Comments on Bernard Avishai Dot Com: The Kumbaya Thing

phenomenal post. thank you.

2008-08-07T16:28:00.000-04:00

phenomenal post. thank you.

this is tremendous.

2008-08-03T14:45:00.000-04:00

this is tremendous.

"They came not to hear a great speech but to be a ...

2008-07-31T15:49:00.000-04:00

"They came not to hear a great speech but to be a part of a great statement"

I am one of the 200.000 Germans who came to be part of a great statement - as you rightly put it. The media may be glad to lable this a "popstar effect", but I´m sure I wasn´t the only one in the audience who has read his books, his speeches and followed his campaign. For one thing, I have never seen seen so many colored faces in a German crowd before.

We in Europe are still in a bit of a state of shock of what happenend in the US in the last years. Not only in terms of foreign politics but also in terms of civil liberties, freedom for its citizens, democracy. And the idea that America could be led by someone who speaks our language is simply enticing. And by "ours" I do not mean European, but that of modern citizens of the world - just as BO said.

Thanks so much for so masterfully deflating the re...

2008-07-31T10:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks so much for so masterfully deflating the reigning blowhards, especially for hoisting the repugnant Krauthammer on his own petard. And a thanks too to the ever-generous Rick Hertzberg for his link to your blog.

To me, Obama seems a very clever corporate Democra...

2008-07-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

To me, Obama seems a very clever corporate Democrat, whose savvy but vacuous message of “change you can believe in” is a brilliant appealing cipher. Surely he could have managed, no matter how tired he may have been, to have said something in Berlin beyond asking for more German troops in Afghanistan. Let me repeat that for those of us who fret about our collective lunacy: “more German troops in Afghanistan.”

If we believe the “details” Obama rather than the “sound byte” Obama, he proposes not an end to the Iraq war but a reduction in our level of effort, as he suggested last year, to around 30,000 troops or so, while increasing US Afghan forces. So rather than ending Bush’s War, Obama would tactically redeploy forces with no fundamental change in policy. While he could not be expected, during the campaign, to suggest ending US support for Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza or making systemic changes to the US economy to reduce significantly fossil fuel consumption, this seems less change than even caution would demand.

And after the campaign? Perhaps the best predictor of his behavior as president is his behavior in the US Senate: after considerable campaign support for and from a left/labor coalition, Obama began his senate term by voting for the bankruptcy bill, opposed by his coalition but supported by corporate interests, and again with his recent domestic spying vote. His votes, unneeded for passage, sent a message to our corporate masters: “I’m your man;” or, on message, “change you need not fear.”

Hear hear!

2008-07-30T11:25:00.000-04:00

Hear hear!

Thank you for deflating the pompous cynicism of th...

2008-07-29T23:21:00.000-04:00

Thank you for deflating the pompous cynicism of the so-called pundits!

Quite right. To jeer Obama for inspiring hope is t...

2008-07-29T09:07:00.000-04:00

Quite right. To jeer Obama for inspiring hope is to align one's self with a failed status quo.

Obama's rhetoric will only look like castles in the clouds if, five years hence, we have endured a term of softly spoken Bush-lite.