A few thoughts about CHANGE and Senator Obama’s Hubris

I’ve been thinking: when one considers the dynamics of CHANGE as a political platform, it becomes clear that Senator Obama’s comments last week regarding the lives and values of small-town Pennsylvanians are not at all inconsistent with his message of HOPE and CHANGE.

The way I see it, HOPE makes lemonade out of the lemons of desperation and dejectedness. It gives folks a reason to persevere, to become empowered agents, and to give thanks even in the darkest of times. It is a powerful, beautiful, transformative force. It allows one to overcome difficulties, to seek CHANGE. So HOPE leads to CHANGE. And even better, widespread HOPE leads to widespread CHANGE. Shame on anyone who would sincerely wish to argue against positive CHANGE born of HOPE. But . . .

this transition from HOPE to CHANGE depends on one very important variable: one’s general dissatisfaction with one’s situation—one’s need for CHANGE. Anyone can have HOPE, and for a variety of reasons, but to turn that HOPE into action takes initiative; thus widespread HOPE and widespread CHANGE as a campaign platform—or at least the particular brand of HOPE and CHANGE that Senator Obama is peddling—depends on a pervasive sense of widespread dissatisfaction among the constituency. What a swell time, then, to capitalize on the constituency’s rancor and run such a campaign: there seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction in the air—and it smells like springtime in farm country.

Perhaps, then, this odious and familiar scent was still swirling in his nostrils when Senator Obama addressed his devout supporters in the golden City by the Bay, far removed from those broken and rusted patch towns of rural Pennsylvania—such poetic juxtaposition!; perhaps it was this scent he contemplated as he flew over the patchwork farm fields of the Midwest and came up with the idea that he could not only capitalize on the discontent that often inspires HOPE and certainly drives CHANGE, but that he could cultivate it, too, like farmers cultivate their crops, by simultaneously (and indirectly) reminding folks just how bad they really have it—reminding them all the while that he understands—and by capitalizing on this misfortune in disparaging terms to those whose local culture and lifestyle could not be further removed from those about whom he spoke as a means to explain away views and values he and his polished audience find naive or objectionable.

The arrogance of his assumptions is compounded by the fact that by pointing out the misfortune of those who have been making their way off the vestiges of an economy two-decades gone to an audience who is completely economically, culturally, and ideologically removed from them smacks of condescension. Back home, we call that tellin’ tales out of school, and it is not honorable. It is not honorable to affect a posture of sympathy and pity and superiority, to congratulate oneself for one’s depth of understanding in the company of one’s peers. It is not honorable to affect temperance and generosity of spirit.

I’ll not condemn Senator Obama’s recent remarks as “elitist”: I’ll leave that to the misguided populists who seem hell-bent on perpetuating such an unhelpful dichotomy in American life. I will say, however, that his comments are reminiscent of the attitudes of 18th century British colonizers upon encountering indigenous populations, those for whom ‘primitive’ behaviors suggested a want of understanding.

Senator Obama’s remarks were not mangled, nor was this a syntactical mistake, as he has claimed, but it is a perfect example of a logical fallacy: nothing Senator Obama said was untrue—that is, until he reached his damnable conclusion. To say that small-town Pennsylvanians are bitter, disheartened, frustrated, perhaps angry—this is not the issue. To claim that it is misses the point. The point is that his assumptions about those who “cling” to what is often described as “small town values” because they have nothing left to hold on to suggests ignorance, simple mindedness, and a lack of sophistication. Thus his is a fallacy of the most confounding sort in that he built a reasonable argument on the foundation of valid premises, only to advance a faulty conclusion—a conclusion that, paradoxically, seems all the more true because of the accuracy of his premises.

At once brilliant and unethical, this seems to me a calculated risk that afforded him the ability to excuse himself for his poor locution (whoops!) without actually apologizing for his own hubris and damaging, hurtful assumptions about the lives and values of those with whom he clearly does not align; it allowed him to draw out his opponent (and, by the way, is anyone really surprised at how Clinton has conducted herself during this primary season?); and it has rallied his supporters, placing them in a position to defend his intent, arguing to give him a pass—after all, who among us has not experienced verbal blunders of our own?