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Obama Speaks And The Nation Should Listen

May 19, 2016
by Caroline Miller
2oo8 election, Barrack Obama, campaign promises, healing the nation, Hillary Clinton, Howard University, justice, righteous anger versus having a strategy, truth and lies, what an election should be about
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In a recent essay, Stanley Bing writes that lies serve as truth as long as they are believed. (“Does the Truth Matter?” by Stanley Bing, Fortune, May 1, 2016, pg. 136.)  In an election year a lot of “truths” serve to justify gut feelings.  One of them is that Hillary Clinton is  hawk.  She voted for the Iraq war, that’s true.  But so did the majority of the Congress.  That shouldn’t make her stand out.  She supported Obama’s involvement in the fall of Libyan president, Omar Khadafy, but that was his administration, not hers, and that decisions is far more convoluted than Hillary’s hawkishness.  (Click)  She did support early military intervention in Syria.  Hindsight tells us her  recommendation was right, though she was overruled.  Being tough and having a strategy doesn’t make a person a hawk. 

Case in point: After I had an exchange with a Hillary detractor, the person closed with,  “In 2008 Obama whipped her butt.”

Obama and Clinton

Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

True.  But what happened next tells a greater story. After her defeat, Hillary dusted herself off and supported her former opponent.  Not only did she support him, she served in his cabinet.  Both the President and Hillary took big steps to heal the country after a fractious election.  Did they have personal reasons for doing so? Probably.  But making peace wasn’t their only option… just the best one.  Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama showed the nation how to move forward.  

Words are cheap.  Promises are easily broken, especially campaign promises  What matters is how people conduct themselves in the clinches. As President Obama said to the graduating class of Howard University this year, “…change requires more than righteous anger.  It requires a program and it requires organizing….change requires more than just speaking out – it requires listening…to those with whom you disagree and being prepared to compromise…The point is, you need allies in a democracy… And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right.” (Click)     

To those who refuse to “compromise” when their candidate doesn’t survive the primary, I turn to the President’s words, once more: When we don’t vote, we give away our power, disenfranchise ourselves – right when we need your power to stop others from taking away the vote and rights of those more vulnerable than you are – the elderly and the poor, the formerly incarcerated trying to earn their second chance.

 This upcoming election isn’t about personal disappointments.  The election is about the future of the country.  It’s about justice.  Think we can’t get justice and social change  from someone who consorts with the wealthy?  Think again.  Think Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

 

 

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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