"Uncommon Sense"

I awoke early with a Thomas Paine in the back of my mind. My common sense tells me that Barack Obama is just a man, not a miracle worker. My friends' common sense tells them this, too. In fact, just about every one's common sense tells them that Obama is not going to wave a wand of holly wood and phoenix, and magically everything will be better. All common sense. However, this is the point where I usually begin to diverge from "common sense"; that is, the point at which I begin to spout common sense, I realize that it is only words and language describing expectations previously experienced...some sort of medley or melange that passes for "knowledge". Mr. Obama is distinctly different in quality from any US leader I have laid eyes upon for at least...well, forever. I mean Reagan had charisma, but not much else. Certainly his economics was "voodoo" (no offense intended for those of Voudoun practice) and he and his wife seem to have had court astrologers. JFK had charisma and brains, but he fell short in the ethics department. Morality for the East Coast establishment has for a long time been the proprieties of the sports team of a limited number of players versus the large numbers of those in the entire "University". There was Jimmy Carter. He was very unique, but he was doomed to fall under the steamroller of the coming Republican Voodoo Economy, 1982 - 2008, 26 years approximately. LBJ was enormous, but he had no charisma. Ike is too misty in my memory, and much too much comforting to be real. Truman...FDR...all iconic images, upon whom various storms beat, about whom fires and wars raged... Perhaps Obama is a modern day worker of miracles. Miracles come from the future. The future does not yet exist...except in symbolic form; you see, I am writing about it: symbolic form. A good deal depends on how we take the possible futures and process their symbols into the Symbolic Structures of the present. If we are like the previous generations, we will crassly create a Tower of Babel from the future; as time goes on, we will build impossible structures to increase our power. Of course, to build a Tower of Babel requires the dynamic of Irony: you will build and it will crash! or it will be destroyed! or you will be driven forth, babbling in incomprehensible tongues! The dynamo of Irony joins together all the opposites: Mission Accomplished goes hand in hand with Abu Ghraib! Irony makes Odd Couples like "Overweening Arrogance" (such as exhibited by neo-conservatives) and "Tripping On History's Banana Peel" join together, as if they were two gentlemen, one 7 feet tall, the other about 5 foot 1", at their childrens' Activities Day Picnic and were entered into a three-legged race, and punctuated the racing turf with their stumbling antics: falling, struggling up, falling yet again, rolling through the mud, the large man dragging the smaller, people yelling and laughing................. If you follow what passes for "common sense" in today's world, you intrinsically embrace the power of Irony: the future will be turned against us! What struggles up, MUST come down! We seek peace, but we get war. We seek health, but we are visited by illness! We are wealthy society, yet millions starve! Free markets are the best economic system, yet every 20 years or so they are rendered immobile, while wealth is further concentrated into the hands of a few! Sin is this: a frame of mind; not the act as much as the ongoing tendency to act, and to act with no remedial measures, no correctives, no ability to be aware of one's sinfulness. "Common sense" is a frame of mind. It is how we judge things. Common sense is a way for the present to accept and work with the possible futures. If common sense leads us to provide for the hungry, tend to the ill, and visit those in prison, then that is one Reality. If common sense cynically leads us to enrich the few at the expense of the many, then that is another Reality. It is in our hands. Perhaps Mr. Obama will cause us to understand that fact. For, I tell you that what goes up need not necessarily come down. It is only our "common sense" that makes us willing accomplices in our own degradation. Strive, then, for Uncommon Sense.