For obvious reasons, O has a very developed understanding and self-consciousness of Dubois' ideas about Black folks' double consciousness , or the idea that Black folks have two souls, one Black and one White,
Also, I gotta say that O is a good writer. And he's one of us. The right-wing has good reason to red-bait him. If it doesn't work, it may mean the wicked witch of Reaganism is dead. Even more. McCain and Palin are accusing O of being a "socialist" . But the US population has been long trained to have historical amnesia or anti-historical consciousness or presentist consciousness. There is an automatic memory erasure mechanism wherein most Americans can't remember politics from six months earlier. They act like a bunch of little airheaded Ronald Reagans. However, since the fall of the SU, the US propaganda apparatus has , not surprisingly, not been able to keep up saturation of the population with mass anti-communist and anti-Soviet demogogy. I mean afterall, communism is dead, no ? Why talk about it on television. There are masses of American , young adults who have almost no anti-communist brainwashing. And the older adults have fading anti-c reflexes with their habit of forgetting quickly - Maybe !. Now suddenly, as a last resort, McCain and Palin go to that well, but it's dry ? Wow ! The contradictions of the American brainwashing machine: anti-historical consciousness wipes out anti-communist consciousness ??????? We'll see in two weeks. Hold on to your hats. It's Change or More Reaganism. Ding dong the witch is dead, The wicked witch... >>> Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/21/2008 3:24 PM >>> I haven't read Obama's autobiography or his other book, and I'm not sure where this author is coming from, but I find this piece fascinating: The New Republic Invisible Man by David Samuels How Ralph Ellison explains Barack Obama. Post Date Wednesday, October 22, 2008 http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5c263e1d-d75d-4af9-a1d7-5cb761500092 Aside from some skewed political remarks of Samuels, and the unrealistic conclusion that Obama ought to reveal his true self, which Samuels has not unpacked as fully as a third party could do, Samuels did not tie together, among other things, the relationships connecting the liberal idealism Obama was raised on, his pragmatic learning about power in Indonesia and elsewhere, his community activism in, and the ultimate realpolitik he pursued as a politician. Samuels makes an interesting connection between Obama's perception of 3rd world realities and those of the American mainstream, but doesn't pursue it as far as he should have. Samuels sees the contradictions in Obama's story, and the peculiarities of racial identity in it, but he doesn't go far enough, even for a bourgeois writer. This is still only a tease, as is the Frontline documentary. Samuels intimates the consequences of petty bourgeois identity without fully drawing out its implications as it intersects with the peculiarities of both racial identity and crossover appeal. Triangulate community organizing and Jeremiah Wright, the Harvard Law School, and becoming an Illinois politician, to begin with, to draw out the weird logic of Obama's political trajectory. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
