Refocus
And refocus. Andrew Sullivan wrote this piece in July, 2007 and it rings truer today than it did then. Sometimes it’s worth turning off the noise that’s getting louder and more shrill and just…
thinking.
About what we want our future to be. About what it really means to be safe.
Sullivan:
…we are not talking about normal times. We are talking about a world in which Islamist terror, combined with increasingly available destructive technology, has already murdered thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands of Muslims, and could pose an existential danger to the West. The terrible failures of the Iraq occupation, the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, the progress of Iran toward nuclear capability, and the collapse of America’s prestige and moral reputation, especially among those millions of Muslims too young to have known any American president but Bush, heighten the stakes dramatically.
Close your eyes and imagine…
Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.
Over the past weeks, there’s been a tendency to allow shrilly cries (on both sides) to replace quiet reason. Part of this can be attributed to the non-stop media din of trumped-up headlines and bad video editing. Part can be attributed to the urgency that the electorate feels around this election, that ‘urgency of now’.
Getting the perspective back is the key, no matter which candidate we support, because really, it is critical that we make clear-headed decisions rather than off-the-cuff emotional ones.
Some other perspective builders: Firesign Theatre was one of my favorites back in the 70’s. My best friend and I used to memorize their bits and laugh about them over coffee at 3am when it was too hot to sleep and too late to do much else. (In Glendale, no less). The fun began on Tuesday when George Tirebiter paid a visit and discussed the art of campaigning. He is an expert, having won an election in Glendale on a Peace and Freedom ticket. (If you didn’t grow up there, you might not get that joke, but it’s a little like GWB being elected president in Iraq, running on the Sunni ticket). It turned serious and even harsh later in the show, similar to what’s happening to the reports out on the campaign trail.
But Wednesday brought new perspective, and a different, calmer show with a broader depth of field, leading us to a paradigm shift. On Wednesday I got to be the straight man, but it worked. I get it, and so will you. Plus, I think we did talk Steve off the roof.
Technorati Tags: Election 2008, perspective, Firesign Theatre, George Tirebiter, NewsGang Live, David Ossman