Dragging the Ship Over the Mountain

By: thebeerdoctor

Recent national political events have reminded me of something I have not considered for awhile. Watching Barack Obama going through the paces of his standard stump speech reminds me of the audacity of repetition. To find out you are genealogically related to someone, you hope that someone is cool. To be more seasoned means that all that hope is boiled out of you... I think you get the idea.

As a lifelong research student I am sometimes enthralled by the political process. A system that enables avarice and naked ambition to be disguised as altruism and public service. This, it has been said, is par for the course. The political professionals, sometimes known as insiders, are hip to this gag. But what about the voters?

Maybe it is just blowback for being a political junkie, but I swear I recently thought I saw Barack Obama looking somewhat like Klaus Kinski. Klaus Kinski? Yes, the late actor who portrayed a vampire in Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu. But that is not the movie I am reminded of. Rather, it is the epic movie Fitzcarraldo.Fitzcarraldo, if you have never seen it, is a movie about a man dragging a 200 ton steam ship over a mountain, as part of a commercial enterprise to build an opera house in a South American jungle town. Kinski's magnificent portrayal of Fitzcarraldo is that of a man with a dream obsession, and an indomitable will to make that vision a reality.

What is also quite remarkable about Fitzcarraldo is that the film itself is a record of visual truth. There are no special digital effects. Thus, the movie was indeed shot in the jungle, and that really is a full size ship being dragged over the mountain, and subsequently, bouncing down river rapids. There are no miniatures involved! Which strangely, reminds me of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. His vision obsession, with his background as a community organizer, is to change the discourse of American politics so that real problems can be addressed. But one of the biggest obstacles in realizing this vision is the Democratic Party itself. That is the ship he is trying to drag over the mountain.

Consider this: look at the state of this country, as created by the politics-as-usual crowd. Hillary Clinton still boasts of the good times the country enjoyed when her husband was President, taking exaggerated credit for economic expansion (the dot com bubble) but not the retraction (when the dot com bubble burst) right after team Clinton left the White House. The same can be said about Bill Clinton's cheerleading and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. A policy that enabled businesses to exploit labor south of the border (Yes you can in Yucatan!), eliminating thousands of living wage jobs in the United States, simultaneously, causing thousands of undocumented workers to risk life and limb to cross into the U.S., after multi-national agribusiness reaped havoc on local Mexican agriculture. Family farmers found themselves beneath the shadow of the Jolly Green Giant. This would be laughable if it was not so tragic.Empty rhetoric or not, part of the appeal of Barack Obama's speech is that it invokes the idea of a more civilized world. Where free enterprise is not allowed to become the tyrant known as monopolized capitalism, and that human labor with dignity matters.

That may seem vague and unrealistic to some, but considering the delusional mindset in place now, this ship of state is about to head down the rapids, and could very easily smash up against the impending rocks.The movie Fitzcarraldo has a bittersweet ending. Although his commercial enterprise fails, Fitzcarraldo sells his ship and uses the money to bring an opera company to the jungle. His dream was realized, just not the way he imagined.

Thoughts on Obama

By: the beer doctor

The founder's day event in Wisconsin Saturday night presented a format problem for the Clinton campaign. Is it wise that Hillary comes out before Barack Obama? This makes it appear that she is the warm-up act, preparing the crowd for the main event, and I mean the main man, the guy you've heard so much talk about, the junior senator from Illinois!

But there is also a problem if Hillary Clinton appears after Obama. Then there will be these rather awkward comparisons to her "substance speech" with the "hope mongering" of Obama. Either way it is not good for Hillary Clinton. No matter how much the experts belittle so-called empty rhetoric, there is something about an inspiring speech that is so valuable in political theater that it indeed can make all the difference. And this is a juggernaut that the Clinton folks have to deal with: an intelligent candidate with natural rhetorical skills. Add to that the exoticism of his origins and story, it is easier to see why the inevitability of the Clinton nomination is now in doubt.Suffice to say that the Clinton campaign totally underestimated the strength and determination of Barack Obama. Preferring to operate in the delusion that Obama was just another black candidate, like Jesse Jackson, as Bill Clinton put it. Nothing in American politics could be further from the truth.

I remember the first time I saw Barack Obama on television. It was the speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention. I said to my family at that time: "he may one day be the first black American president." I thought: some time in the future, and never would have imagined he would come so far in just four years time. Even last year, when he announced his candidacy, there was talk of a symbolic gesture, and it never seemed to occur to anyone at that time, that no, this was no gesture, he was going after the whole enchilada.

This is where the Clinton campaign made a huge mistake. Secure in the knowledge that they had the big money locked in, they campaigned with the confidence, now seen as hubris, that it will all be over by the first week in February. Meanwhile, the Obama folks were building up a giant small donor data base on the internet, with their candidate and his wife working as hard on the campaign trail as anybody in show business.

It would be best to put aside all the nonsense about Barack Obama being naive, untested and weak. Bill and Hillary have both tried that tactic, but without much success. Yes, it is true that Obama has the same stock speech that he gives day after day, and despite pundit consternations, it is most effective. Why? Well first it gets back to inspiration. As one attendant at an Obama rally told me: "I may not agree with him on all policy matters, but I respect him." This may be the basis for the so-called Obamacans, republicans who shudder at the thought of Senator McCain launching yet another preemptive war against Iran.

The whole race card gets hammered to death by the media. There again, those who know seem to be missing the point. Barack Obama's favorable numbers among white voters has very little, if any, to do with liberal guilt. It is much more likely that the general electorate has become weary of ideological, nonsensical, hot button issues. This divisive climate has made it close to impossible for a reasonable person to be considered. You only have to look at the rantings from both left and right to become conscious of the fact that they will never be satisfied no matter who the candidate is. For this corrosive but very loud minority, everything about the election is just to score some ideological points.

But what about the average voter? Someone who takes their civic responsibility seriously and votes, but does not make a racket and/or career out it. What is he or she to make of candidates who renounce the theory of evolution, say that all answers are in the Bible, and that torture is not only necessary but sometimes good? Or of a woman who claims her thirty five years of experience makes her the most qualified, when in fact the main reason she was able to move to the front of the line was because she was the spouse of an ex-United States President. Suddenly Barack Obama seems like a very resonable person indeed.

Make no mistake I am not a great supporter of Obama. I am too radical for that. As an advocate for universal peace and justice, and a complete end to the insane war on drugs, Senator Obama is too moderate for my personal concerns. But considering the alternatives in this frighteningly high stakes poker game, he is at this time, the best chance for this country.