the first good news for the obama campaign in weeks, finally; you could definitely sense in his speech that he's ready to get his momentum back. I had been steaming over the reverend wright thing because the thought that it could lose him the election made me sick to my stomach, but it's looking sort of like people are willing to separate the crazy man from the candidate. obama won comfortably in north carolina, and almost took indiana - with good old south bend, home of notre dame, going narrowly for obama. I honestly wasn't expecting that good of a turnout for him.
I confess that at this point watching a speech like this one leaves me practically drooling, maybe because I have some kind of pavlovian response to certain talking points: changing washington, and changing politics of division and ad-hominem attacks, to name a couple big ones. the fact that obama speaks about things like negative campaigning openly, without self-aggrandisement ("I know I'm not perfect), cannot be overstated in importance. the man consistently comes off as honest, genuine, thoughtful, and sympathetic. he gives us the feeling that for once, someone might get in office and not fuck it up. for those of us who don't really remember the clinton administration, for whom politics has been mostly a disgusting shambles covering shady deals between industries with a shitload of money, obama is a fucking beacon.
that said, as I was talking last night I had to admit that, when it comes to issues I really find earth-shatteringly important, none of the candidates even approaches them. the world of politics is still hopelessly self-absorbed. no one is really talking about climate change in any detail. usually in his speeches obama will say the tagline "planet in peril" a few times, and that's as far as he gets toward talking about the monumental challenges that face our planet; last night he expanded a little more, but still in the context of the american economy. to which I say, look people, there are more important things than gas prices. you might want to pay attention to rising sea levels, extreme weather, mass extinctions; not to mention other gruesome possibilities such as epidemics of tropical diseases due to warming.
american politics is still miles away from anything that is actually important. I know that. I don't put my hopes in mankind on the government of any country. what really needs to happen, I think, is that an international governing body needs to be formed, with representatives from every country, plus a boatload of scientific consultants, to solve the problem of sustainability. I know there are groups out there like this, but the efforts so far haven't been given enough importance, and the members of this body would need to have a lot of power to actually get shit done. they have to be able to impose regulations and limits on all nations, not just the ones that feel like following the rules.
I don't see any other way to do it. the problem is, we're still stuck in this nation-state formation, with people so self-absorbed that they don't see how some melting glaciers in antarctica could possibly affect them.
that said, yeah, I'm still jazzed about the november election, which seems a little contradictory and it is. but I've learned that you have to take any change you can get and run with it. obama is not at all a bad start. seeing what he's done - I don't have statistics or anything on this, but I know it's happening - with registering new voters is reason enough to vote this guy into office. anyone who gets new people involved and interested in politics, after, like I said, a decade of disillusionment and disappointment, deserves to be in office. enough said.
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