Tuesday, January 20, 2009

On the inauguration

I don't feel like this inauguration marks a serious change in the way the US works. I'm skeptical mostly because the same forces which supported every candidate for the last quite a long time supported Obama.

His rhetoric is brilliant. A more positive rhetoric that I've not heard from people in serious power. The Si Se Puede co-opting = brilliant. However I'm afraid the only revolutions have been rhetorical ones.

So I think we will get out of our current crisis' and we will do so by putting ourselves back into the system which led us here. For all the democratising forces we've come to rely on, they still operate in spite of the larger powers that be, rather than in concert with them.

I really do think of larger organisations as things with lives of their own. If you took the whole staff out of a company and replaced it with entirely different people, you would have the same company in a very short about of time. The power of a few individuals cannot change the basic nature of an organisation.

I don't know if it's because I enjoyed Dune a Little too much, or if maybe it is just my bent towards futility, but I do know that an analysis of groups as entities separate from the parts which make them up makes good sense.

It's something that has bothered me for quite a long time. The presidency is still going to be what it is going to be. Unless there is some structural change business as usual is going to continue. Perhaps particular policies will stop, but the systemic problems that brought untenable policies about will still be intact.

I don't believe there will be change from this. And I don't believe that any elected official, as long as they are elected by the money donated to them rather than by the people voting, will be a vehicle for real change.

The only real changes we can make are by ourselves.

So I don't know about you, but I will not worry about who is president or who the police are, or what the laws are. I will worry instead about the way I interact with people, the way that I affect the world around me and the ways I can make my surroundings better. there is little more I can do.

As for this president, I look forward to being disappointed in new ways, and the election of a minority while we're still prosecuting other minorities doesn't particularly inspire me.

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