Sometimes When You Get Too Close, You Get Too Far
“Sometimes when you get too close, you get too far” is one of many pearls of wisdom handed down from my Italian immigrant grandparents. They used the expression to warn their children that all relationships weren’t the same and that there are circumstances whereby getting too involved is ill advised. Fortunately, my parents passed those same words along to their children. I’ve been focused on the saying for several weeks as I’ve been seeking an understanding of my own indeterminate malaise.
Let me offer some background and then some explanation. I love politics and psychology and I often focus on their overlap when writing. I’ve done so because I’m convinced that all of our actions can be traced back to the individual’s psyche. Try as we might, I suspect we actually understand very little about the mechanics of that entity…other than the fact that it undoubtedly makes each of us uniquely flawed individuals.
If we look close enough, perhaps we can find themes or threads that connect some of us. At the same time, it seems safe to infer that the reverse is true…meaning there are also threadbare holes in this imperfect human tapestry that divide us. Politics is thus the tundra upon which these commonalities and these differences unfold.
This current election cycle is a unique moment in our American history. Never before has it been inevitable that either a woman or an African American would be the nominee of one of our political parties. Part and parcel of that eventuality is the concept of change. Confronting this change, in my estimation, involves many of the same dynamics found in my grandparent’s thoughtful insights.
There is a spoken belief that our nation long ago confronted issues of race and gender and set in motion the removal of the barriers associated with either. There is also an unspoken reality that neither has been achieved. As we approach the moment where our lip service may well be forced to acquiesce to the living of these lofty proclamations, we begin to see that the closer we get to its achievement, the further we may be from its existence.
The evidence that exists is no doubt the equivalent of a DNA match. Whether it’s a product of our capitalistic mindset that idealizes winning and posits that the opposite is losing, I don’t know for sure…but I suspect it may well be. If so, then nothing could be more divisive than to ask voters to affirm one oppressed group over another. It’s as if fate is bringing us to the precipice of progress…only to ask us to make a choice that will catapult one group to the pinnacle while seemingly pushing the other into the abyss. While this isn’t actually the choice, it may be the perception.
Worse still, those groups who lack a contestant in the competition for the quintessential prize worry that the elevation of one of their fellow second class societal equivalents may well result in the further disproportionate distribution of the spoils of success. Hence, if the perception exists that the proverbial pie isn’t large enough to nourish us all, then the thought that one’s longtime competitor (for the crumbs that fall off the table) is about to receive not only a place at the table, but a plate…and a bigger piece of the pie, is apt to create angst…and resentment. Therein lies what we must attempt to understand.
An example might be beneficial. I received a distressing call from my younger sister last week. As I picked up the phone and said hello, all I heard on the other end was my sister sobbing…telling me that she had just gotten off the phone with my mother. My heart sunk as my mind raced to guess who had died or was diagnosed with a terminal disease or fallen gravely ill. It’s amazing how many thoughts can occupy a few seconds. I immediately asked, “What’s the matter?” As I braced for the bad news, she replied, “I told mom I had caucused for Obama and she got mad and hung up on me”.
You see my mom is in her seventies…and the thought that a fellow woman would choose to support “the other candidate” (a man who happens to be black) is akin to treason. Add to that the fact that she grew up in a small Colorado community as a Catholic whose Italian immigrant parents had distinct accents and customs that were foreign to those around them and one begins to see the generational impact.
Such is the insidious nature of discrimination and prolonged periods of lost or limited opportunities. Let me be clear…my mom doesn’t have a racist bone in her body and I can’t recall a single disparaging remark about any minority (save for her angry comments at my announcement many years ago that I was gay). Nonetheless, she is a product of a society that relegated her and other women to a lesser status and in so doing served to rob her and many others of the same opportunities as their male counterparts. The fact that she saw similar limitations placed upon her foreign born parents only exacerbated her awareness of the issue.
When I subsequently spoke with my mother on the phone, the gravity of the situation was revealed when she stated, “I want to see a woman elected to the presidency before I die.” Yes, the same woman who idolized the charisma and the hope she found in JFK couldn’t envision that my sister had seen the same in Barack Obama. She could only feel her own sense of loss and sadness at the fact that time is cutting short her chances to witness the culmination of her dreams and her hopes.
2008 will be a historical election…but whether it will be a transformative one remains to be seen. Sometimes the closer we get to fulfilling the hopes and dreams of the least of us, the more difficult it can be to preserve them for the rest of us. Hence, transformation can be a double-edged sword.
My love for my mom and my sister is unlimited…and yet it can’t always bridge the gaps that come between people from disparate eras. When injustice has been administered and experienced over lengthy periods of time, it may be impossible to repair the damages or remove the regrets that accompany it.
We each see life through our own prisms. We occasionally see the same thing when looking through those prisms…yet if we see those things in our lives at differing chronological points, they will likely have different meanings. In the end, sometimes when you’ve gone too long without, you’ve gone too far within. Perhaps the lessons learned in 2008 will bring all of us closer to where we belong.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
My mom too is in her 70’s and is quite witty. Here’s what I love about her. When she went to get her prepaid cell phone last year they said her social security number was not needed as there was no contract. Her reply “Oh good now Bush can’t listen in on my conversations”. I laughed when she said that and said that was funny and she replied to me “I can’t believe people actually think they are being listened too it’s so ridiculous”
But back to Obama. Charisma and hope does not a president make.
The guy has been in the senate for only 3 years
Unfortuantely for him Clinton is a little more well oiled.
He may have to wait for the next go round with a little more experience under his belt. That’s how it usually works anyway.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
8 years in the Illinois legislature IS experience. It’s not like the guy ran a hot dog cart before getting elected to the Senate. This whole inexperience meme originated from the Clinton camp, and it sure has done a good job of shifting the experience question off her ( not much) and onto him.
It worth remembering that the Junior Senator from New York is on her first real gig by herself.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Get ready for the lame critiques and accusations, Jet…
1) Obama has no experience (historically, his experience ranks pretty well among presidential nominees)
2) Obama’s father’s family is Muslim, and are tangled in the current Kenyan crisis, so therefore Obama is a closet-Muslim (Obama has little to do with his father’s family, he is a Christian, and has said that that his mother was his main influence in life)
3) Obama was involved with a slum lord (very nominally - certainly no more than say McCain and John Glenn were involved in the Keating Five)
4) Obama is “the most liberal senator” (based on a dubious ranking from the Washington Journal that is based on 2007 when he voted rarely because he was compaigning and many of the votes they include are either silly or were destined to pass or fail anyway - his real ranking is more like 10th or 11th, unless you’re insane enough to think that senators like Widen and Sanders are “less liberal” than Obama)
So get ready! It’s gonna be another season of stupidity!
JMJ
February 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Suck it up Jersey you’ve been doing the same thing for 8 years.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Same thing as what? Making up silly excuses for not wanting a black president. Sorry Lisa. Not me.
JMJ
February 12th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
No for all the other stuff. Stop making this a race issue. Bring your race issues up with the Clintons.
I guess CNN won’t make a big issue out of Obama’s coke use like they did Bush’s or make a big deal out of his Muslim background but Romney being a Mormon now there’s somehting to talk about.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Sure there’s lots of lame excuses out there for not voting for Obama but just as surely there are non-racist reasons (as opposed to silly, made-up excuses) for not wanting a particular candidate (Obama) who happens to be black: like being a conservative and Obama’s a liberal (whether he’s the most liberal or not is wholly irrelevant). Obama’s being black doesn’t make every vote for any other candidate a silly, made-up excuse for not wanting a black candidate.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Obama is liberal? He is hopefully a populist and whether that makes him liberal matters not to me. If I defined all people by whether they were conservative or liberal…I would of missed out on some wonderful relationships and conversations.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
No. Being hopeful does not make one a liberal. Nor does being a liberal make one necessarily hopeful. Or a populist. Mike Huckabee, self-styled conservative is as populist a huckster as you’re likely to find.
What makes Obama a liberal are his policies. And while I have some very liberal friends, I wouldn’t vote for them for president of the United States. I think you’re missing the point here. We’re not being asked to vote for nice person and friend of the year, we’re being asked to vote for the most powerful man or woman in the free world, whose policies will give direction to one third of the entire bureaucracy of the government, the bureaucracy that will be most responsible for executing the laws of the land, managing the behemoth of a regulating administration, in charge of the police, prosecuting offices, secret investigations arms, military of the country and the relations to the foreign nations of the world. Whether I’d like him as some wonderful friend is entirely beside the point since I’ll likely never meet the man, let alone sit down with him for a relaxing chat over tea.
I’m sure Obama is a wonderful man. He’s certainly an uplifting speaker. He may even be our next president but I won’t vote for him. I’m not, after all, a liberal like him. I’m a conservative. To me, government is not our friend. It is a bloated, corrupt and corrupting monster run by people whom you and I have never heard of, let alone have any idea what they are actually like and whom we never have and never will vote for. I don’t vote for people who think the government is the savior of the people. I vote for those who think the government should stay the hell out of the people’s lives and let them be free to succeed or fail.
In short, it is his policies, such as I understand them, with which I disagree and disqualify him for my vote.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Well, by all means Craig..enlighten me on what exactly are his ‘liberal’ policies please..
February 13th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
As far as a bloated government..your conservative in the White House and his Republican brethren in Congress did a great job of increasing that bloat during the last eight years..
So don’t blame all the bloat on ‘liberals’ my good man
February 13th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Taking your last point first, I certainly agree that Bush has added to the bloat and Republicans in Congress have added to the corruption. I was not blaming all the bloat on liberals.
But elections generally present us, in this country, with a choice, ultimately, between two people and the question facing the voter is not, which candidate represents my set of policy preferences perfectly but which most closely represents them. I have no fear saying that Al Gore and John Kerry were both more liberal than Bush. That is, as imperfect, from the point of view of a small government conservative, as George W. Bush was, he seemed less imperfect than either Gore or Kerry and so he got my vote.
Since taking office, Bush has done a great many things with which I disagree from a conservative standpoint and I have groused about them all. Since it is impossible to know what Al Gore and John Kerry would have done or not done with the reins of power, I won’t speculate but I’m pretty sure that either of them would be yet more of the “the government is our friend” sort than Bush has been at his (from a conservative’s standpoint) big-government interventionist worst.
From the standpoint of the election, however, we don’t know what ANY candidate would do with the reins of power other than what they say they will do before being given the reins.
As for Obama’s policies, it’s hard to say since his speeches are mostly feel-good talk, largely devoid of actual policy prescription. I don’t have time to go over them all now, since I have to go, so I’ll limit myself to one. Obama wants us out of Iraq as quickly as practicable with a bare minimum of troops at most either remaining in the country to protect our embassy or close by to respond to terrorism. Well. I don’t believe that Iraq is at the point yet where that is a wise policy.
But surely you’re not trying to sell Obama as a small government conservative, are you?
Any way, I gotta go. Catch you later. Be well, my friend.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
What I am saying Craig, is that our tax monies need to be spent on national problems not international nation building. I think Obama has made that statement recently.
That is hardly a ‘liberal’ mindset. I know of too many friends and family members that believe we need to take care of our own before we clean house in the Middle East. Many of them range from moderate to conservative.
Take care Craig..have a good Wednesday
February 14th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Dusty,
It’s easy to find conservatives who criticize the Iraq war effort and who think that we shouldn’t have gone and who think that we should come home. We conservatives are a diverse lot — some are isolationist, others are interventionists, some are realists, others are idealists — so it’s no surprise that you may have friends who identify as conservatives who think we should not be nation-building around the world. My disagreement with Obama on whether and to what degree and when we should be pulling out of Iraq is not, per se, a liberal/conservative question. It is merely one point on which I happen to disagree with Obama and it is a point on which my disagreement is strong enough to debar my voting for him, even if he were a conservative in other respects. After all, I would not vote for Ron Paul either, even though of all the candidates running as Republicans in this cycle he was the one most in favor of small government libertarianism, a position that I favor strongly. I would not vote for him, not JUST because of his stand on Iraq but that is certainly a part of it. Iraq is an issue on which I feel quite strongly that it should be seen through.
I do think Obama is a liberal, though, in the area of trade. According to his web site, he is for what he calls “fair trade” and against free trade. Conservatives tend to be pro-free trade, along the lines of the thinking of economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich A. von Hayek. Obama wants to tinker with free-trade agreements already in place and is unlikely to put further free trade agreements in place. Well, I think that government tinkering in the economy distorts markets in ways that are inimical not just to businesses but also for consumers and workers.
I think Obama is liberal in job creation and encouraging entrepreneurship by costly government spending. Well, the best way to create jobs and encourage entrepreneurship is for government to stay out of the business of tinkering in business. Eliminating corporate taxes, I would think, would encourage corporate growth and hiring. Minimizing regulation would encourage entrepreneurship more than spending tax dollars, in my opinion.
I think Obama is liberal in union organization because of his support for the Orwellianly named Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate secret ballots in voting for or against union organization.
In reading through his many issues web pages, Obama is definitely of the opinion that government is our friend, at least with him at the helm. I am of the opinion, with most conservatives, that government is the problem, that governments’ role should be limited as much as possible to give maximum liberty to individuals.
Anyway, it seemed strange that I should have to actually defend the proposition that Obama is a liberal. I didn’t think that it was a assertion that anyone would challenge. Anyway, this is hardly an exhaustive accounting of Obama’s liberal views and policies but should be sufficient to show that he’s a liberal.
However I would make one point in closing. Just because one can find moderates and conservatives who think that Bush has been too interventionist internationally, doesn’t make Obama a moderate or, certainly not, a conservative. On issue after issue, Obama turns to government intervention into every aspect of life for solutions. I’m with Regan, at least in this sense: Government is not the solution; it is, in most respects, the problem. The most frightening nine words in the English language to a conservative are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
February 14th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
It’s easy to find conservative s who criticize the Iraq war effort and who think that we shouldn’t have gone and who think that we should come home.-Thats a nice cop-out Craig
Why don’t you back up your assertions with linkage Craig? Your pov doesn’t make it fact..does it?
By your own yardstick..liberals are also a diverse lot..think outside the neocon bubble much? Most neocon mouthbreathers call Hillary a liberal too.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I’m not sure where the cop-out is. Pat Buchanan is and always has been against the Iraq war Ron Paul, the most right-most candidate in the Republican line-up wants us out of Iraq as quickly as Obama or more so. How hard was that? Cop-out free zone here.
Certainly liberals are a diverse lot. I never said anything different. Politics is a sliding scale, not two poles with everyone either one or the other. I think Obama is to the left of Hillary but, certainly a McCain is to the right of both Hillary and Obama. Paul is to the right of McCain.
Humanity itself is a diverse lot. How could our politics be any different?
February 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Looking at one of the problems Daniel talked about, the perception by members of one underrepresented demographic that it’s a zero-sum game (as a one-winner primary or election truly is) and that another underdog’s gain is their loss, the parallel that comes to mind is what happens if you put a bunch of crabs in a shallow pot. One might easily be able to climb out, but none escape because when one gets halfway out, the others grab it to hold it back or ride along - don’t know which, I don’t speak crab - and end up pulling it back down.
Which is why power elites have historically loved to pit beleaguered minorities against each other, so none of them would look up and say, “Hey, wait a minute!” and why when underdogs have started to team up, the reaction of those in power has always been stark terror, usually followed by hysterical accusations of sedition and corruption, stoking of bigotry, character assassination, and so on.
My heart goes out to Daniel’s mother, but the realities are first, that on the one hand a win by anyone outside the demographic that has monopolized the office until now would be a historic event that would improve the chances of every other subgroup in the future - but that on the other hand every candidate needs to be weighed based on his/her merits and not on ethnicity or gender.
Personally, I am not crazy about Obama, Clinton, McCain, or Huckabee. I respect Obama and McCain more than the other two; and between Obama and McCain, I would vote for Obama because I see the war as the most important issue affecting our future and McCain’s statements that we might be in Iraq for another hundred years and that there will be many more wars scare the crap out of me. So Obama is the least of several evils.
February 15th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
LJ,
Your final paragraph expresses something very close to my opinion. I also respect Obama and McCain more than Clinton or Huckabee. I would vote for McCain, however, because I too see the war as the most important issue affecting our future. We just have alternate visions of that future and the effect of swift withdrawal from Iraq would have on that future.
Certainly, the war is not the sole issue, as I’ve said above, but given a vote for Huckabee or Obama, I’d vote for Obama so there is, in fact, a scenario where Obama would get my vote.