deepfoam.com

Re: The New President
Posted: Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 4:56pm

All,

Ok, it’s WAY past time for a grain a salt on the public Obama-stroking

I think everybody needs to curb their enthusiasm just a little bit. He won, he’s got his chance to make any number of things happen (or fail to happen). I grant him that opportunity. But I hear a lot of people talking about how much they like this man’s words or what they perceive as his character as if they are some kind of guarantee –they are not. And I would warn them that such things are dangerous without a clear demand and understanding of results and reproach applied to any leader, anywhere.

Greatly charismatic individuals have a tool at their disposal that can just easily become a weapon, granted that they are allowed to wield it in the face of such grandeur and adulation. I don’t believe I need to cite the obvious, historical examples… We, the people, are the keepers of the power and it’s our responsibility to cross-examine and question our leaders as much as it is to support them. I fear that within a certain level of desperation OR enthusiasm this can be easily forgotten. If that occurs we will lose our way and will subsequently allow someone else define it for us.

For anyone to say they are “proud to be American again” should be ashamed (though that phrase seems oddly void of context in its reference). It is America that provides the platform for all of us to live in a democratic republic in which we have the power to choose and vote our leaders into office vs. them taking it as the please. I haven’t liked many of our leaders but I haven’t once been afraid or felt disgraced to be an American.

This country, our freedoms and struggle to make them work, like no other nation in the world, does not belong to the President, the Office of the President or the governments we institutionalize as operating agents –it belongs to us. We must always know this, want this and believe this.

I wish Mr. Obama the best and I look forward to the possibilities that he and his administration bring to our, current, dire situation as well as our bright future. However he is no more perfect than anyone else and he will not always be right. Now that doesn’t propose him as a failure anymore than people’s relief that he’s not “W” or John McCain makes him the answer to every prayer they ever had… but it does give cause for a reality check. Don’t forget to give that a chance, either.

V/R
J. Keys

Politics : A Scary Opinion
By J. Keys

Opinions are often scary regardless of their factual nature or not. With all the lack of objectivity in people’s ability to even just perceive it’s a wonder that anyone decides anything actually based on a fact or something that they know. I think this idea of the democratic process is somewhat of a far cry in reality as it relates to what really makes a country operate, move, shift and command some kind existence. There is, in my opinion, a lot presumed in the power of one man or woman much less any amorphous group (like a political party or ideology) generating the momentum to make the gears of war or commerce make even one, complete revolution. Just review what happens in other countries of any similar attempt at a similar process and what occurs when something is changed or implemented in a way that those with their wallets and means take full exception to; riots, civil war, coups…

That, I believe, is really the scary part of all of this. There is a disparity that has been brooding within the continuity of the American populace for a very long time between the citizens of this country and their political “leaders” who have pretty much all but failed them. For now the lights are still on, water flows, garbage is picked up and taken away… but given the condition of this disparity and the fact that servants of the state have almost single-handedly reversed their roles to act as kings and lords and given that we’re probably overdue for a revolution anyway? …I fear, despite who takes office, that the shedding of our adolescents will be upon us sooner rather than later…