Us and Them and Him and Here and There

Well I am no political expert, you know, but I noticed this thing about Obama's acceptance speech that I thought was interesting. It seemed like his speech had kind of two climactic moments, both of which were encapsulated in a three-word phrase. About halfway through it was "we'll get there," and then at the end it was "yes we can."

"We'll get there" is my favorite. First off, we never know quite exactly where "there" is. So that's kind of nice, because it involves the listener in inventing their own there. Also, it is such a flexible phrase, to be found in exasperation by some parents to some kids in the back seat, in the desperate promise of a repentant lover, reassuringly from teacher to baffled student, in resignation by the leader of a slow-moving group, or even sidesteppingly by a slacker who would rather defer blame for a later day than face it head on.

"Yes we can" is similar in its vagueness and its catch-all quality: the go-to retort to "No you can't," the simple proclamation of simple entitlement, the mantra of the little engine that could and I'd imagine the hope-against-hope mantra of plenty of little engines that couldn't, the gambit of the motivational speaker, even the rallying cry of the willfully apathetic.

I like to imagine a Venn diagram for who the "we" (and its compadre the "they") is in both of these phrases. The way Obama talks makes the "we" region comparatively huge, and the election results are evidence enough that the majority of voting Americans reside there in "we"-land. But then I think maybe the most clever line of the speech puts a bigger bubble around "we" and "they": "And for those who did not vote for me I will still be your president." First off, this change of voice turns the grammatical subjects "we" and "they" into the political subjects "us" and "them" (grammatically, Obama becomes the subject, his 'subjects' become the object). Then by subsuming both under the presidency, Obama is able to say at the same time 'I will still listen to you,' but also 'you better do what I say because I'm the motherfuckin' president and I'm takin' ya there like it or not!' Boo-ya!

Figure 12: Some Political Topology

Soundtrack for this post generously provided by:

I'm sorry but this is just so funny

I had a political idea

I usually don't get too caught up in political stuff. But lately I have been a little bit more. I guess cuz it's everywhere. But check it out, I got this cool idea. I hear all this talk about Palin, about what the hell is the idea with her, and I figured something out-- Palin is there to triangulate Obama. I mean, experience-wise. On the one hand, you got the wisened elder McCain who obviously knows everything since he's like 99 years old and has been doing politics and army stuff since he was like 7. Then you got Palin who obviously knows nothing since she was just like the secretary of the Alaska PTA or whatever. In the middle is Obama, who like had experience once but never inhaled, or maybe whose experience is like the Canadian girlfriend he said he got to second base with or something.

Point being, this way the republican ticket has Obama surrounded. When Obama seems like he is bringing hard "beginner's mind" "non-Washington" kind of game, they can hold up their even more beginnerish, even more non-Washington Palin to cash in. But then when Obama tries to bring a more experience-havin' game, they hold up McCain and his eyebrows which have seen it all before. By circumscribing Obama on either side, they can try to locate him just where they want to, public opinion-wise.

It is like Obama used to be a point, and so did McCain, and you could draw a line through both points, and it would be a straight line. Let's call it line segment OM. As long as that was the line segment, it was kind of an either/or, more/less kind of reasoning that could separate the two on any issue. Especially experience, which seemed so big there for a while, until the republicans started noticing nobody cared as much whether Obama had been in the senate for like four Strom Thurmonds (the new unit of Washington age) or not.

Well so then they put in Palin, and so now we have a line segment POM, and now we can make a more exact judgment of who is closer to who. Which line segment is shorter, PO or OM? That is what I am talkin'. Geometry. Political geometry. Can you major in that? I wanna go back to school and major in political geometry. I got a compass and everything. Good bye.

P.S. There was a test today in class, so no Mr. Fuji. But don't worry cuz I got the next two planned out and they are gonna cause you to have one single chuckle, EACH.