I think so, that the times are confusing just now, that is. For me lots of touch stones that I'd become accustom to helping provide some stability for me in viewing or maybe just thinking about the world have fallen away and generally there seems little protest about it. Of course the anchors could likely only be of any importance to me and thus it may only be me that is just now a bit at a loss in considering what to make of things both domestically and internationally.
Let me start with Obama. He's not a politician in my country so considering him may seem a strange place to start. But, I'd thought, on his election that he had a potential to impact positively on the development of politics in other Western countries. If he did usher in a round of reform and a more principled approach to US federal politics it would have a bandwagon effect in other Western democracies or so I assumed and now seemingly just dreamed. If he didn't live up to his promise of change and a new way of seeing the world the whole cause of political enlightenment could be subject to a crashing avalanche of cynicism. As he named his Cabinet and particularly those destined for economic portfolios my heart slowed and I had to resuscitate myself with a few solid thumps to the chest as well as some stiff shots of whiskey. Only just now Paul Krugman has expressed what I thought at the time, clueless. This was also roughly at the time that Obama was promising not be be enveloped in the notorious WH bubble, surrounded by well qualified courtiers all whispering in the confines of high pressured luxury sensible nothings, hey he had a Blackberry & trusted pals had his number & they'd set him straight about the real world. So a year or so later it's disappointment or worst a sense, for some, of betrayal that has set in - in regard to those who felt betrayed, the opinionary have especially savaged them, I suspect, to make them castrati and thus, in our faux potent age, not able to be heard by those with dysfunctional hearing. But I still like the person Obama. He seems like a nice man. I've read and reread his 2 books and yes he has for me, as I suspect for others, similar insights into our unique worlds with our worries for now, for the future, loving remembrances of parents, grandparents and, the sometimes, strange circumstance of our upbring or the strangeness we impose on current progeny. But now I have to admit, after rereading the last book but again, I've a sense of being used, of being lead down a lane and how kicked in the balls. Pretty dumb, I admit and he isn't even someone I can vote for or against. For some particular reason I was reading Pico Iyer's essay "Sleeping with the Enemy" as I struggled to get warm in bed late last night - I'd post it but can't find a copy on line ever though it is only 2.25 pages long (shit, sorry, I've found a copy - I'm slipping in my Google expertise? I guess.). The essay is about Graham Greene and triggered, on Pico's part, by reading Norman Sherry's 2nd volume of Graham's biography. Other than the oft quoted passage from Greene's The Power And the Glory - one missed by Bush/Cheney, & some mainstream columnists (but they've lead sheltered lives so that's alright eh) - about torture which I assume can only be inflicted by a human that hates the essay has vanished. Greene wrote:
I'd never expect some to understand what Greene wrote and I accept that actual torturers are also human beings but I do find it hard to accept those that cheer torture from the sidelines as such but know, for my own sanity, I must. The passages in Iyer's essay that relates to Obama and why I've modified my opinion of him after reflection is this - the essay related it to Greene's personality:"When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . When you saw the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination."
"... that kind of sympathy with the enemy could seem the worst kind of two-facedness or moral relativism: not so much turning the other cheek as sheer turncoatism. And by trying to see both sides of every argument, Greene contrived to make enemies on both sides of every fence: Catholics and agnostics, McCarthyites and communists, all found his conviction wanting. A would-be Christian who admits to putting people before principles gets accused of sentimentality by skeptics and of hypocrisy by believers.
Sounds a bit like the Obama we, or, I see in the WH. The guy who can see both sides of everything and is not sure which he should side with because a leader has to, unlike us normal morals or great authors, side with someone and have a conviction or two.