A President Obama will be good for Life, life in all its reach, its complexity, its simplicity and beauty.  An apparent practicioner of TM, transcendental meditation (he has that unmistakable "it" that knows who and what "it" is) ---Obama promises to be a serious man, an Aristotelian "spoudaios aner," transported to our shore, our Augenblick, our Moment of Vision and Destiny.

Sorry about that--I got carried away.

But even serious men can get carried away.  Witness Obama's first gaffe, the flippant remark about White House seances.  (By the way, there have been seances in the White House, and Obama, a great student, may well have had in the back of his mind some of the unconventional interests of the slightly mad Mary Todd Lincoln.) 

OK.  It's just you and me, now.  President-elect Obama I did not vote for.  He said nothing during the process that indicated a willingness to really change U.S. Foreign Policy, a disaster in the making.  An ongoing disaster.  What, for example, are we doing in Saudi Arabia, the place from which came most of the 9/11 extremists?  Well-meaning--that's what it is.  The Bush Family connection, a very special connection, to this highly suspect regime of ruthless dictators.  Good intentions.  But look at the results.  Altogether fitting and proper and providential that this payback-event (I repeat, it was a payback event and an attempt to wake up sluggish, sleepy people like me...they succeeded)...September 11, 2001 happened on W's watch.  9/11.  Let us never forget about 9/11.  9/11 was a day that woke at least one American up from his slumber.  The Bush response to this, after the dust settled, was unsettling.  It was "knee-jerk."  It was insane.  It was the old "eye for an eye" mindset.  The Old Law at work.  But we are now in the New Dispensation.  Providentially, I guess, New Directions have come our way.  A new sort of Great Awakening, is, or should be, adrift in the land.  One positive sign of this Great Awakening is the hue and cry for "energy independence."  Suppose we accomplish this useful goal.  What then?  Do we abandon our friend, Israel?  They have the atom bomb.  Does this mean they can take care of themselves?  Make no mistake about it:  This country by and large loves Israel and its people.  But we love our own families even more.  We, like Israel, like Palestinians--we love our own.  But we also love, some of us, Christ.  Christ symbolizes the bigger picture, the ultimate questions that go beyond the narrow love of one's own family, tribe, culture, tradition, etc.  "Leave the dead to bury their own dead," said our Master, Jesus Christ.  What does this mean?  "Do not call me good..."  What does this mean?  "Who cares about my mother?  Who cares about my family?"  What does this mean?  The answer can be found, among many other places, in Galatians 3:27ff.  The answer, ironically, can be found in Obama's quixotic quest, even in the international arena, for Unity, for the Family of Man.  Don Quixote indeed.  Suddenly, everything in the world appears as a means to the end of peace and hope and self-giving love.  Appears...appears.  Need I remind myself and others that there is an age-old difference between appearance and reality?  Truth appears in the tired old cliches, "limited government," "states rights," "free trade."  OK.  What about civil rights?  Suppose we had the apodictic maxim of limited government applied to the issue of whether my public high school continues to have separate water fountains, one for black students, one for white students (by the way, both water fountains are still right there in F-Hall).  And Dennis Prager, the incarnation of Don Quixote, would like to have us believe the old wounds and legacies of racism have been washed away.  Well, yes...and no.  Appearances versus realities.  I loved the way Obama made fun of the attacks against him:  "They call me a communist because they found out I, I shared my peanut butter sandwich when I was in kindergarten."  LOL.  My point is that the appearance of wise governing, the conventional wisdom about prudent politics, has been for the moment exposed as the half-truth it really is.  I mean, "limited government" is a half-truth, not the full truth in politics.  I like Edmund Burke and, to some extent Winston Churchill.  But I also admire Colin Powell and Ben Bernanke, a couple of pragmatists, a couple of students of history.  Let's stop with the mindless cliches, conservatives.  Rush, you are getting old--not in the positve sense of the term, but in the negative sense of the term.  Old, old, old.  America, change has come!  Change has come!  It's not a cliche.  It's not that word, C-H-A-N-G-E, a word that, Gary Hart wrote on some blackboard way back in 1983 when he wanted to become Prez.  It's not the "tool" that Sarah studied while majoring in journalism and "political science."  Rather, real change is what I would call the reincarnation of Authentic Wisdom.  Nietzsche wrote about this and Joan Stambaugh, a great scholar, published an article about this Nietzchean theme some years ago in the journal, "Philosophy Today," or somesuch.  The theme is, or was translated as, "Decadence versus Creativity in Nietzsche."

 

For Nietzsche, correct me if I'm wrong, decadence is the conventional wisdom, what "they" say.  Heidegger, a student of Nietzsche, had some things to say about the "They" in his epoch-making metaphysics.  I've studied, and studied hard, Heidegger and Nietzsche.  Contrary to what the knee-jerk conservative poli-sci people have to say, both Nietzsche and Heidegger make arguments about ultimate issues, arguments from which humble people might learn a thing or two.  The theologians Balthasar and Ratzinger both appropriated and continue to sift out some valuable gems from these fruitful, if imperfect, minds and hearts.  And so do other reasonable and driven people.  People driven towards a viable Truth.  A deep-down joy.  Read the works, say "God and World," of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict.

 

As for the principle of Creativity, Nietzsche, as I recall him through decades of distraction, praised men like Richilieux (about whom I know nothing), Napoleon, Socrates, Emerson, Caesare Borgia, Putin and Barack Obama.  Yes, Nietzsche, as they say at St Johns Annapolis, "knew everything." 

 

(As for Zarathustra's praise for Putin, why not, oh you Pragers of the world, why not poison off the "liberals"?)

 

Getting back to business, Nietzsche's principle of Creativity is something the conservatives, some of them, need desperately--like thirsty wanderers in the desert need water.  But let us not get derailed here.  Partisanship is not where it's at.  Mindless partisan "thinking," left or right, is Kaput.  I wrote months ago, during the Reverend Wright fiasco, that "Obama is over."  Boy, was I ever wrong about that.  And boy, is there much that the Rush Limbaughs and Al Frankens of this world are utterly, and potentially disastrously, wrong about.   The point here is that one has to keep alive in one's soul, one's thoughtful mind,  the tension, the fruitful tension between Decadence and Creativity.  And when one makes a mistake, one needs to be big enough, like Eliot Spitzer, to not mince words about it.  I'll hand the man that.  I was dead wrong, several months ago, about Barack's chances.  To this day, I'm flabbergasted at what has happened.  A body can only handle so much "cognitive dissonance."  Underneath it all is a joy the likes of which I've never known, and I did not even vote for the guy!

 

Decadence (the conventional wisdom) versus Creativity.  Would that more Muslims would read, truly read and study and assimilate great minds like the mind of Nietzsche.  Sadly, Mohammed Atta probably read some Nietzsche while studying in Hamburg--and firmed up his "manly" desire to perform what he and his allies performed.  Some French pundit or philosopher remarked, after 9/11:  "What an incredible Work of Art."  I cannot stand with quite such radical thinking.  But having read many of the philosophers of our time, I know exactly what he means.  War is politics by other means.  And Mohammed Atta, in his way, was a politician-artist.  Personally, I don't think I could go that route. (After my conversion, it would be unthinkable.)  But I was not born in Egypt, son of a lawyer who probably beat him mercilessly when he was a child.  Most murderers pass on what they know, what they've learned in life, about life.  They don't wake up some fine autumn morning and say, "Think I'll fly a human bomb into a symbol of oppression of my people."  Whatever else about Atta, he no doubt saw himself as a pious warrior, doing the "will of God."  I repeat, I don't believe I would have gone that route.  But I don't know for sure.  I do know I'm a passionate person, an ambitious person.  Fortunately for me and those around me, that passion and that ambition has been "sublimated" into a working love of Christ under the guidance of heroic lights like John Paul the Great and our truly awesome Holy Father.  And fortunately for our nation and the world, as I hope, Obama has truly undergone a positive conversion.  We saw him evolve right before our eyes these last several months, even years.  In spite of his serious blind spot about abortion, I have reason to hope that he gets it when it comes to actual Creativity, not the appearance of Creativity or Truth.  For that's what Creativity really boils down to, a love of Truth, of Justice (not rabid tribalism). 

Rabid tribalism.  Just what did I mean by that slur-sounding expression?  Certainly not the expression Karl the Great Rove--and I mean that--used the other night when, in context, he referred to himself as a "Norweigian-American."  Nor would Reverend Sharpton or Jesse be, at this point, rabid partisans.  I see love and self-giving in both black men.  With them, my eyes fill with tears of hope, joy, amazement , disbelief, an exalted confusion.  "I'm confused on a higher level," said one beginner in Alcoholics Anonymous many, many years ago, bringing tears of joy and true recovery to my naive beginner's eyes.

 

I guess I'm judgmental enough to see the homicide bombers as "rabid tribalists."  But those who respond in kind, as opposed to with reason and Aristotelian Prudence, are also "rabid tribalists."  Do we, as a world family, want this vicious cycle to go on forever, or do we want to work rationally for solutions?  I see signs of hope in 3 events of late.  One, Barack's election is powerful in a way that defies human speech.  Obama's face is one with which billions of marginalized people can identify.  The oppressed people, the historically shut out folks on this planet, now have reason not to hate, but rather to look up, look up, once again, after a long stint in the wilderness, to the Shining City on a Hill.  Two, recent events in Israel, the heart of the world, show a willingness to listen to world opinion as opposed to digging in, the "in the trenches" mind-set.  Three, recent actions taken by the remarkable President Ahmadinejad, too, offer this Pollyanna signs of Hope.  Ahmadinejad has sent our President-elect a letter of possible reconciliation.  He thus gives more hope to us dreamers in this world.  Let me add one additional sign of Hope that Obama's Team should seize upon, viz., the Saudi Peace Initiative, behind which, I'm told, are 22 or so Arab nations.  The land from which came most of the 9/11 "martyrs" (not really martyrs in our eyes, but only in the eyes of millions and millions of people around the world) is apparently rising to a deadly serious occasion.  Obama's election, in this regard, might have staggeringly positive consequences, or start another tragedy of shakespearean realism.  Shakespearean reminders, like the biblical reminders, that there is indeed hope, but that we have to struggle, we Westerners, too, have too struggle, daily, in an inner-jihad, to do the right thing in  the face of what is, after all, Faith, Hope and self-giving love.