Has Obama lost his message?

[mswas]

@LilShieste

Isaac Newton seriously pursued studies in alchemy and the occult. Does this mean we should just toss aside his theories on mechanics, which are still in use today.

This example works better for the OP, as Newton’s work on Mechanics and his work on Alchemy and the Occult were not separate. It is an entirely modern conceit to separate his experiments that were fruitless into ‘occult’ and his experiments that did work into ‘science’. The distinction as it stands today did not exist for Newton.

So this example actually supports Kozmik’s thesis. Because it is trying to separate Newton into two Newtons when there was really only one and all of his experiments were driven by the same impulse to understand the mind of God.

[stolichnaya]

But it’s also an excellent example of how people can have both great ideas and absolutely batshit ideas, and we don’t have to throw the former out with the latter.

It works much harder in that regard than it does toward the hypothesis of the OP, if such a thing can be discerned.

[Sam_Stone]

For those who think that Obama is getting some special scrutiny here, I should remind you of other front-running candidates who have been sunk by far less than this.

For example, who remembers George Allen? He was the new Republican hope two years ago. But he got caught on video calling a heckler ‘macaca’. No one even knew what it meant. But hey, it must be racist, right? The media did flips and twists to scour the globe looking for the word, to try and tie a racial connotation to it. They found out that French colonials in the Belgian Congo had used the word as an epithet. Well, Allen must be a racist then. The video was played over and over again, and Allen’s campaign was finished.

Howard Dean let loose one “YEAARGH!” that looked a little manic, and he was done.

John McCain was beating Bush handily until rumors surfaced that he had fathered a black baby, just as the nomination contest was moving into South Carolina. Bush beat him, and McCain never recovered.

Party nomination contests are often dirty, and it doesn’t take much to sink a candidate because the primary criterion to winning is electability. Anything that casts doubt on that is trouble.

But the reason Allen was sunk by ‘Macaca’ is because it played into people’s suspicions of him in the first place. And because it was caught on video, so it gave fodder for TV networks to replay over, and over, and over. The gaffes that kill politicians are ones that play into their perceived flaws or the public’s fears. If there’s video, ramp up the damage by a factor of 10.

Obama so far has weathered the Rezko issue, the Bill Ayers issue, and the Revend Wright issue. But if this sinks him, it won’t be anything that hasn’t happened to a dozen other promising candidates. If anything, he’s taken more hits than most candidates would be able to withstand - probably because he’s up against another weak and polarizing candidate with her own baggage.

But this does not bode well for him in the general election.

[mswas]

@stolichnaya

But it’s also an excellent example of how people can have both great ideas and absolutely batshit ideas, and we don’t have to throw the former out with the latter.

It works much harder in that regard than it does toward the hypothesis of the OP, if such a thing can be discerned.

Right, but people continue to judge Newton based upon their 21st century understanding of categories. Newton did no experiments that were not Alchemical or Occult, just some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Alchemy was the precursor to chemistry. You’d have no modern chemistry if not for alchemy.

Sorry, no more hijack from me, this is just a pet peeve of mine. Sloppy rhetoric that is taken as gospel.

[Phlosphr]

The reason Obama is still able to fend off the grief from the Rev.Wright issues is because people are voting for what Obama stands for in Washington, not necessarily for the man himself, but for the movement he represents. Take that for what it’s worth, notes from an Obama campaigner.

[descamisado]

@mswas

Right, but people continue to judge Newton based upon their 21st century understanding of categories. Newton did no experiments that were not Alchemical or Occult, just some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Alchemy was the precursor to chemistry. You’d have no modern chemistry if not for alchemy.

Sorry, no more hijack from me, this is just a pet peeve of mine. Sloppy rhetoric that is taken as gospel.

Actually, I personally don’t think this was too much of a hijack in that, as an analogy to the OP, this side discussion has a clarity that helping me understand the OP a little better.

[stolichnaya]

@mswas

Right, but people continue to judge Newton based upon their 21st century understanding of categories. Newton did no experiments that were not Alchemical or Occult, just some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Alchemy was the precursor to chemistry. You’d have no modern chemistry if not for alchemy.

Sorry, no more hijack from me, this is just a pet peeve of mine. Sloppy rhetoric that is taken as gospel.

I think I understand what you are saying here, and thanks for the clarification. Your point if I am getting it right is that Newton wasn’t doing a combination of some physics and some alchemy, we have just built on some of his occult/alchemical work as the foundation of modern physics. It is indeed a valid distinction.

However, it still applies to the Wright situation in a way that would allow Obama to retain and build on the themes of Wright, even if it turns out that the man has been wrongheaded about a lot of things.

Generally, I think that the big deal is not that he is wrong about AIDS or brain chemistry, if it was really just that and Wright was the man he was in the Moyers interview, we would not be having this discussion. The problem is that the man is loud and bombastic and confrontational and, I think, humorous and sarcastic. This brings attention to his odder ideas that otherwise would not exist. Really, I think this brow furrowing about Wright’s incorrect and ridiculous ideas is so much window dressing, it never gets applied to most religious thought on science, which is generally whackadoo. The issue with this guy is that he won’t behave.

[Kozmik]

@Gangster Octopus

Seems to me that Barack is back on message, if he was even ever off of it.

Notice that Obama mentions that both him and Hillary are part of the same movement… it’s the Democratic movement - but something more.

@Phlosphr

The reason Obama is still able to fend off the grief from the Rev.Wright issues is because people are voting for what Obama stands for in Washington, not necessarily for the man himself, but for the movement he represents.

Obama mentions how he went from a few people, to thousands, to millions. That’s the movement. But what I’m saying is now, in this month, he has to fight the battle. Obama, Clinton, Edwards and - who else is out there?

[mswas]

@stolichnaya

I think I understand what you are saying here, and thanks for the clarification. Your point if I am getting it right is that Newton wasn’t doing a combination of some physics and some alchemy, we have just built on some of his occult/alchemical work as the foundation of modern physics. It is indeed a valid distinction.

Yes, that is precisely it. Thank you.

However, it still applies to the Wright situation in a way that would allow Obama to retain and build on the themes of Wright, even if it turns out that the man has been wrongheaded about a lot of things.

Yes, that is true. I think Obama has ultimately owned, ‘The Audacity of Hope’, and made it his own.

Generally, I think that the big deal is not that he is wrong about AIDS or brain chemistry, if it was really just that and Wright was the man he was in the Moyers interview, we would not be having this discussion. The problem is that the man is loud and bombastic and confrontational and, I think, humorous and sarcastic. This brings attention to his odder ideas that otherwise would not exist. Really, I think this brow furrowing about Wright’s incorrect and ridiculous ideas is so much window dressing, it never gets applied to most religious thought on science, which is generally whackadoo. The issue with this guy is that he won’t behave.

Well, as I’ve said in another thread. I buy into the Obama/Wright conspiracy angle, that they planned their split in order to get Obama in. I don’t believe Obama didn’t know who he was prior to this, and I don’t believe Wright is oblivious to the nature of politics. I think Wright took one for the team in the hope that Obama would actually do what he could to help that community when President. I think Wright helped kick the gates in so Obama could Storm Heaven, so to speak.

[stolichnaya]

That’s where we part ways, I think- what you describe would be an extremely risky strategy for Obama and his camp, who have shown themselves to be cautious and considered in most of their strategic moves. I think Wright is the prototypical loose cannon, and the one thing they can’t plan for- they knew he was waiting in the weeds and they have just had to react to him based on how demonstrative he decided to get.

I think they’re doing OK, by the way, he is really incredibly vigorous and colorful for an albatross and as such is extremely difficult to shake.

[waterj2]

@Sam Stone

For example, who remembers George Allen? He was the new Republican hope two years ago. But he got caught on video calling a heckler ‘macaca’. No one even knew what it meant. But hey, it must be racist, right? The media did flips and twists to scour the globe looking for the word, to try and tie a racial connotation to it. They found out that French colonials in the Belgian Congo had used the word as an epithet. Well, Allen must be a racist then. The video was played over and over again, and Allen’s campaign was finished.

It was North Africans of French descent, such as George Allen’s mother. And it didn’t sink his campaign, it just led to a flood of evidence that he was indeed a racist, and perhaps a bit of a sociopath.

[descamisado]

@stolichnaya

That’s where we part ways, I think- what you describe would be an extremely risky strategy for Obama and his camp, who have shown themselves to be cautious and considered in most of their strategic moves. I think Wright is the prototypical loose cannon, and the one thing they can’t plan for- they knew he was waiting in the weeds and they have just had to react to him based on how demonstrative he decided to get.

I think they’re doing OK, by the way, he is really incredibly vigorous and colorful for an albatross and as such is extremely difficult to shake.

I think this is pretty close to it, when it comes to what Obama is dealing with.

[tomndebb]

@Sam Stone

For example, who remembers George Allen? He was the new Republican hope two years ago. But he got caught on video calling a heckler ‘macaca’. No one even knew what it meant. But hey, it must be racist, right? The media did flips and twists to scour the globe looking for the word, to try and tie a racial connotation to it. They found out that French colonials in the Belgian Congo had used the word as an epithet. Well, Allen must be a racist then.

I agree with the general point that small slips can cause irreparable damage.
Allen’s case was a small slip, even though it did not play out the way you have described it. It hardly took the media “scouring the globe” to discover that macaca was a racist pejorative among French-speaking colonial Europeans in Africa and that Allen’s mother was, indeed, a French-speaking colonial European from Africa. It also did not help that Allen already had a track record of using disparaging language about blacks–not that he was persistently racist in all his comments, but that he occasionally let loose with ethnic slurs, setting a precedent. Nor was Allen’s claim that he “made up” the word plausible, given that he used it as a name when referring to a dark-skinned person to whom he also said “Welcome to America.” (Why use a nonsense word as a name?)

Allen’s misstep was much less than Hart’s challenge to the media to catch him fooling around, but much more than Dean’s silly scream in Iowa. Small things can have an impact on elections (as Gerry Ford could relate regarding the domination of Eastern Europeans by the U.S.S.R.).

[don_t_ask]

@Phlosphr

How do you know it has new meaning for him? Did you read Audacity of Hope? It’s a very good read, please tell me you read it and didn’t just peruse it…

I have to ask, what do you think peruse means?

American Heritage Dictionary
pe·ruse (pə-rōōz’)
tr.v. pe·rused, pe·rus·ing, pe·rus·es

To read or examine, typically with great care.

[Sam_Stone]

@tomndebb

I agree with the general point that small slips can cause irreparable damage.
Allen’s case was a small slip, even though it did not play out the way you have described it. It hardly took the media “scouring the globe” to discover that macaca was a racist pejorative among French-speaking colonial Europeans in Africa and that Allen’s mother was, indeed, a French-speaking colonial European from Africa. It also did not help that Allen already had a track record of using disparaging language about blacks–not that he was persistently racist in all his comments, but that he occasionally let loose with ethnic slurs, setting a precedent. Nor was Allen’s claim that he “made up” the word plausible, given that he used it as a name when referring to a dark-skinned person to whom he also said “Welcome to America.” (Why use a nonsense word as a name?)

Allen’s misstep was much less than Hart’s challenge to the media to catch him fooling around, but much more than Dean’s silly scream in Iowa. Small things can have an impact on elections (as Gerry Ford could relate regarding the domination of Eastern Europeans by the U.S.S.R.).

My recollection of the event was that it took a couple of days for the origin of the word ‘macaca’ to be found. And I did say that the reason this hurt him was because it played into the existing fear that he was a racist. That’s the point I was making - that if the gaffe reinforces the public’s worst fears of you, it takes on far more importance. I wasn’t trying to defend Allen, although on second reading I think it was a little too slanted that way. So my apologies for that. I don’t want to defend a racist in any way. If he was, good riddance. It doesn’t change the point, however.

[Kozmik]

@mswas

This example works better for the OP, as Newton’s work on Mechanics and his work on Alchemy and the Occult were not separate. It is an entirely modern conceit to separate his experiments that were fruitless into ‘occult’ and his experiments that did work into ‘science’. The distinction as it stands today did not exist for Newton.

So this example actually supports Kozmik’s thesis. Because it is trying to separate Newton into two Newtons when there was really only one and all of his experiments were driven by the same impulse to understand the mind of God.

Vox populi vox Dei

[tomndebb]

@Kozmik

Vox populi vox Dei

You have still utterly failed to demonstrate that Obama’s political message has ever reflected the politics of Rev. Wright–or even that Wright’s political views made it into Wright’s own spiritual views or sermons with any frequency.

While it is nice to go on about the holistic nature of human thought, the reality is that the principles upon which one bases one’s views can lead to widely diverging views of actions and praxis. To oversimplify it (appropriate to this thread), Wright can have a deep belief that a faith in Jesus gives us the audacity to hope for better things against all earthly odds. Wright can then take that to mean that the black community needs to stand up and demand an end to white oppression that preents the black community from escaping poverty and Obama can take the same primary message and assert that citizens must stand up and work to change the political stagnation and institutional inertia that results in the whole society failing to resolve its problems.

Until it has been shown that Obama ever embraced Wright’s politics–or that Wright ever made his political views central to his religious message, it is still simply a silly assertion that Obama has “lost” any “message.”

[9thFloor]

@tomndebb

You have still utterly failed to demonstrate that Obama’s political message has ever reflected the politics of Rev. Wright–or even that Wright’s political views made it into Wright’s own spiritual views or sermons with any frequency.

LOL “.…with any frequency” being the key (slippery) words.

Wright’s political and spiritual views are obviously intertwined, as they are by the very nature of Black Liberation (political term) Theology (spiritual term).

But I think you know that.

[9thFloor]

And until there’s any evidence that they haven’t always been so intertwined in Wright’s sermons, Obama can’t claim that Wright isn’t “the same man” he met 20 years ago.

Personally, I think what’s possible (and gives Obama the most benefit of the doubt, in my view) is that Obama always knew what Wright believed – and Wright always believed it – but he chose to simply cherrypick the part that he agreed with and discard the rest; I’d even go further and suspect Obama even “didn’t notice” to some degree the rest of it…in that sense, he seems tone deaf to parts of another person with which he can’t agree or find common ground on; it seems to be his way of ‘uniting’ people to just hear what he wants to hear: the parts that he can find commonality with, which might mean ignoring 75% of who someone is to extract out the 25% that you believe.

The best that can be said for him is he has pretty poor judgment of who to associate himself with for someone whose presidential aspirations apparently started in kindergarten. LOL

But then again, Wright was probably part of his campaign to buy himself into that kind of “blackness” by association (as his courtship of his wife may have been). Well, it worked.

And now, he wants to pivot the other way. That won’t work, no matter what happens. He could even win the presidency and this will never go away; and it will be cause for further divisiveness on deep social (elitist), cultural, and racial terms that go way beyond any polarizing Hillary’s (mere) politics (as opposed to race and cultural hatred) would ever engender. The black community was, of course, completely behind her at the start and only changed after Obama injected his fruit punch into the mix, dividing the party. His effect would likely be the same as POTUS.

Thanks a lot, uniter! :smack:

[stolichnaya]

Man, it’s going to eat you alive when this guy becomes president.