Obama off to a good start with FOI and Presidential Records Act.

[David Healy]

someone provide this essayist a dime, point him/her towards the Golden Gate Bridge... way too much pain... No wonder the world is ripe for another wannabe messiah

[Peter Lemkin]

While it is good that Obama has shown [or seems to show] a kind of 'sunshine' policy with documents, but it is the agencies that have them [NSA, CIA, FBI etc. that 'decide' if they exist, what must be redacted or withheld for 'National Security', etc. In many of these agencies IMO important docs have been removed to privitized locals, shredded, hidden, faked and replaced, and who knows what other techniques they have. While Obama will appoint heads of those Agencies, there is a culture of 'darkness and opaqueness' in all of those agencies, who guard their secrets carefully and won't let a one [or less] term President get in their way - unless really pushed. I hope it is done - I'm still not holding my breath. I sure hope my cynicism is unwarrented! A complete release of documents on [just for starters] JFK, RFK, MLK, Iran-Contra, Watergate, Savings & Loan, Enron, NSA spying on ALL Americans, US participation in government overthrows, assassinations and wars, etc. would go a long way to creating 'Change'! Yes, they (in theory) can - No, I doubt (in fact) they will.lug:

[Magda Hassan]

Obamanation: A Lesson In Black*Power Being Black in the US means something. *It implies an understanding of power and oppression. *It implies an inclination and proclivity to side with those that resist oppression and exploitation, the Black nation having a history of acute experience with those forces. That said, does it matter if we have sitting, the first Black chairman in the 221 years of the House’s existence, if he sits idly by and congratulates a president-elect that promises to embrace imperial foreign policy across Africa and the so-called Middle East? Does it matter if that President-Elect’s skin happens to be Black if his office appoints an Attorney General that advocates more of a draconian domestic policy already *decimating Black communities? Does it matter if we are greeted by the first ever Black Attorney General if he wants to make possession with (cop’s discretion) intent to distribut a 5 year felony? Does it matter, in 2008, the color of the faces of a system that is grinding into dust, the bones of Black and Brown Americans and Iraqis alike? Hell yes, it matters so much that he is Black. *But not as a justification for backslapping celebration. *Obama is a tool of the ruling class and when the power of Blackness is used by the ruling class it is Black power in reverse, turned around to use as a weapon against everyone except the ruling class.

Obama will be for black liberation what Thatcher was for women's liberation.

[David Guyatt]

someone provide this essayist a dime, point him/her towards the Golden Gate Bridge... way too much pain... No wonder the world is ripe for another wannabe messiah

I think you're right David and that the world is prepped for a new messiah.

There is a danger about messiahs, I think, because the Unconscious yearning for them arises at times of great stress and imminent change (whether this be for good or bad is impossible to predict).

One argument would be that the last Messiah brought peace as His message -- and thereafter war and pestilence was visited upon the Earth for two millennia.

On the other hand, the Archetype of a Messiah acts as a catalyst for unknown number of others to follow the new message promulgated and civilization is incrementally advanced as a result, which cannot be a bad thing.

http://www.dreamhawk.com/messianic.htm

The messiah is obviously a very powerful concept in some religions. If not expressed under the word messiah, it can be also seen in images such as that of a saviour, or an avatar. But the idea of a messiah has to do with a new revelation, or a new epoch, perhaps a way maker.

The concept, and the experience of the messiah archetype possibly arises from a deep stratum of the human psyche that holds racial memories of confrontation with times of crisis, times when human development had reached a point that needed a new impulse, a new way of responding to the world, to continue. In other words the way forward in human, social or individual development had reached a point of impasse. A new paradigm, a new example, a new birth of human potential was needed. My best guess is that within the human unconscious, a vision or sense of what was needed had formed and was felt. The ‘new being' that needed to emerge was intuited as a great leader, a great spiritual being who would incarnate and lead the race forward. Of course, the ‘new being’ was or is a potential within the person themselves. But individuals who expressed this new being would be looked upon as the very incarnation of the messiah, and act as a catalyst for others to allow the new qualities or social order to emerge from within themselves.

Part of the messiah archetype is to do with demonstrating the courage to face death lightly, or to be sacrificed. In its very primitive form, the messiah or saviour would have been killed by his own tribe or people, and torn apart and eaten. The flesh would have given the magic power of fearlessness to those who ate this sacred meal. Therefore the torn body would have been like seeds of the new life, the new consciousness.

This is probably not the thread to discuss these things...

[David Guyatt]

Obama will be for black liberation what Thatcher was for women's liberation.

Eh?