Just curious

Rama, I think you're going to benefit LEAST from these new thumbs up/thumbs down options.

I am here to learn if possible or else expose the hypocracy which is my hobby.

Here is one I quote to expose the quick-fix decency.


The Obama phenomenon is a new and major development in US political life. Media people over there like to call it a breath of fresh air. It has injected new life into politics, inspired higher levels of public interest and voter registration, and supplied copious fodder for the media machine.

A major feature of this year's campaign season in the US is the American public's thirst for settling scores with the Bush administration's deception of the American people after 11 September, its military adventurism and its application of neoconservative ideology in American policies overseas. The Obama phenomenon feeds this thirst, while the candidate himself, the aspirant to presidential rank and power, benefits from this climate without having to offer anything really new -- apart, that is, from a rhetorical flare that contrasts strikingly with Bush's leaden tongue, and a talent for judicious arguments that never exceed the bounds of political correctness, that pay lip-service to democratic debate but that are carefully pitched not to offend anyone from the right.

He "sympathises" with African Americans out of work and he "feels for" white women who feel threatened by crime. He's smooth. He's very clever at sound bites. He inspires admiration and threatens no one. Vote Obama and win pain-free change. Vote Obama and ease your conscience without the trouble of introspection. Obama: two films for the price of one.
The American public's revenge for allowing themselves to be duped into war and then voting Bush into power for a second -- and even more disastrous -- term comes very late in the day. In the single election round in which their fury is being vented and their plagued consciences wrung, one senses a surge of self-purging reminiscent of that which produced the John Kennedy phenomenon. On that occasion, the white American conscience sought to purge its guilt for its racist past and create a pretext for reconciliation between the grandchildren of slaves brought over from Africa and the American establishment. But Obama is not a descendant of slaves; nor is he representative of the suffering of African Americans. He is a relatively well- to-do son of an African who emigrated to the US centuries after the era of slavery. To mainstream whites in the US he is an offer too good to refuse. With him they can ease their conscience without having to work to end racism, and all they have to do is not vote for McCain. It's easy and cheap. In fact, since, to the Republicans' great detriment, McCain only reminds voters of how Bush will look in 20 years' time, it's bargain basement cheap.

On the other hand, what the Obama campaign has stirred among American youth is something new. Here we find an enormous surge of interest and eagerness to participate in the democratic process. It is an angry and relatively quick response to the spread of ultraconservative values and vengeful militarism, as well as a reflection of a resolve to put paid to such unspoken taboos as electing a woman or a black man to power. This is an unquestionably important development in American society. Undoubtedly, too, it is one that the ruling establishment will contain through the machinations of its military- industrial complex, its banks, media and cultural institutions. As for Obama, the person, he is perfectly contained in that establishment. In fact, he has fought for years to be contained in it, and he has shown that he can be quite nimble at changing his positions in order to facilitate the establishment's digestive process. "
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/911/op2.htm

my English is better than the journalists who vouchsafe the views of the administration.
One should have some moral, ethical civil courage like MLK.
But I am a dremer like most of the Americans.

"It is in vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that power," he observed. "This rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity."------Alexis de Tocqueville