Post Election Commentary
Lanny Davis, who is a
stalwart liberal but is not as radical as some, posited an interesting thought
a day or so after the election results were in. He said that Obama is no
longer in need of pandering to his base and may move further to the middle in
his second term. It would be nice if it would be so but I’m not confident
that will be. I’m reading Dreams From My Father. With so
much that is happening, I can’t get around to reading the second half of the
book. I’ll write a post for Facebook about it when I’m done. If
Davis reads that book he might begin to believe that Obama has greater
ambitions than just wanting to be president.
There are five chapters about
Chicago. I’m through them and am now in the chapter on Kenya.
At the very beginning of the first Chicago chapter you see
that he has dreams of radically changing the political landscape. He has
dreams of lighting a fire under a very lethargic black community in Chicago and
trying to get them to rise up against the town fathers to bring about better
living conditions for the people in the ghettos. As you read on through
the Chicago chapters you see that the Columbia student is so driven to go into
community organizing that he actually resigns from a good paying job to pursue
that interest. He also turned down a “generous offer” from another
company. The charismatic young college student is very much in demand
among business people that know him. He
s actually flat broke about six months after he turns his back on the offers
that could give him a comfortable life-style but he’s so driven to turn the
world inside out that he’s willing to suffer the deprivation. Women friends that are with him in the
organization he’s trying to put together ask him questions like, “What are you
doing here when you could be basking in the sun on the beaches of Hawaii?” According to this book that he’s the author
of, Obama did not have an impoverished
life-style as he was being brought up by his mother and very doting maternal
grandparents; mostly in Hawaii and a few years in Indonesia. His mother had a good paying government job. There’s much to report. I’ll save it for when I get done with the
book. He has ambitions that are not good
and he shows a bitterness of being a black man living in a white man’s
world. He shows this preoccupation throughout the approximate 250 pages I
have so far read through. Anyone reading Dreams From My Father should expect the autobiography to be an
almost total preoccupation with race.
The very title cover of the book is sub –titled A Story of Race and Inheritance.
There’s a lot going on behind that happy outgoing demeanor.
One of the things he mentions is what he has learned from hearing about “Rules
for Radicals.” He says words to the effect that you do not win friends
and influence people exuding an angry countenance. He says whites are
attracted to blacks that are smiling and happy.
In chapter eleven he talks of a conversation he’s having with his
half-sister, Auma, who has come from Kenya to visit him and stay with him for a
few days. He talks of a white girl
friend he had that he was very fond of but was getting more and more
apprehensive about getting too serious with.
He says, “I realized that our two world’s, my friend’s and mine, were as
distant from each other as Kenya is from Germany. (Auma had a boyfriend in Germany that could
lead to marriage but she was not keen on living in Germany) And I knew that if
we stayed together I’d eventually live in her’s. After all, I’d been doing it all my
life. Between the two of us, I was the
one who knew how to live as an outsider.”
In the very beginning of
Chapter seven the twenty-two year old Barack Obama talks of deciding to become
a community organizer: “I didn’t know
anyone making a living that way. When
classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did,
I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead
I just pronounced on the need for change.
Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on
their dirty deeds. Change in the
Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change
in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would
say. Change will come from a mobilized
grass roots. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll
organize black folks. At the grass
roots. For change.”
I was adding my prayers to
the novenas Catholic Bishops were guiding their congregations through nationwide
that we’d get a pro-life administration and one that would foster religious
freedom but I was never losing sight that it might be God’s will to bring about
a chastisement on this country for the way so many of the masses are sinking
lower and lower into the depths of a depraved culture. Nothing happens that God doesn’t want to let
happen.
“But my people would not
listen to me;
Israel would not submit to
me.
So I gave them over to their
stubborn hearts
to follow their own devices.”
Psalm 81:11-12
1 comment:
Thank you. I enjoyed reading this. I started to read 'Dreams From My Father' but have become so disgusted with President Obama that I couldn't read very much of it and remain objective. I believe God is allowing this nation that has rejected Him to suffer the consequences of shutting Him out. So be it. Standing up and speaking out for the Truth will be much more difficult as time goes on. We just have to strengthen our hearts and minds for the battle and understand the purpose of suffering. God bless you, Jack West.
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