Saturday, November 08, 2008

Obamessiah Suck-Up of the Day

Novelist Alice Walker's advice to President-elect Obama:
I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies.
Obama--is there anything he can't do?

I remind Ms Walker that the Chinese government still occupies Tibet (from which the Dalai Lama has been exiled for a half-century) in derogation of human rights, while democratic Iraq no longer feeds protesters to mass graves.1
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1 New favorite Wikipedia sentence from the Iraq article (footnotes omitted): "Although violence has declined from the summer of 2007, the U.N. reported of a cholera outbreak in Iraq."

(via normblog)

4 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

This soul-focus is fascinating. There is a growing tendency for people to say "so long as my hands aren't directly dirtied, let the evil do as they will."

@nooil4pacifists said...

AVI:

Yes, but I see as more important the modern secular reluctance to recognize the existence of evil, much less a duty to battle it. Hand-washing is their third rationale for soul-focus. Of course, as Jonah Goldberg observes (the subject of an upcoming QOTD), soul-focusers have no trouble flipping back to world-savers when it suits them.

OBloodyHell said...

Of course. Those who point to Gandhi as a pacifist example fail to grasp how his pacifism only worked because it was against an essentially decent people like the Brits who had blinded themselves to the wrong of what they had done.

Had he been up against the Nazis he would have lasted six months and never been heard from again.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Obama fails to grasp the absolute need for the latter part in the above meme.

@nooil4pacifists said...

OBH:

Agreed.