Oh, the qualms of being liberal!

One of the classes I am substituing for this morning is watching "Oliver Twist", the Roman Polansky version (which I recommend, and would do so more highly if I could picture ever being in the mood to see it of my own volition). My favorite quote comes after Oliver has been thrown in the coal shed at Mrs. Sowerberry's. Mr. Bumble tells her he never would have behaved violently (after his mother was called a whore) if she hadn't fed him meat. "Oh," she exclaims "the qualms of being liberal!" Because I helped this poor boy, she is moaning, he had the strength to rebel against me and cause me trouble!

The spirit of open-heartedness and generosity that should pervade the helping of other people is still often missing in today's society. Republican cries we have heard this week that an economic stimulus package that relies on the creation of jobs will be ultimately ineffective reeks of this same timidity in extending oneself. "We want to help poor people, we just think the best way to do it is to decrease the taxes on all the short-selling I've been doing in the stock market this year." Um, yeah. (Really, Bucky, your idea for a blog post was to compare Republicans to a Dickensian antagonist? Has it been that slow a week? Are you that bitter for not having known about short-selling ETF's yourself at the beginning of the year? Let's see where this goes...)

I have confidence and faith in the benefits of generosity and forgiveness because I have been the recipient of so much of both in my life. I'll have paid off my Perkins loans long before I can hope to have returned even a fraction of the love and care I have received to the the world. But the small ways in which I have been able to taste these ineffable emotions sustain and uplift me when I feel overwhelmed by the pervasive messages of our society about the money, power and comfort that successful people "should" be focusing on. Benjamin Franklin wrote early on in his experiments with patronage that someone is more likely to help you out after they have had one opportunity to give you assistance than if they owe you a favor for a kindness done to them. He recognized that people got more of a lift from lending him a book than from having him do something they needed for him.

This same sentiment expresses itself so fundamentally in all the cultures that I have lived in. Mo Zi wrote that our human instinct to help others manifests itself in the natural reaction to save a baby teetering on the edge of a well. Nasreddin Hoca tales in Turkey highlight the astute cleverness of helping your neighbors and the ways in which it benefits you in the long-term with stories about borrowed pots that "magically" reproduce while in his possession. This combination of noetic and cultural knowledge fills me with hope, and is sustaining.

Obama's Cons

While the term "Obamacon" has become a self-congratulatory term for liberal pundits to refer to conservative intellectuals who have "come over to their side" and voiced support for President-elect Obama, a more needed reference at this point is to "Obama's Cons"- the conventional Cabinet members Obama has appointed.  Obama has done a superb job of assembling a capable and experienced group of individuals to help the US recover from a historically harrowing year.  However, in doing so he has disappointed many of the progressives who helped to jump-start his campaign in its early stages.  Predictably, his early emphasis on stoking the enthusiasms of college students and grass-roots activists has given way to corporate and establishment pandering.  

But the foreseeable shift from focusing on empowering a grass-roots campaign in hopes of toppling Hillary to searching for experienced  high-level officials did not have to take as heinously conventional a form as it did.  Authority and validity in our political system are deeply enough tied to institutional experience and conventional forms of praise and reward that many people felt it would have been irresponsible not to seek such traits in Cabinet members.  Obama's lack of imagination and courage in bending those expectations was frustrating though.  His method of finding and hiring the biggest names that would give his fan base reason for recognition and support was more Brian Cashman than it was Theo Epstein (Theo would have had the courage to drag along some of the in-house organizers and difference-makers that gave us hope early on, taunts of crony-ism be damned [and if there's one area we can easily link Theo to Obama, it's how much the media loves them]).  It was more (deep breath...you can write it, Bucky...just get it over with...SOUL WRITHING IN ANGUISH!!!) Al Davis (sea creature-esque owner of the Raiders who perennially ruins his franchise's chances by signing mediocre big-name players) than Scott Pioli (savvy personnel architect of the Patriots dynasty.  

So far, things have been more The Best and the Brightest than Team of Rivals.  There is no good way to mean that, unless you are putting together a Trivia Bowl team- so maybe we can just hand Summers his t-shirt, mug, gift-certificate etc. and send him on his merry way?  Didn't think so.  

The most striking example of the "Obama's Cons" phenomenon has to be Robert Gates being retained as Secretary of Defense.  Did I miss the part during those huge campaign rallies where Obama pledged to shift our national security efforts away from the draining, unpopular occupation of Iraq by...retaining one of the men Bush chose to run the war?  Was there a mistranslation that had crowds in Germany waving their lighters at the thought of a hold-over running the department responsible for one of the most fundamental changes everyone was asked to believe in?  There should be a hue and of outcry over the pure slap-in-the-face symbolism of this decision to the majority of the country that has at least in opinion joined the anti-Iraq-war movement.  The lack thereof just shows to what an extent we have come to accept the logic of the status-quo and thereby disempower ourselves as believers in the possibility of transformative change in our country.  

...And for the sake of ending on a more upbeat note, check out this courageous and inspiring link to a story in BusinessWeek (of all places) about an act of creative disruption at which I am still marveling: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D958H33G1.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+++analysis