Progressives of my stripe (an an increasingly exiguous part of the populace) were thrilled by the sparks and the real signs of fight in Our Guy. “We will not go back…I will not cede…We will not back down…I will not go back…With or without [the Congress]”: all of these words are like water in a dry land to those of us in the reality-based community who have shrunk back in horror as we’ve watched dinosaur Republicans bestriding the political globe by patronizing and dumbing down the people whenever possible.
Water in a dry land to rational people of all persuasions, may I add. For the faith communities in which I travel, truthtelling is of inestimable value regardless of the side of the proverbial aisle that is doing it. Tonight the President did an excellent job of simply telling the truth: pinpointing the sources of our current suffering and thumping hard on the urgency of real financial market oversight and regulation by government, basic tax fairness, the insufferable educational burdens we place on our young strivers, and the need to get real about infrastructure and clean energy investment.
There was, of course, still evidence of a strained effort to walk down the middle: thus the binaries (we’ll free good teachers from teaching to the test, but we’ll terminate the bad ones, etc).
Others may quibble, but I think that Obama gave much too much to Big Energy in his burning passion for tapping domestic energy sources. Fracking? Really?? Anyone who pays attention to the impact of hydraulic fracking knows how very reckless and irresponsible this is.
There wasn’t much fake religion, which is always welcome. This president doesn’t like to pander in that way, I gather. But there was the odiferous religion of nationalism. There was a distinct pong of American exceptionalism (“ours is a moral power,” “indispensable nation”), there was the blooded scent of saber-rattling (Iran), and there was the crisp masculine tang of “America will always win” on a level (trade) playing field.
I am acutely aware that this president can’t afford not to invoke these shibboleths. We need not applaud him for it. That is my only point. What the shibboleths do, as far as I can tell, is create expectations that tend in turn to engender American violence. Morally and religiously, it’s time we outgrew them.
