From the current issue of
Tikkun, and a very good article. He points out the issues he has with Obama's candidacy but gives a thoughtful analysis of why Obama has captured such a passionate following. It's a rather long piece, so I encourage you to read the whole thing (beyond the small snippet I'm able to post here). And I hope it gives some of you pause before throwing around terms like "cult" and "koolaid drinker." It's not an endorsement of Obama (Lerner says so very plainly), but an examination of what his appeal is. For so many here who've claimed they don't understand the appeal, perhaps this explanation will be helpful.
Aside from the piece's overall excellence, I just thought it'd be nice to post something a little less angry and a lot more conciliatory in here. :hi:
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0803/frontpage/phenomObama’s appeal starts from his insistence on not demonizing the Other—the very point from which Tikkun started as a project of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health (ILMH) twenty-two years ago. At ILMH we learned—through conducting an intensive study of working class consciousness—that people moving to the Right politically were not primarily motivated by racism, sexism, and hatred, but by the spiritual crisis in their lives that the Left failed to address and the Right spoke to (albeit with distorted solutions).
In short, Obama is telling his supporters, we are not in need of some magical leader, not even Obama himself. Rather, what we need is the confidence in ourselves to reclaim the public space, to break down our fears about ourselves and each other, and to recognize that it is only when we move beyond our personal lives and work together for our highest vision that anything substantial will change.
Obama has used his campaign to teach us that we actually can emerge from our frightened, withdrawn state, and enter into a public community and affirm each other’s humanity, whether that be through our foreign relations, in our approach to immigration, in our economic lives, or, even, in overcoming the ossified categories of “the Left” and “the Right.” And Obama presents himself with a sense of certainty that helps us overcome our own uncertainty—he is determined to win the election because he thinks we can do this if we are willing to “declare that we are with each other.”
It is precisely this striving to create a transcendent experience of connection without demonizing the Other that has been the important element in the Obama phenomenon. Although the criticisms of his seeming inability to recognize the depth of the struggles that must be waged against the entrenched powers of global capital are well-founded, the Obama phenomenon promises to accumulate the power to challenge the powerful precisely by rejecting the demonizing of the other and following a path of nonviolence, not only in actions but also in words. This kind of nonviolent communication, a powerful extension of Gandhi’s and King’s methodology, may actually, in the long run, prove far more effective than pointing out the cruelty and hypocrisy of those who will not challenge the existing systems of militarism and global economic and political domination.
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