Reply #8: Pretty good essay... Cynicism tout court becomes cynicism for no sake other than its own.... [View All]

[BlooInBloo]

For such a thorough-going cynic, the justificatory burden is on the cynic, not on Obama.

The cynic wondered if Obama was tough enough, so he went to the far South Side of Chicago, where Obama did his community organizing.

Barack wouldn’t quit,” Love said. “He pulled us off to the side and he said, Well, we messed that up. We didn’t see that coming. We need to strategize right now about how to deal with stuff like this and hold people accountable so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”

Altgeld Gardens, the cynic believed, was tough enough. The far South Side was tough enough.

...

The cynic wondered if Obama was smart enough, so he went to Harvard Law School, where Obama went and shone more brightly than he ever had before, thriving in a lush rain forest of towering egos in which every second person already has the Supreme Court in his eyes.

Heisenbergian physics, the cynic believed, was smart enough. Harvard Law was smart enough.

...

He wondered if Obama was shrewd enough, so he went and he talked to Congressman Mike Capuano, a former mayor of the blue-collar town of Somerville in Massachusetts, who went to Congress in 1998 because he was a better street pol than the prettier, wealthier candidates he ran against in a massive brawl to succeed young Joe Kennedy to his uncle Jack’s old congressional seat.

Convincing Mike Capuano, the cynic believed, was shrewd enough. Somerville is shrewd enough.

...

So the cynic did due diligence, and at the end of it, he watched the campaign go on from Wisconsin and he realized that tough enough and smart enough and shrewd enough weren’t anywhere near enough.

Obama takes the stage and the hall explodes, the way all the halls have exploded in this, the last really good week he will have. All the rest of the upcoming weeks and months will be about becoming aware that the country he imagines is not the America that is, and that it hasn’t been for a very long time. And the cynic realizes at last that he is more naive than anyone else here, particularly more than the slim, smooth candidate himself, stalking the stage in his edgeless way and looking out over the crowd at something in his private distance. The cynic believes in an old, abandoned country that’s no less illusory than the redeemed one Obama is promising to this crowd. Isn’t that something? the cynic thinks. Maybe that’s enough, that single revelation, just a flicker of the lost imagination. For the last time, in the roar of the crowd, it comes back to him again. Convince me America is not an illusion. Convince me that it never was. Convince me that you’re not a pious mirage. Convince me that we’re not. Now that you brought it up, convince me.

Convince me.

Convince me.

Convince me.

It may indeed turn out impossible to convince some of the hopeless, but it won't be due to anything lacking in Obama.




EDIT: Forgot the bold.