"No Surrender" vs. Lapel Pins

One aspect of modern politics has been to elevate the trivial to unheard of heights. By any serious measure, Barack Obama holds an enormous advantage over John McCain. His poise, intelligence, and charisma are undeniable, as is the utter ruin of the right-wing agenda with which McCain has many ties. Unfortunately, Obama forgot to wear a flag label pin, and now one has to worry about trivialities reigning supreme once again. Critics have grumbled for decades that soundbites have surpassed informed knowledge of the issues. Taking advantage of this slippage into superficiality, the Republicans turned "liberal" into a dirty word, intelligence into elitism, and the smiling vacuousness of a Ronald Reagan into a prime key for electoral success.

Thus McCain's "No surrender" approach to the Iraq war appeals to the cherished illusion that America can never be anything but a winner. This attitude covers over the disastrous reality of how the U.S. destroyed another country without provocation, yet the public tells pollsters that it trusts McCain over Obama on national security. In essence, image matters more than realism. In the same way that voters preferred Bush in 2004 because he maintained his hawkishness (and John Kerry rode a windsurfer), Obama has been condemned all over the blogosphere because he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin and thus, by some mystical rationale, isn't patriotic enough to be commander-in-chief. What if the electorate had judged John F. Kennedy for not wearing a hat? Or Lyndon Johnson for lifting his beagle by the ears?

On PBS last week, David Brooks pointed out a similarity in the awful news stories that came out on Friday -- soaring oil prices, a falling stock market, plunging home prices, and the revelation than one in ten homes built since 2000 now lie vacant. Brooks suggested that they all represent loss of control, a fear that seizes the American public today, with no end in sight. What Brooks failed to mention is the major cause of all this bad news, which is twofold.

The first is that this country, once it became the world's only superpower, chose an aggressive military route in using its power. Good guy America, a role occupied since the Marshall Plan, flipped into bad guy America. The results in animosity were dramatic. The Middle East, including most of OPEC, showed its anxiety and anger by using the price of oil as a punitive measure. The atmosphere would have been far different if America had led the way in dealing with global warming, among other positive issues, and letting the UN lead a united front against Saddam.

The second reason for today's bad news is an addiction to unreality. This includes more than the administration's blind faith in the free market and its denial of climate change. Obstructing stem cell research was born in an equally blind faith in fundamentalist Christian ideology, and a programmed dismissal of all progressive ideas. The whole country -- or a huge segment -- bought into the illusion that American leadership, prosperity, and backward-looking self-interest would be permanent. As a result, nobody currently in power has remotely begun to seize any kind of control over our future. Lulled into unreality, we have come to see a lapel pin as equal to "No surrender." To the extent that we wake up form this field of dreams, the better chance that someone will regain control, not just for our sakes but the whole world's.

www.intentblog.com

www.deepakchopra.com

Comments

[jdbid1]

Following the Kentucky primary I saw three interviews from voters who were asked why they didn't vote for Obama.

One said it was because he was Muslim. Another said because his middle name was Hussein. And another said it was because he was black. So there you go, proof that the flag pin doesn't have any impact on the voters. And who says Americans don't vote on the issues.

[MindandMatter]

Dr Chopra writes, “The second reason for today's bad news is an addiction to unreality”.

There is another addiction to unreality, it is bad news too. It is when seemingly normal people are threatened and intimidated by logic, reason and critical thinking. On your own blog, intentblog.com, comments promoting these traits are often removed.

The latest removal is report that a team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7440217.stm

So on one hand you, or whoever looks after IB, remove scientific opinions but go on telling us that you “know” that there is “Life after Death”. Or you cite that bizarre University of Virginia study that to date has found over 2,000 children who vividly remember their past lives . . . Even more astonishing, over 200 of these children exhibit birthmarks that resemble the way they remember dying in their most recent lifetime. http://dangerousintersection.org/2007/02/28/the-great-afterlife-debate-michael-shermer-v-deepak-chopra/

In “Peace is the Way” you even tell us that mental spoon bending is a fact our culture is trying to deny us. You tell us how you and your wife have been part of many spoon-bending get-togethers.

Thank goodness for Arianna’s blog, here everyone is welcome no matter how addicted one is to unreality.

[Dap]

Dear Dr. Chopra,

Been awhile sice I dropped in on you, hope you are well. Another, eloquently expressed and sound punditry indeed, we are in the same stream of consciousness on this one. Agape.

PS.
With regard to one of our other points of contention.
Look what I've come accross Dr. Chopra

Seems Schrodinger's cat in the box, might be a "Cat in the Hat", if ya catch my drift.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017939/posts

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080515/full/news.2008.829.html

What do ya think about that? Here a dated piece from 2006 Stanford, about Bohmain Mechanics.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Gonna be quite interesting, we'll have to wait and see the finding, until then I reserve my right to say, "Told ya so" about that QM stuff, BTW my personal confidence is HIGH. TeeHeehe >:-)

[OnTheCusp]

God help us all, (the whole freaking world,) if the flag-waving yahoos prevail in November. I shudder to think of it!!

[Johnnn]

Nice statement issued just now by Obama.

[brixtony]

Pleeeeze try to get it. It's not about "doing it for you". Hillary and Barack's policies are virtually identical. McCain is a 100% CONSERVATIVE who has shown, just like all the other pols, that he can change his so- called "maverick" ideals on a dime. Obama will bring in good solid liberal, moderate and I hope, progressive, people to the cabinet, the Supreme Court, State Dept and all the other positions that matter. McCain is another Bush'ite who will have to kiss up to the radical right, the ultra-CONs and the worst of the war profiteers. Personally, I'm to the left of Kucinich but I'm excited to see what the Dems pull together. Hillary was far from my choice, but I would have gladly voted for her and will again if she runs for Senate, Governor or whatever in NY.

Think about it, THINK!!

Posted June 7, 2008 | 12:08 PM (EST)

[Johnnn]

Brixtony, it's good to hear that while you describe yourself as to the left of Kucinich you won't be voting for Nader. In 2000 I and the moderate members of the Party voted for Gore but people of your political bent migrated to Nader in droves. I guess 8 awful years under Dubya puts things in perspective. The Democratic Party never seems to get it right. Maybe if Joe Biden was the nominee we could all unite behind one candidate.

[XME]

"Image matters more than realism"

I believe that's the motto of the Republican Party!

[Johnnn]

The Republican motto is: HONESTY IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE

[XME]

I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean, but there are fortunately a LOT of voters out there who believe that the candidate's views on the issues is much more important than how much experience they have. All of McCain's experience doesn't change or help the fact that he wants to continue a war that cannot be won and that even he has no map to what a win is. It doesn't help that he wants to undo women's rights and that when it comes to the economy, he's clueless. His experience is in Congress and has a soldier...that doesn't have anything to do with experience running a country. In that regard, none of them has the experience, and most of us decide based on their views and positions, and we see McCain taking the views of a president with a 25% approval rating! Pretty scary.

[Joeseo]

We Americans will never clear the fog of, and as you say, the addiction to unreality and dreams. We no longer can act as citizens should but merely act as consumers 24/7, sheepishly obeying the Corporate Shepards.

We had a few days of clarity based on unity after 9/11. The fog returned permanently and we continue to blindly grope for understanding as Corporate Fascism overturns our freedoms.

I say American Standards can be resorted only as we connect the dots between 9/11, Iraq, and Oil.

Let us never forget the shame of the Pentagon on 9/11. The most expensively defended and cheapest return we ever got on Defense spending. Aramco and Saudi Wahabism have won the game and the ONLY pin Americans deserve is the one they are pinning on our rear-ends.

[Johnnn]

Damn! Hillary just endorsed Obama. What a mistake! It won't do any good. I gotta go with the old man.

[Johnnn]

Succinct and intelligent, but now I realize why I like Hillary best.
Obama is intelligent but I can't relate to him with his appeal to youth and rich liberals.
McCain stumbles along unnaturally but I trust him at the controls. I believe he knows what to do,
and in fact both Hillary and Obama are wrong on Iraq. To end the ordeal in Iraq quickest we need to
WIN that war and end the fighting. Trying to run will make matters worse. McCain is right to appeal to
America's image as a winner who does not run from a fight.
Overall, however, Hillary is the best candidate. Intelligent but comfortable with people. What a
disasterous mistake the Democratic Party is making.

[slank]

Did you not hear her speech? She said to look forward because looking back at what might have been won't work for the country and it is defeatism.

[Johnnn]

Yeah, she said that but Obama doesn't do it for me.

[XME]

Don't bother...no doubt this is a Repug troll...

[cc]

Life is not a competition--it's a cooperation. You and McCain are both fools.

[nlb]

Could you please define what "winning" in Iraq entails? If you can't, I'm not surprised, since no Republican in or out of the administration seems to be able to define it either.

[Johnnn]

Don't worry about me defining "winning" in Iraq. Worry about McCain knowing what winning means. He says he can win that war if the American people support the effort. Those are his words.

[suzukimom]

Shouldn't you sign up to serve, since you believe in winning the war? Or if you are unable, are you encouraging your sons, daughters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren to volunteer for the military? Maybe we will have the troops we need to win if all of the people who support the war actually do so. I actually think that every person who chooses to vote for McCain has an obligation to their fellow Americans to accept responsibility for that vote. At the very least, they should feel a pang of guilt for every American serviceperson or innocent Iraqi civilian who is maimed or killed in Iraq after Bush leaves office. But hey, I still have a Bush/Kerry sticker on my car so that everyone knows that the last eight years are not my fault.

[suzukimom]

Sorry, I meant to write that I still have a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car so that people know that the last eight years are not my fault. Thinking of McCain and his supporters always reminds me of Bush.

[IndependentAllways]

Interesting, but please one favor, when you say "WIN" the war in Iraq, please define for me what would constitute this WIN you are talking about. IOW define WIN (in relation to the war in Iraq of course) for me. And when you take your time to really think about this, maybe, just maybe you will realize how utterly naive and unrealistic and ultimately stupid you sound.