A Pilgrim’s Digression

The following quote is from an article on Barak Obama in the Washington Post. Eugene Robinson was writing of Obama’s rejection of the “either-or” mentality of Washington, which defines every problem as being either about too little money, or too little personal responsibility.

While more resources are needed [to battle inner-city educational problems], “there is a strong values-and-character component to educational achievement,” Obama said. “To deny that is to deny reality, and I don’t want to cede that reality to conservatives who use it as an excuse to underfund the schools. . . . Sometimes people think that when we talk about values, that somehow that’s making a ‘lift yourself up by your own bootstraps’ argument and letting the larger society off the hook. That’s why I always emphasize that we need both individual responsibility and mutual responsibility.”

I think there is a strong craving in society for a message such as this, and maybe for a messenger who can deliver it. People are sick of the “liberals/conservatives are evil” war, instigated and promoted by the media. What people are anxious to see is someone who is genuinely what George Bush merely promoted himself as being: “a uniter, not a divider.”

One of the reasons I do not support Hillary is that she is not that kind of politician. She represents the forces of stasis and division in government. Turning over the Presidency to yet another Clinton (following eight years of another Bush) would merely prolong the tug of war that has existed between the left and right for far too long–for pretty much the entirety of my life, in fact.

We need a better way to advance, instead of merely swinging back and forth between a leftist and a rightist dictatorship of the petty powerful. Our government and our country are not going to progress if we keep electing the same people, or the same kind of people rather, over and over.