{"id":870,"date":"2014-08-25T18:00:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T22:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/?p=870"},"modified":"2014-08-25T21:57:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T01:57:14","slug":"were-not-a-family-were-a-nation-so-take-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/08\/were-not-a-family-were-a-nation-so-take-that\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re Not a Family, We’re a Nation, So Take That"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cHe [Obama] invoked the American family last week. It\u2019s a lie, brother. You\u2019ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We\u2019re not a family. We\u2019re a people. We\u2019re a nation. And a nation always has divisions. You have to be able to speak to those divisions in such a way that, like FDR, like Lincoln, you\u2019re able to somehow pull out the best of who we are, given the divisions. You don\u2019t try to act as if we have no divisions and we\u2019re just an American family, with the poor getting treated in disgraceful ways and the rich walking off sipping tea, with no accountability at all . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u00a0Cornel West<\/a>, interviewed by Salon<\/em> about his thoughts on the president\u2019s being \u201ca brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. . . . It\u2019s like you\u2019re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.<\/span>\u201d We\u2019re not a family, we\u2019re a nation, that\u2019s an important insight.<\/p>\n

I think much of current policy comes from trying to settle disputes as if we were a family, where forbearance can be imposed and concessions to the odd or eccentric or egotistical member can be required, even if his demands aren\u2019t fair or reasonable, because the alternative is division. Hence what\u2019s called political correctness \u2014 which has a conservative as well as a liberal mode \u2014 which tries to squelch possibly divisive arguments in favor of a kind of family coziness, which of course is in fact dysfunctional.<\/p>\n

Nations thrive on disagreement and dispute. Some arguments are\u00a0political, some cultural, some economic. Fighting\u2019s\u00a0the cost of doing business.\u00a0Nations\u00a0necessarily produce winners and losers, and sometimes the losers are going to be really angry. Well-running nations have mechanisms that make sure the anger isn\u2019t permanent.\u00a0\u00a0This is why politics can be a noble calling. Someone has to make the arguments and work for the answers and find ways of accomodating those who win and those who lose and those who lose and get angry.<\/p>\n

That Cornel West seems to see. In his bitterness at the president for running as a progressive and then revealing himself to be \u201ca Wall Street presiden[t],\u201d though, West forgets that Obama always ran as if America were a family. He was the great unifier, the man who stood above the divisions and brought the divided, battling people together. He was going to be the dysfunctional country\u2019s mom. The compromises of which West complains were implicit in his campaign rhetoric.<\/span><\/p>\n

That being the great unifier, healer, uniter, etc., really meant \u201cDo what I want you to do\u201d was obvious to some of us. It was a political rhetoric that pretended not to be a political rhetoric. While he still talks like that, as when he speaks as if all problems would be settled if only the Republicans didn\u2019t oppose him, this conception of the nation and his role as the agent of its unification \u2014 that he is the mother who calms and pacifies the family \u2014 allows the kind of corporatism and the retreat from progressive politics of which Cornel West complains.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that so few people are happy with Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe [Obama] invoked the American family last week. It\u2019s a lie, brother. You\u2019ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We\u2019re not a family. We\u2019re a people. We\u2019re a nation. And a nation always has divisions. You have to be able to speak to those divisions in such a way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1863,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWe're Not a Family, We're a Nation, So Take That<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""He invoked the American family last week. It\u2019s a lie, brother. You\u2019ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We\u2019re not a family. 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