The Obamafication of America, The Melting Pot Is Finally Cooking

In The Good Shepherd, a movie about the formation and early years of the CIA, there is a scene between Joe Pesci and Matt Damon that summed up a lot of what America HAS been about. Damon plays a Yalie, Skull and Bones initiate, Pesci an Italian mobster being recruited to help the CIA vs. Castro. In response to Damon’s intensity of purpose, Pesci asks…

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something… we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the n*****s, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

The rest of you.

America has been ruled by, has been owned by White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPS) since its inception. Not just the Government, but business as well. The partnership of business and government is what was reffered to by the young folks in the Sixties as the Establishment. The rest of us (though technically I am a Wasp!) have just been visiting their world. We have been tolerated, though unwelcome, guests in an Establishment house. After 230 years, that is about to start to change.

Let me be clear on the title, Obama is not who or what will change it, he is just a VERY noticeable symbol of the change. The change began in the Sixties when our first non-Protestant president was elected, (and then assassinated) when the Wasps kids rebelled against the Establishment and when “the rest of us,” the Others, started to infiltrate the halls of power. As Digby  phrased it Real Americans Vs The Others.

The change is more about consciousness, than demographics. More about confidence than actual power. And fortunately for those who wish to see a more just, equitable, free and less violent world….more about “Real Americans” finally running out of steam, ideas and the ability to bullshit the world than anything specific “the rest of us” have done. Their Dynasty is dying…finally…in the face of a technologically induced consciousness shift.

And by the flagrant display of their own incompetence in every area from the economy to waging war, which used to be their strong points!

The “Godly” Puritan Pilgrims who “founded America,” and whose ethics on exclusion, work, sex, and Manifest Destiny have dominated and shaped our country since before it was a country fled here to avoid persecution. And that feeling of persecution has also continued. They are still, to their mind, under assault, still being persecuted and attacked, in their Island America. But Island America has ceased to exist in the face of the technology. We are part of a planet liked not just by technology, but by an emerging consciousness that all humans are…human. Not “other”..and not lesser humans. Just humans.

Much of the shock of 9/11 was that we were attacked in our Homeland after having been sheltered from the rest of the world by the oceans surrounding us. Much of the politics that lead to Bushco were about the backlash from the first real attack on the Puritan Wasp ethic and dominance in the Sixties. All of this led to the realization of the dream of the Wasp Establishment, total freedom and dominance of their philosophy for the first time since the Fifties. I other words…The Bush Administration. Which has proven in every possible way to be a utter an abject failure in the face of 21st Century reality.

I wish to note at this point that I am not condemning all those who share (like myself) the Wasp heritage. Indeed it is the fact that so many of “us” have rejected the philosophies of the Wasp establishment that have helped to dim it’s power. Along with the refusal of “minority groups” to continue to be oppressed  by the Established Powers That Be.

Immigration, gay marriage, sexual freedom of all types, the rejection of hate based on race and religion, the demonizing of all Muslims as enemies of America…and portraying being Anti-War as being “unpatriotic.” All of these issues and more have been politicized by the “Real Americans” as a thinly coded last ditch effort to keep their hold on power. And one by one “they” are starting to lose on these issues. The long held Establishment is in the process of being rejected not just by Americans themselves, but by the realities of the world we live in.

They will not just give up. This is why the contest between Obama (Other) and McCain, (Real American) which if it was taking place in a vacuum would be a “no brainer,” will quite possibly be one of the nastiest contests ever. Brace yourself, prepare to work and fight hard. In electing Obama, we are not just trying to replace the evil of Bushco with someone more enlightened, modern and rational….we are very much shifting the paradigm of what it means to be a Real American.