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Obama: What type of Animal?
17 years ago
What type of animal is Barack Obama?
I just watched a speech of his from a while back that included a LONG, articulate discussion of secularism in U.S. society, (and what's effed up about the wackjobs who want a Theocracy in this country-- and he was even polite about it without giving an inch). And I think I'm now a fanboi.
I think he might be a cheetah. He looks like a cheetah. But cats are, (sorry, felines in the audience), just not exactly the deepest furs on the savannah.
He might be a leopard, except making him a leopard would beg to make him a melanistic leopard, which would evoke the somewhat extraneous things.
To be honest, I like to make people with strong well-reasoned convictions goats-- it works well with John Brown, anyhow.
But I'm not sure I want him as a Goat either. Some sort of African/North American hybrid might be indicated too... perhaps a North American Pronghorn and an African Antelope of some kind.
Still. Does one picture cervids as being invincible dreamer/doers? I almost want him as an elephant (except republicans have preempted them) or Rhino (taken to be more aggressive than bright.)
I just watched a speech of his from a while back that included a LONG, articulate discussion of secularism in U.S. society, (and what's effed up about the wackjobs who want a Theocracy in this country-- and he was even polite about it without giving an inch). And I think I'm now a fanboi.
I think he might be a cheetah. He looks like a cheetah. But cats are, (sorry, felines in the audience), just not exactly the deepest furs on the savannah.
He might be a leopard, except making him a leopard would beg to make him a melanistic leopard, which would evoke the somewhat extraneous things.
To be honest, I like to make people with strong well-reasoned convictions goats-- it works well with John Brown, anyhow.
But I'm not sure I want him as a Goat either. Some sort of African/North American hybrid might be indicated too... perhaps a North American Pronghorn and an African Antelope of some kind.
Still. Does one picture cervids as being invincible dreamer/doers? I almost want him as an elephant (except republicans have preempted them) or Rhino (taken to be more aggressive than bright.)
Now to craft iconic "speed" into a broader quality. Something along the lines of Senator Obama, ahead of all the rest.
Look beyond the face value on any of them hun... and you will find a crocodile telling you it's perfectly fine to come swimming...
I do not have an answer for the problems we face... but what we face scares me the same as a praire fire will scare those who live there.
V.
But crocodiles, humans, and even politicians are animals, with comprehensible, adaptive behavior-- know their habits, and they should be very live-with-able.
Moreover, which animal's in office *does* make a difference, as the state of the U.S. clearly demonstrates after 7.4 years of torture-obsessed, warmongering, rapture-craving, oil baron frat boys from hell being in power, compared with eras when less rabid creatures (including every Republican I can think of, except *possibly* Nixon, who might hold a candle to him, and Ronald Regan, who was the mastermind of the heart of the crisis we currently face) prevailed.
So, you'll have to forgive me for liking an uncompromising but diplomatic guy who gives full, nuanced answers to important questions and gets every item he speaks to right. I don't "believe" in democracy in the U.S. any more than I believe in god. But I don't regard the influence of either, even if only as an inchoate ideal, to be negligable.
Reps and Dems are both now antiquated fat cats... it is no longer government by and for the people - it is by and for the lobbyist and special interest groups and who can put what in whom's pocket. What we have here is a failure of the complete system. This is exactly what our enemies have always wanted. It took them long enough to figure out they could simply buy our demise.
If it were fair - and if this was not so - the candidates would not have spent the gazilions of dollars trying to obtain the White House - it woud be a fair process where by everyone would have a shot at it, and we could pick honestly and not simply the lesser of two evils.
OK... enough said... I'm going back to Scanectity's valley where I can at least feel safe.
No offense meant in any of what I have written... but I do fear for this country.
Hugs...
V.
We also only 'naturally' distinguish between none, one, two, and many. Three and up are available to us only because reason steps up to the plate.
People are much, much more than just "greedy at heart," for the same reasons we have Godels and Leibnitzes.
And there you have hit the nail exactly on the head. Once upon a time, I was married (the first time) and my father-in-law, a retired Army Major, worked as a prison councillor. He told me almost exactly what you just discribed but in different words. There is little crime in a small town because the locals all know each other and will deal with 'said crime' in their own methods. Basicly - you can't hide. In a big city, he told me, you are just one of the many, and it is easy to hide, and so crime runs rampid.
V.
How about thinking of him, and his opponent, as queen ants? Never mind the gender, here. To them, we are expendable pawns who need to be controlled for our own good. Our freedom is irrelevant. So, some sort of herd animal is appropriate, and what better captures that mindset than an ant colony?
"To sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and to sacrifice your life to the eminence of that cause, is the noblest activity of all." -McCain, on human sacrifice as a governing philosophy
"[O]ur destiny as Americans is tied up with one another... I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper." -Obama, calling for universal public service
But you notice that McCain's hyperbole attaches to an abstract and nonhuman "greater cause," and Obama's to people. I don't know what the dumbass is doing invoking "Destiny as Americans," after all the genocide we've been involved with under the heading of "manifest destiny" (poor choice of words, mr junior senator).
But I mean, a choice between veiled references to sky fairies and veiled reference to democratic socialism could scarcely be easier.
How about a pair of dueling queen bees?
Regulation of private enterprise (Regan -> massive deregulation -> this country currently in deep shit), and in particular to insure that businesses are not operating at cross purposes to the interests of actual human beings-- aka, workers (corporations are not persons and therein lies a significant part of the problem), subsidization of human and material infrastructure (education, healthcare, roads and bridges, teh intarwebz), social security ("We the people, in order to ... promote the general welfare... establish this Constitution for the United States of America.") progressive tax, environmental protection, secular & progressive social policy, and securing human & civil rights and liberties, are all core social democrat policy issues. If there were a pure social democrat running and elected to the office of the U.S. presidency, it would be the very best this country could hope for. (A libertarian-- those anarchist puppets of the far right-- would be by far the worst it could hope for.)
It's nonsense to suppse that all political segments in the U.S. have been equally ignoring the proper limits of government in general, and that all strong roles the government can play are equally scary. (Hint: the segment that supported the executive collecting unprecedented power, lying to and defying congress unimpeached, getting us into a disastrous as well as criminal and immoral war-- that segment to which one but not the other of the two candidates clearly belongs, is the one to be worried about.)
Complain to me that representative democracy is an imperfect thing since politicians say one thing but can do another-- I'm sympathetic to the idea that the stated positions of politicians require a lot of scrutiny. Or complain to me that Obama's a wussy for giving lip-service to the Great Sky Fairy after having been raised by a woman with the good sense to be an atheist. I'm sympathetic to that too. Complain that two-party systems suck-- I couldn't be more sympathetic.
But throwing in with superstitionist claptrap under the pretense that it is what defeated Nazis and got us to the Moon (not meaningfully true, rather than playing a role in our genocidal acts as a nation, which it certainly did), and that there are no other significant differences between the positions of the imperfect candidates that would lead you to prefer one to the other, is a cop out, or worse.