It is very easy, as an Obama supporter, to focus on language being important.  For one thing no one reading this would even be on TMP if they didn’t have some affinity for language.  We are all writing it constantly!  Secondly, after 9 years of George Bush (don’t forget we had to listen to him during the campaign) we are all starved for a simple sentence, let alone a coherent one.  When we first heard Obama speak, it was such a balm to the soul.  Was there someone in politics who was actually worth listening to?  Might that person actually be in a position to gain enough power to accomplish something, anything?  More importantly, is it possible that we have become accustomed, in this short period of time, to the sound of accountable language?  That is why Clinton’s melt-down Friday was so very hard to hear.  We all know that as sure as you are what you eat, you are also what you say.

Saturday there was a wonderful post by Bserious that started a great conversation.

the joshuablog just posted truly interesting statistics from CBS news: 
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/05/cbs-poll-support-for-obama-reb.php

As I was responding to the thread, I realized that this is an idea that has been fomenting for a while, and may be threadworthy itself.  The idea that the mass hiysteria we are all suffering through might actually be a disease.  It is one of the few things that would explain the statistics that he outlined in his post. 

Obama leads McCain 51% to 40%, nationally.  OK, we understand that is everybody.  Among Democratic primary voters (those who have voted or plan to vote in a Demnocratic primary) Obama leads Clinton 50% to 38%.  That would be pro-Obama Democrats (Obamacrats), pro-Obama Republicans (Obamacins), and pro-Obama Independants (Obamadents).  Not surprisingly among registered Democrats, Clinton leads Obama 45% to 44%.  What does this all mean?  I believe we are on the verge of the diagnosis of a far reaching social disease that can only now be identified by these statistics as Post-Clinton Traumatic Stress Disorder or PCTSD.

While reading these statistics memory brought me back to a wonderful quote from years ago.   "Statistics are like bikini's.  They reveal a great deal, but hide vital parts."  The quote was from the psychologist John Bradshaw during his groundbreaking PBS series On The Family.  I do think he was quoting someone else, but that is my source for the quote.  More importantly is the context for which he was using this quote, and the far-reaching information in this series on dysfunctional families and addiction.

If Obamcrats, Obamacins, and Obamdents have no trouble seeing who should be elected, why is it so difficult for registered Democrats to see things as clearly?  45% of registered Democrats, by nature of their political interests, are related to and identify with the Clintons.  They are family.  All other demographic groups do not relate to Hillary and Bill Clinton in as personal a manner, and therefore do not remember things with quite the same filter.  The filter of denial.
 
I look at this as everyone living in a Post-Clinton era, without Pro-Clinton advocates understanding that the era is over.  We can surmise that Pro-Clinton Democrats (at least 45% of them) don't know what is good for them, but the rest of the country (at least a majority) does.

The difference in perspectives is based on trauma.  When you identify with your dysfunctional family member it is much harder to reach clarity and quite often ends in co-dependant behavior - you are traumatized.  When you have no vested interest in the dysfunctional behavior you merely see the insanity.  It is in essense a matter of mental health.

The new national tragedy that we are all suffering the side-effects of is PCSTD - Post Clinton Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The symptoms are disassociation from your own best judgement, and a level of denial that allows you to vote against your own self-interests.  The nature of the dysfunction leaves you aligned with one who would actually hurt you, and not understanding the difference between "Post" and "Pro".

While the mainsteam media is looking further and further into polls (and exit polls) to see what socio-ecomonic, ethnic, and religious dynamics are at play, they have buried the lead.  The country is in a dysfunctional relationship with a political family, and these addictions know no such bounds.  Everyone related is suseptible.

Obviously we can also translate this as the trauma that enabled people to vote for Bush , CBTSD - Current Bush Traumatic Stress Disorder - but that is another disease.

 

It has been most noticeable in the 24/7 news wars that election coverage brings out more talking and time filling by pundits and reporters as they dispense with other forms of news. They need to fill vast amounts of time with less and less information. Naturally, conversational qualities take over as there are a limited number of topics to discuss. What has struck me in the last few years is that talking heads have a tendency to repeat things that they have heard, many times repeating each other. It is brought into specific relief by the vocabulary we hear. People are very identifiable in terms of their facility with language by their vocabulary.

It is almost like an educational fingerprint. When you hear words that you know, but almost never hear in normal conversation, they sort of stand out. It seems with each election the heads listen to each other, and some “good word” they almost forgot creeps into the lexicon. I find it ironic that the major complaint about the blogosphere is that it is “rampant opinion with little means of verifiable of fact” and yet I don’t see a lot of difference when it comes to television. At least in the blogosphere you can talk back, and it is fairly simple to see who has the conviction of a good argument. On television you are left with little gems just hitting the speaker of your TV with a thud.

In the last election cycle the word was “gravitas”. Now I have known that word since I was a child and my father threw Latin at me all the time – don’t ask me why – but “gravitas” is a word that does not enjoy common usage. When you hear it over and over again it becomes annoyingly repetitive, and you start noticing who is parroting the new word. The new word this year is actually two words, but still in Latin. Saying “bona fides” is the way to preen your intellectual feathers this year, and it has the additional quality of pointing out who actually had a good education by how it is pronounced. I’ve heard a few mangled versions that made me wonder. Are these people not lawyers, or have they simply never been to mass? I am neither Catholic, nor an attorney, but I still get it – must be the musician’s ear. While I find all of this irritating, in a slightly humorous way, there is a phrase that has crept into everyone’s lexicon that has me seeing red. In both the blogosphere and in television coverage, not so much in print, people are quick to throw around the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid”.

At first I didn’t think much of it as people were just referring to the delusional qualities of Obama supporters. Since I am an Obama precinct captain I am well aware that we are not delusional – we just want the agreed upon, current primary/caucas system to decide who wins. From our perspective it is the Clintonites that are delusional. How can you even want a candidacy that is at the expense of everyone else? It is just un-American, or at least delusional. But as I heard this phrase over and over something started haunting me. What was haunting me was my own educational fingerprint, my own understanding of the real meaning of “drinking the Kool-Aid”.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and November, 1978 was the month that we were all left numb. As we experienced the shock of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone being assassinated in Moscone’s office by Supervisor Dan White, we were still ringing from the enormous shock of the Jonestown Massacre. These events happened within nine days of each other. Congressman Leo Ryan had led reporters and a delegation of concerned relatives to Guyana to investigate reports of mind control and imprisonment. The congressman and three others were murdered as they were about to fly home to report their findings. Subsequently, the people following the Rev. Jim Jones committed suicide. The majority of the members of the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana were from San Francisco. The community was reeling. This one horrific act of mass suicide involving between 913 and 1100 people was achieved by “drinking Kool-Aid” laced with cyanide.

Maybe I didn’t catch on to the level of cynicism in this phrase because of some long term PTSD over my own regional history. Maybe, for a while, I just forgot through my own participation in collective amnesia. But in repetition, I am remembering. As far as the press using this phrase – they have no excuse. While many covering this election may be younger, many are not. In either case we depend on the press to at least be able to look at their archives for the stories that inform our language. For the rest of us there needs to be more reflection. If you are old enough to remember Jonestown, please think twice before rattling off that phrase as merely a way of explaining something you find unfathomable. If you are not old enough to remember, the web is replete with information on this gruesome mass death and it is easy to research. All you have to do is Google “Jonestown”. As we fire-off opinions to each other on our wonderful blogosphere let us show more originality than the mainstream media we love to trash. Let us not repeat a phrase that has no business being used so casually, and has no business describing the informed support of historic candidates. Let’s not drink the Kool-Aid, and let’s not say we did.

I have a series of blanket questions for all bloggers. 
1)   Has anyone ever seem Hillary with an American flag pin?
2)  Has anyone ever asked her why she doesn't wear a flag pin?
3) Is this an ivy league thing, getting pinned?

Everyone on every network is missing the entire point of Obama's approach, and it is so basic I cannot believe no one has caught on.  There is one simple and overiding reason that Obama does not go in for the kill with Clinton, and it has nothing to do with his ability to "close the deal".  Obama has to gain this nomination without pissing off all of Hillary's supporters. 

If he dives in to any of the critical comments pundits and so-called reporters think he needs to in order to show some killer instinct, he will totally lose the women who are currently pro-Hillary forever.  The vitriol is bad enough now, can you imagine how Hillary's girls would feel about him if he had flattened her?

I asked my 82 year old mother, who hates politics with a passion because it is so negative, what she thought about the debate.  She said "Well, he's being a gentleman, of course.  Thank goodness, that is why I will vote for him."  She then said "It's about time someone behaved properly."  She then also asked me why I was making her watch the coverage.  "You know this is why I hate politics, I'm going to go play mahjong on the computer."

Simple, to the point, out of the mouth of a lady who usually won't even pay attention to all of this.  This is not unpreparedness, this is foresight so complete, and farreaching that gaming minds have missed it.  He can't win without all of those women.  He can't win those women if they hate him for destroying Hillary.

In paying very close attention to the Senate hearings yesterday a life-imitating-art moment occured to me.  It was brought home in the difference between the questions posed to Crocker and Petraeus by John McCain and the questions posed by Barack Obama.  The recent identification of the Clinton campaign to Rocky Balboa had me thinking of pop-culture characters where our candidates were concerned, but after yesterday I realized we were thinking about the wrong characters and the wrong movie.

While it was swell for Hillary to think of herself as the fighter who never gives up, and we were all busy reminding each other that HIllary/Syllvester loses in the end, the real problem is that Hillary not only missed the more applicable story line - she isn't even in the movie.  The screenplay we will have playing out before us is not "Rocky", it is "Crimson Tide". 

The characters are so clear.  John McCain is the grizzly, staunch, experienced commander (Gene Hackman) who in light of his cold-war mentality takes having his finger on the button very seriously.  Unfortunately he is more inclined to take that serious mission to its logical conclusion - at some point you have to push the button.  Barack Obama, however, is the Harvard educated, bright, clear thinking, philosophical younger officer of conscience (Denzel Washington) who refuses to react out of fear.  His education informs the kind of decisions he makes, and the seriousness with which he dispatches his responsibilities is always tempered with a global perspective.  It is the idea that unintended consequences are not situations that you fall victim to, if you are willing to think it through.  If you are willing to apply what you have learned

I have always liked this movie, and I think I would still find it pertinent even if Obama didn't have the obvious attributes and star qualities of an actor like Denzel.  The story itself is the real parrallel.  Iran is the myriad of Russian targets that we know (as observers) should not be hit.  McCain has his finger on the button, and due to his vast experience, training, and hyper-vigilance is going to stop at nothing to let those bombs fly.  Obama is the last hope we have of the sane, methodical, cool-under-pressure commander who can see the ramifications of his actions, even though he has never faced a situation of this magnitude.  Being able to see clearly in the middle of many agendas is what his education was about in the first place.

The more I think about it, the closer the story resonates.  It is almost frightening how close.  As McCain makes his case for his vast war experience being the deciding factor for the presidency, he leaves us vulnerable to the horrific results that are likely to unfold.  Now that Iran is flirting with nuclear power the similarity only tightens.  As Obama presents his arguments in a measured and cautious manner he is both praised and villified.  People mistake thoughtfullness for calculation, they mistake coolness for uncaring.  But this thoughfullness, coolness and measured caution is how he is going to approach some of the most dynamic and potentially disasterous crisis we have seen since we acquired the ability to blow each other up.

I, for one, want the movie's ending.  The old guy retires with commendation, and the young guy gets command.  The battle between young and old is not seen as the end, but as the beginning of what is more informed, more palpable, and quite frankly, more conscious.