For most of us on the left, the last two weeks have been pretty infuriating – at least they have for me. The nomination of Palin, followed by the lies and distortions, and then the reality that this campaign might actually be successful has been more than disturbing.  

But today, I’m beginning to see the possibility of a light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been in lately.

Here are some of the stories that are sparking that optimism.

One of the things I value most in life is onoing growth and learning. I don’t know if its genetic or learned, but there’s nothing that I dislike more than stasis. This leads me to an almost knee-jerk reaction to conventional wisdom. There are certainly times that convention proves to be wise, but I almost always need to ask questions and learn why.

Over the course of my life, that has led to a kind of slow burn rebellion rather than the burst that I’ve seen so often when young people reject the status quo and/or authority. Perhaps I never had the courage to just outright rebel, but I think its also linked to not wanting to let go without really understanding where I’m heading as an alternative.

Questions that are easily solved or answered don’t interest me that much. But when understanding or learning is more like peeling back the layers of an onion a little bit at a time…that’s when I tend to get truly engaged.

A few years ago a friend of mine went to Russia. She brought back a set of nesting dolls as a gift. Little did she know that toys like this were my absolute favorite as a child…opening one to find a smaller one in side over and over again.

The conventional wisdom about the presidential race these days is that the McCain/Palin attacks are working and that if Obama wants to have a shot at winning this thing, its time he came out with some punches of his own.

Personally, I think arguments can be made on either side of this question. But today I read something that intrigued me as a deeper look at the appeal of Palin and the possible rejection of Obama. It comes from voters that I don’t often hear from given that I live in an urban setting and get my news from the blogoshpere.

The article is in Salon, is written by Dan Hoyle, and is titled What small-town America is saying about Obama. Here’s the set-up.

For three months during this summer and early fall, I’ve been traveling across America, exploring the nation’s small towns and rural areas and meeting the people there. From Michigan to New Mexico to North Carolina, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews with white working-class voters across 18 states, gauging, among other things, their thoughts and feelings about the first black man to have a serious shot at winning the White House.

I thought a fun way to celebrate a year in the life of Docudharma would be to try and capture the various iterations of our own Zen Dictator over that time. This proves to be a bit of a challenge since, to my counting, he has published about 458 essays since the launch of the blog one year ago. But themes do emerge – at least they did to me. So I take the credit and blame depending on how well you think I may have captured all this.

I’m going to be completely dismissive of all the political essays Buhdy has produced. There are hundreds of them (I didn’t bother to count) taking on the issues of the day as any self-respecting progressive blogger is wont to do. But I’m going to focus on the other sides of our dear leader here. Some are serious and some are just for fun (I’ll let you decide which is which).

I’ve been in a bit of a funk the last couple of days. That’s mostly because night before last I watched an HBO movie titled The Fever. Here’s a synopsis:

Director Carlo Gabriel Nero brings actor/playwright Wallace Shawn’s controversial study of the growing chasm between the first and third world from stage to screen with this tale of a privileged woman whose reality suddenly suffers a profound shift. A bourgeois woman awakens suffering from a particularly intense fever and trapped in an unidentified third-world country. Later, upon venturing out into her war-torn surroundings, the once-wealthy woman is forced to contend with such unfamiliar issues as luxury, culpability, and revolution. Angelina Jolie, Joely Richardson, and Michael Moore co-star in a drama that employs animation and thought-provoking first-person monologues to explore the concept of bourgeois privilege.

If you’d like to read Shawn’s original writing, you can find it here. Part of me wants to do like many critics have done and write this off as merely playing on liberal guilt. But for me, it brought all those ugly questions that linger in the back of my mind to the fore.  

This last Wednesday marked the one year anniversary since I signed up at Docudharma and next Tuesday it will be one year since I posted my first essay. So I think a little reflection is in order.

You see, I’m still working on learning how to fly.

Here’s an interesting take on the history of black/white relations in the US from Ampersand at Alas! A Blog.

A few months ago I engaged in a project at work that was like nothing I’ve ever done before. It was completed this week and I thought I’d share a bit about it here. I’m not sure it will have much interest for anyone but me. But its something that has moved me and I hope the end product will be a lasting legacy and testament to the small ways we have tried to change a few lives in this town.

But first, a little background. Most of you know that I work for a non-profit agency who’s mission is “to work with families and the community to redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at home, at school, or with the law.” We do this in an urban setting where too many kids live in a darkness created by poverty, racism, abuse, domestic violence, crime, and drug addiction (to name just the most obvious). Many of them make mistakes that too often lead them into being criminalized for life. Our task is to try and enter their lives early on to both hold them accountable for their behavior and support them in taking a different path.

After 30 years of renting space for our operations and moving on average once every three years, in 2006 we bought a building. That’s been a whole interesting process, but not the heart of what I wanted to write about. The building was originally built by the 3M Corporation (whose international headquarters are just up the road from us) as a community bank. The interior is perfect for our needs – wide open spaces with lots of natural light that sooths the tensions that are so present in the work we do.

But the outside of the building was anything but warm.

I imagine that many of you are like me and are having trouble actually watching the RNC. Tonight I had it on in the background and was absolutely stunned to see a video that was billed as a “Tribute to 9/11 Victims.” It was anything but a tribute to the people who lost their lives that day. It was nothing but a rank appeal to fear and a politically motivated abuse of those who lost loved ones on 9/11.

Here’s what the Boston Globe says about it:

One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.

The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

A friend of mine just forwarded an email she received from a friend of hers in Alaska. He gave permission to share his view of Sarah Palin and I found it quite informative. So I thought I’d post it here.

First of all, this is just outrageous.

Here are links about the days activities and Amy’s arrest from:

Democracy Now

Glenn Greenwald

As I sit to try and write something for this morning, I realize that rather than having anything meaningful to share, I’m needing some nourishment myself. I’ve spent alot of time this week watching the convention and thinking about electoral politics. And as Nightprowlkitty and Jay Elias so beautifully captured – some of us have experienced a journey between head and heart…and it has been draining for me.

In addition to that, we know that Gustav is bearing down on the Gulf Coast. That not only brings concerns about the welfare of people who are most vulnerable in that region, it rekindles memories of all the horrors of Katrina.

Finally, I am deeply disappointed already in the gestapo-like tactics my city seems to be employing to deal with potential protesters at the RNC. Due to the nature of my work over the last 20 years, many of the people involved in the city, law enforcement, and courts are friends of mine. I had hoped that they and my home town would rise above what we have seen from other cities in the past. It looks like that will not be the case. I know its happened before, but this time its personal for me.

All these things combine to leave me feeling a bit empty this morning. So I thought that perhaps the best thing I could do is to try to fill myself up with music and poetry. While I’m at it – I’ll share it with you.

As much as I love blogging, I often think about the danger that comes when we think about and craft political strategies based on assuming the level of information that we political junkies pay attention to.

Just as an example, I told the story here about my conversation during the whole FISA debate with a co-worker who is a Democrat. She had never heard anything about FISA, even though she tends to read the largest newspaper in the Twin Cities daily. So of course, she would never question her support of Obama because of that. And perhaps more importantly, she would never apply any pressure to Obama either in the campaign or once elected to do the right thing on that issue.

Just yesterday I got together with another one of my friends who is probably the best informed of anyone I know in RL. She had never heard about Obama’s disagreement with the Supreme Court decision against extending the death penalty to crimes where murder is not involved.

I haven’t even asked anyone if they’ve picked up Obama’s nuance about getting out of Iraq vs. getting “combat troops” out of Iraq. But I’d venture to say it would NOT be something that has broken through the consciousness of most voters.