Trying to figure out our young people and Obama with one post.

Remind me not to go partying in "The Atl" anytime soon. What's wrong with you young bucks? I know it's hard to respect another human's life when you do not value your own, but this cycle of depraved violence has got to stop. In fact, all of the ignorant and inexplicable s&^t that we do from time to time has got to stop. Crack in a toddler's shoe? WTF?

Still, I won't lay all of the blame at the feet of these young bucks. They live in a very f^%$#d up society where black is white and white is black, and where there is all kinds of gray in between. It's easy to rationalize away morality when you see politicians on the take and everything around you is driven by shallow consumerism and a live for the moment ethos. We glorify the very rich regardless of how they accumulated their wealth and we wonder why these kids have no morals. Joseph Kennedy was an alleged bootlegger and his son went on to become the president. Many wealthy A-merry-can families built their fortune on the backs of enslaved human beings. ,and we think nothing of it. The depravity we are seeing from some of those in our society should not be so surprising. I know that I am not. I talk and interact with enough of these kids to see just how messed up their heads are and why the think the way they do. Many of the tings I outlined mirror what they spit back at me when I try to lecture them about getting their lives on the straight and narrow. Live for the moment, that's all they do. In their minds the future is now. There is no wife, kids, and a picket fence anywhere in their dreams. Just joining their home boys upstate or hoping that their mother's don't cry too much at their funerals.

Anyway, sorry for the brief reality check. Now back to politics:

Lately I have been more pro O than usual. I am not a huge fan, but I am not a hater like some people. I think the guy has done a decent job, and, more importantly, he did pretty much what he said he was going to do. I expected what I am getting now, so I am not like some of those Obamaholics who are feeling this great disappointment because their boy didn't walk on water and feed every A-merry-can with one happy meal.

He is what he is. And, he is better than the last guy. I actually read an article recently that kind of crystallized my position. The author was speaking for me:

"Nowadays, the political stage has become America’s communal fun house, and nobody looks stranger than Barack Obama.

The president’s critics on the right deride him as a radical socialist seething with anti-American rage. To them, he’s a frightening success who has transformed the federal government, ruined the economy, and undermined national security. To the left, Obama is a tragic failure who squandered his chance for dramatic change: no single-payer health-care plan, no heated battle against Wall Street, and endless war in Afghanistan. If the president is struggling these days, the critics say, it’s perhaps because he’s out of touch with Americans, and even at odds with his own principles.

Yet Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do. Perhaps the critics should read—or reread—the president’s own books. Dreams From My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006) are the most substantial works written by anyone elected president since Woodrow Wilson (who wrote several books before he won election in 1912). In laying out his philosophy, Obama contrasts the GOP’s excessive individualism with the ideal of “ordered liberty” and the rich traditions of civic engagement typical of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. He also criticizes orthodox...

...Almost everything you need to know about Obama is there on the printed page. In contrast to the charges coming now from right and left, Obama is neither a rigid ideologue nor a spineless wimp. The Obama who wrote Dreams and Audacity stands in a long tradition of American reform, wary of absolutes....

...Throughout his career, Obama has refused to demonize his opponents. Instead, he has sought them out and listened to them. He has tried to understand how they think and why they see the world as they do. His mother encouraged this sense of empathy, and it’s a lesson Obama learned well. Since January 2009, Obama has watched his efforts at reconciliation, experimentation, and -consensus--building bounce off the hard surfaces of political self-interest and entrenched partisanship, but there is no reason to think he will abandon that strategy now. He knows that disagreement is a vital part of the American fabric, and that our differences are neither shallow nor trivial......

....Although Obama’s reform agenda echoes aspects of those advanced by many Democrats over the last century, he has admitted—and this is the decisive point in understanding his outlook—that his opponents hold principles rooted as deeply in American history as his own. “I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him,” he wrote in Audacity. “That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal … We are all shaken out of our complacency.” Obama rejects dogma, embraces uncertainty, and dismisses the fables that often pass for history among partisans on both sides who need heroes and villains, and who resist more-nuanced understandings of the past and the present." [Article]

My sentiments, exactly.