In between multiple plugs for natural gas, pharmaceutical companies who want to help me find free drugs, and Preparation H, Timeh the Russert potato-head opined on why the remaining super-delegates are not moved to give The Clint a reprieve on her life support.
The Clint
“If you want my guns you’ll have to pry them from my cold dead fingers.”
But there may be a more idealistic reason super-delegates want to get out of the emergency room, where The Clint must conduct her campaign from here on. The super-delegates hear Obama loud and clear when he talks about how “we” will end the old politics of division: “We will end it by telling the truth, forcefully, repeatedly, and confidently. . . even if it’s coming from an imperfect messenger.”
Rare though it might be, telling the truth isn’t entirely novel for politicians. We may have the attention of the 81% of Americans who believe we’re headed in the wrong direction, but it will still depend on just how much truth the American people truly want to hear.
The truth is powerful stuff; Jesus said knowing the truth would set you free. Can you imagine what kind of truth you’ll be hearing from John McCain in the next five months? Will it measure up to the truth you’ll be hearing from Barack Obama during that time?
Just the fact that Obama is perceptive enough to see that speaking the truth to power— which is really what he means— is essential to changing our nation’s direction, is practically revolutionary on its face, given the commonplace lying of politics today, and indicative of the “new politics” that must come to pervade our culture as true ethics for the twenty-first century.
The next five months will give Obama plenty of time to shape the new direction our country must head, and there will be plenty of time to contrast the truth of his vision for America with that of McCain, the self-proclaimed man of the twentieth century. The distinctions should be powerful and striking; McCain, if he can remain lucid, will be debating a man with a confident grasp on the morals and ethics for a new century; Obama will be debating a man with a death grip on the outworn ethics and corrupt morals of the past century.
Social and economic change will require many months, but the moral and spiritual changes that are quietly underpinning the swing of our ship of state in a new direction can be embraced immediately, even though the social repercussions of the Obama phenomena may be rippling across the social fabric of the United States for decades to come.
