A Message from Martin Buber to Barack Obama
--Speechmaker, your speech is too late. Just a little while ago you could have believed it, but now you can't.
Now you and I understand that the State is no longer controlled by anyone...
The stokers still shovel coal, but our insanely accelerating locomotive is out of control, and even while you make your speech, you can hear the gears rattle and clash in our runaway economic machine.
The masters of wealth still smile their superior smile, but it's only a death-mask. They claim the machine was designed for our convenience, but we ride it as far and wherever it takes us... until it shakes us off.
Their speechmakers claim that "free markets" replaced the State, but you know there was nothing to replace except a dictatorship of incomprehensible powers, where human understanding has been consigned to shadows...
This is pointlessly vague drivel.
October 2, 2009 8:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
A noun, a verb, and everything bad is Barack Obama's fault. No surprises.
October 2, 2009 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'd say intellectually obscure would be a better description. You really need to know your Jewish philosophers. Yet the point is always the same, I don't like Obama in any way shape or form.
October 2, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
In *choke*cough*hack* fairness, Rootie has actually praised Obama policies on a couple of occaisions when he thought he deserved it. And, also in fairness, change the negative in the criticisms to a positive and you've got what a lot of people here say about me.
October 2, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "praises" are outliers. This post is an example of regression towards the mean. If you bet that a post will be negative towards Obama you will be correct much more often than you would by predicting a positive Obama post.
October 2, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The percentage positive or negative doesn't matter: the percentage corresponding to reality does.
October 3, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oink?
October 2, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get it. As Rudolf Otto explains sehr clearly in Das Heilege, the sacred place in a civilization is the place that has no practical value. This little post is truly holy.
October 2, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
And we shall smite the heretics who dare enter.
October 2, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ouch! Hey, quit smiteing me already!
Rut-roh!
October 2, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is not pointlessly vague drivel. He is pointing out, rightly, that this nation is in the throes of madness brought upon us by a combination of ignorance and secrecy. That which is revealed we refuse to understand, and that which we desire to understand is hidden from us. Such a state of affairs can not last.
October 2, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, but when has this even not been the case...in any modern society. Yet, Obama somehow is suppose to undo the global network of economic powers at the same restoring the global economy to stability and growth. Maybe Ruta believes he know how it could be done in less than year, but I doubt even the wisest could not.
October 2, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is why I don't see this post as critical... just resigned. I think the enthymeme is that Obama believed his own message. Now, Obama is forced to reiterate his message but now understands the reality of the world he has chosen to help lead.
October 2, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or it could be he understood that was being embarked upon is a journey of a thousand miles. Making significant fundamental changes in a neighborhood takes years. Dealing not only with the actual systems from Wall St. to D.C. to multinational board rooms in far away countries, but also dealing with a country that still has embraces "capitalism" like a god, while wanting "socialism" in reality, is something that must occur increments. To deal with it quicker would only create more havoc and chaos, which is never good for a struggling economy.
It is as he said in his speech, it is not about big government or small government, but what is the right size of government. Just getting people to discuss on this nuanced level is a monumental task at times.
October 2, 2009 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pithy this Rutabaga is. Oracle he means to be.
October 2, 2009 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would not Kucinich face a similar fate?
October 2, 2009 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Refers to an exchange found here:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/rutabaga_ridgepole/2009/10/unemployment-gets-worse-faster.php?ref=reccafe
October 2, 2009 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I came back to the States after a 4 yr respite on Eivissa in mid March, just past the heart of the primaries. Everyone was either an Obama or a Hillary supporter. Itold them all the same thing, 'there is not a nickel's worth of difference in what either might accomplish, our gov't doesn't run like that.
Could have been anyone, the political reality is we would not be significantly better/worse now regardless of whom the Democratic President might be. However, I am quite happy with Presedent Obama's efforts thus far.
October 2, 2009 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Holy buckets! You lived on Eivissa! And you must have actually known a few Catalans, instead of the usual EuroTrash, if you're calling it by its Catalan name! How did we ever get into so many crazy arguments?
I spent half my life on Islands like Eivissa, although Eivissa I missed.
But Menorca, Mallorca, Crete, Hydra...
It's just one earthly paradise after another, and I never came back until I was dead flat broke!
What's your excuse?
Seriously, my email is easy to find. We should correspond and bewail the sad transformation of everything around us from beautiful to banal, or worse.
October 2, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
1 euro=1.63 dollars at the time I left, slowly starving myself wasn't in my plans.
October 3, 2009 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
October 2, 2009 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
And then there were a few philosophers, who looked directly into the sun, and went blind...
Although Plato claims that they later recovered their sight, after recuperating with a guide from among the deluded, like a seeing-eye dog in the world of illusions.
But meanwhile they looked like idiots.
October 2, 2009 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
looked like idiots
yes, but righteous idiots.
October 2, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rootie- On a totally separate topic do you use a mac?
If so can you tell me how to insert pictures in moveable type. I just switched and no matter what I do I can't get a picture to save on my blog. I figured with your brilliant avatar photo (and particularly the afterimage) you might know. Or maybe someone here might now.
Thanks,
October 2, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
A mac! Eeeewwww! No way!
But in defense of those weasels and their over-priced everything from software to hardware to even video tutorials (!), I have to say...
It probably isn't the computer, it's the browser, and about problems with mac browsers I know zero.
But there are also a few other possibilities...
Maybe you're trying to link and embed from a photo site that TPM refuses. Try photobucket.com or flickr.com if you haven't already.
Have you tried hotlinking? (You did not hear this naughty advice about bandwidth theft from me!)
Pretending that parentheses are those little html wedges for a second, so this comment doesn't scramble...
(img src="http://whatever.com/yourimage.jpg")
For hotlinking to work, you need the exact URL of the image, instead of the page, but the image will usually pop out and show you its URL, if you double click.
One last possibility...
Maybe you're trying to embed wider images than TPM accepts. Anything wider than 480 pixels gets truncated, and if you try something much wider, which would totally mess up their margins, Moveable Type just says no.
October 2, 2009 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed, but they are very pretty machines, and I am a sucker for beauty (and now have an ex-wife to prove it).
Thanks for the advice. (and particularly the Hotlink tip, I did not know about that). Also I seriously do want to know did you plan for the ephemeral after image of the happy smily kid when you click away from your screen or am just hallucinating? Either way it is brilliant.
October 3, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink