2. I may be a little in love with Obama. His interview with Chris Matthews revealed both his considerable charm and his strategies for fixing much of what's wrong in the U.S. When any question raised a divisive issue, he kept bring it back to what Americans share, and it wasn't corny. I like to think that I recognize when I'm manipulated by political figures and cultural products (e.g., stupid tearjerkers). For example, in 1998, I went to the National Mall for the July 4 celebration. More than a million people (including me) sang the national anthem together. Even as I felt the tears well up, I thought about the politics of nationalism and my complicity in it. In contrast, Obama offers a kind of American politics founded on unity, not tribal, ethnic, partisan, or gender loyalties. (I'm looking at you, Clinton boosters. You know who you are.)
3. That said, I'd like to turn my more philosophical eye toward Verfremdungs. I don't like most of you. As I'm beginning to feel better, I'm beginning to enjoy being caustic again. I could give lots of examples from the past couple of weeks, like saying to a crying woman that her problems are boring. They are boring. My own problems are boring. I don't know why you people even read any of this.
It may be alienation, but it's my alienation and I might remember how to enjoy it again. And now a poem, from the esteemed John Berryman:
Dream Song 1
Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeaseable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the sea
and empty grows every bed.
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