Years of Poems and Spirits

It was always a pleasure meeting like-minded folks. This is true for hillbilly racists, white working class laborers, liberation theologists, too-poor-to-own-property-but-enough-to-afford-a-latte-a-day liberal activists. So is it true for immigrant intellectuals from the Orient.

ZDS is a professor in law school. We are of the same age but took quite different routes to the same spatial and temporal location as we did this afternoon… that is too much. We met in his office about my coal mine paper.

But the conversation diverged soon after. I am pleasantly surprised that he’s a fan of Foucault and Said too (more so of the latter and P Bourdieu). His has a insightful view concerning the two: Foucault is too concerned with domination and permeation. Said, however, expands Foucault’s thesis and dares to contest the symbols that were created by the powerful.

Our different views of recent events: Tibet, 08 election and the Western liberal democracy, echo our choice of favorite between Said and Foucault. I suspect his training in law and legislation breeds in him a more optimistic outlook for the outcast surviving in democracy. After all, his job is to protect the right to be different.

I am much more pessimistic about where the liberal legacy in the U.S. is heading to. Now think of it, I may have been “shocked and awed” by the collective reactions following 9.11. But the force of conformity is unmistakeable.

Will an Obama presidency change the paranoia, the hysteria of fear and the intolerance of dissent? To me, that is the hypocracy and the weakness of popular democracy, for it creates a paradox that is unsolvable: even if Obama’s election will change the political ethos of our time, he cannot win unless sufficient majority are ready for the change. If, just for the argument’s sake, the majority is wrong, irrational or stupid, what’s in liberal democracy that can bring a change to this sorry reality?

Just saw the news that Obama openly repudiated Rev. Wright. Also, there are reports that the Wright appearance in the Press Club was in part orchestrated by a Clinton supporter within the organization.

I have never been so disgusted by the political process since I came to the States. I can barely think now.

1. Why the liberals can’t appeal to more Rockefeller Republicans but have to pander to the Reagan Democrats? I would rather give in to the R.R. on tax cuts, law and order, and restrained regulations, rather than to the guns and religon of the racist hillbillies. Is it ever possible to keep a mass of ignorant, easily manipulated, and even reactionary people happy and to commence progressive social changes at the same time? What is the point to keep those people in the tent, so to speak? Do their votes help or hurt the liberal cause more?

2. What Obama is doing is to repent in public: I have sinned for knowing this man. What he did is no different from what a jailed dissident has to do in a Totalitarian regim: he can only be released after he confesses his “crime” and begs for forgiveness. What Wright said is extreme but is well within the limit of freespeech (and is true too!) But the mob society just quartered this guy: humiliated him ruthlessly and played him subtly. Apparently, this is not enough. Obama has to confess too. Otherwise, how best can the powerful mob ensure that Obama, who is running to be their President, is sufficiently disciplined and obdient than forcing a black man to repudiate another black man for protesting against racial injustice–in public and in earnest?!

3. Hillary Clinton is perhaps the most deserving President for this mob society. Not unlike what Bush and Cheney did after 9.11, she knows how to appeal to the worst in human beings. To ascend to the pinnacle of power, to fulfill her own imagined destiny, she is more than happy to pimp herself out to the dirtest fetish of the least desirable group of men, and the insecurity of the pettiest group of women.

Had a lousy day today until got hit by this news: “Spitzer Is Involved in a Prostitution Ring“. I have been following this guy the way once I followed McCain. I thought he had a good shot at the Presidency if he learned well at the governorship (the most recent New Yorker article seems to suggest this way).

Still it is hard to feel sorry for him: he can always go back to law practice; he has a well to do family; so far, he’s invested some but not all he has (money, life, reputation, etc.) into the political career so he’s not gonna go bankrupt or being missed much.

That just shows Bill Clinton’s audacity, ain’t it? Also, just can’t imagine what a day Leno’s crew is having today …