tried”) understanding of where a new administration would actually need to start out, were they to actually do something constructive in that obnoxious realm of foreign policy.
Still, it’s undeniable: Clinton sounds good and rational, playing the part of the wise veteran, admonishing her junior colleague and opponent that she thinks the obviously judicious approach when it comes to dictators is caution. It’s also undeniable that such a wise, rational statement is a bit too convenient and wonderfully non-committal. Politically speaking, her response was smart. She wins that round of Jeopardy! But I wonder if, perhaps, we should actually be puzzling over a completely different category of answers and their respective questions.
Perhaps, for too long, American foreign policy has been brazen and arrogant in all the wrong areas and only cautious and non-committal and conveniently tripping over red tape when Washington is uncomfortable, its mouthpieces and wizards-behind-the-curtains worried about personal reputation/careers/assets/special interest groups/etc. Sure, caution sounds pretty great to us these days as the war trudges on and we reap the consequences of our lack of caution. But perhaps we’re too quick to embrace so-called caution when we really don’t want to step outside our comfort zone.
Perhaps Obama has not made a “naïve” statement after all. Perhaps we’re quick to write off his perspective because it seems the rational thing to do. But I have a hard time believing that such a statement came out of a naïve idealism when his track record reveals someone with a broad scope of multi-faceted intelligence and passion for learning—and an understanding of non-American culture that no past president has acquired through personal life experience (that is, outside the realm of diplomacy and politics).
Perhaps, instead, he’s recognized the place at which America must start over when this current administration, bull-in-the-china-shop that it’s been, moves out with its wake of burned bridges and smoldering crops left trailing behind. Perhaps, just perhaps our only hope for picking up the pieces and building something new will be this: a willingness to be humble and shrewd enough to begin by engagement—by persistently pursuing the dialogue that eventually leads to relationship building.
In fact, it’s naïve to imply that Obama is unaware that that Kim Jong-Il’s crew and Iran’s various leaders are unlikely to ever be buddy-buddy with the U.S. Rather, Obama is merely recognizing that a position of real, substantive, constructive, and lasting “power” within the global community will stem out of a more subtle disarming which, in the long run, actually is more efficiently developed through relationship—again, built upon an ongoing human-to-human dialogue.
He seems to understand that, rather than retreating behind the standard mouthpieces and all their monotone, loaded words sprung from behind closed, locked doors, an effective head-of-state will have to proactively engage with our world, continuously deepening his/her experience-based understanding of that world. As naïve as I might sound, I wonder how things might change, were our leaders to practice shrewd but authentic engagement within their political world rather than retreating behind the walls of politics the way we’re used to doing them.
Most of us, including the right wing, are aware that we as a country are probably not in very good standing with the rest of the world. And the most committed patriot would (hopefully) see that it would be preferable for our neighbors to see us as real people—equal humanity worthy of basic, mutual human respect—rather than merely the one large slick-faced commercial for capitalism that much of the world has been led to believe America is.
I hate to “go there,” back to our most collectively sore spot—but one has to wonder if the young men turned Al-Qaida terrorists would have felt so righteous in destroying the World Trade Center (something they saw as the face of America’s immorality, greed, etc.) had they instead been acquainted with the true faces of the thousands of people who filled that shell—humans who might have surprised the young terrorists had they been given a voice and allowed a real, human face for the world to see and hear.
From what we now know of Al-Qaida (and other terrorist cults that seem to prey on idealistic, generally sheltered young men), in spite of their time spent in the West, they’d already developed a very cold, distant image of the US and what they believed it stood for long before they shaved their beards to go incognito—before they decided that defeating this selfish, steel-and-glass, pleasure-obsessed “monster” was a mission worth dying for. One must wonder how things might have been different, had they grown up knowing of America as an engaged country with an engaged leader, who, despite massive differences, related to their world with at least a cordial, authentic respect and sought to doggedly keep the conversation going in spite of tension or setbacks on either side.
Now, I recognize that, had some American (or other Western) neighbors invited these young men to dinner or, at least, sought to engage with them in some sense, it would not have been enough to avoid September 11. Even at best, someone else would have taken their places, because this chasm between their world and ours has been eroding tirelessly and growing deeper for a very long time. But this is where, if we want to see change in our country’s direction and change in the deeply troubled landscape of our world, we have to embrace a certain amount of simple wisdom—even if it be derided as naïvety.
We as Americans are an impatient people, as distinctly illustrated by our initiation of this war we’re still mired in years later. We were certain that Shock & Awe would take care of our apparent “problem” as quickly and completely as a Starbucks Triple Venti Vanilla Latte is supposed to make us happy and keep us awake and headache free, all in the time it takes to steam the 2% just so and present itself through the drive-through window for merely an hour’s work pay!
So, for years and years, we’ve avoided the seeming “long route”—certainly a sometimes arduous and demanding and frustrating one—of dialog and relationship building, because it just takes too long. The results just can’t be accounted for at the end of each week. We don’t go back to school to exchange our career for the one we dream of because it’ll take 4 long years, and we’ll be 50 when we graduate; or we don’t take up dance or surfing because most good dancers or surfers begin as children. Yet the adage holds fast: “Well, if you don’t, you’ll still be 50 in three years and you still won’t have the degree and you still won’t know how to dance.” Likewise, perhaps Obama recognizes that, if we don’t start at square one any time soon, the next four years will come and go and we’ll still be in the increasingly distressing predicament we’re in as a nation today.
So with that in mind, I think I’d like to warn Hill & Co. that they’d better think again. Perhaps, just perhaps, that greenhorn Obama is opting for an perspective that indicates far more experience and discernment when it comes to so-called "bad people" than what those pat answers we're so used to might just actually imply. Perhaps it's time to redefine "responsibility."
