Back in April of 2008, while the campaign for the Democratic nomination was still raging, I wrote the following piece which was itself a look back at an earlier piece I'd posted on my website the previous December (2007).
The first piece --"The Muddle Through Scenario" (at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=1020) -- gave my thoughts about where America was heading in the wake of its failure to confront the Bushite evil.
Between the two "Muddle Through" pieces, I wrote about a potential I saw in Obama to repair the evil using his non-confrontational approach.
Then in the second "Muddle" piece --first published here 13 months ago, and pasted here now, below-- I felt less encouraged, believing that Obama's deftness might not be adequate to address the challenge that arises out of the evil forces that have hold America in its grip.
Obama's approach seems predicated on the fact which I stressed in the original "Muddle Through Scenario" piece, namely that America had failed to attack the evil when it arose, as our Founders had in mind for the Congress, the press, and the people to do in the face of such lawless and usurpatious presidential power.
As a consequence of that failure, we still must deal with the forces --which I regard as best understood in spiritual terms-- that expressed themselves through that Bushite regime, but are now finding outlets elsewhere, mostly through the increasingly mad, negativistic and (self-) destructive Republican Party, and through the damaged people who respond to such strife-loving, lie-ridden messages as come out of the mouths of the likes of Limbaugh and Cheney.
And now Obama has come to power, with the war against this dark spirit still needing to be fought. Either wisely, or out of an excessive sense of caution, he is acting as if America were still not ready to --or cannot be trusted to-- engage in that confrontation.
Thus Obama embarks upon a repair mission that is incremental, that picks its points for advance while avoiding all-out assault across the battle-lines.
It is, in a sense, a "muddle through" scenario. And while it is not ideal --one's dream of the vanquishing of evil-- it is perhaps an ideal version of the muddle through, inasmuch as the most powerful office is now occupied by an ally of the Good, and one with a keen, long-term strategic sense.
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Revisiting the Muddle Through Scenario
[first published on www.NoneSoBlind.org on April 26, 2008]
I thought it might be useful to go back to how things looked to me late last year, when I saw no hope that anything of significance could come out of this round of presidential elections. It might be useful because, with the present destructiveness of the Democratic campaign, my more recent hopes are being threatened, and if they are dashed then, as I see it, we go back to how things looked to me then.
My sober view of things was expressed first in the piece, "The Lament of a True Patriot," published here last October (at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=919). America had failed, I said, to confront the evils that had risen to power. (That remains, I believe, essentially true.)
Because of that, as I wrote in a piece in December, entitled "The Muddle Through Scenario" (at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=1020), the struggle against those evil forces was going to go on for years to come, with the outcome uncertain. But I did not share the pessimism of one of our more articulate and engaged readers, I wrote. Rather, my observations of human affairs --at both the macro and micro levels-- suggested to me that sometimes even in the absence of the confrontations that are called for, systems manage to put themselves back together over time.
Here's a passage from "The Muddle Through Scenario":
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