Schrijft: LOODJE HERBERT

Het ras is als pornografie in de Verenigde Staten - de vuile verhalen en de vuile beelden die iedereen beweert om te haten maar niemand kunnen zich verzetten tegen. Maar ik verdenk dat porn de verslaafden zelfs hun vulling soms worden.

Wij hebben het volledige politieke proces toegestaan in wat misschien de belangrijkste verkiezing in de V.S. is. sinds Wereldoorlog II om te worden grondig scheefgetrokken door histrionics van loony preacher van de Kant van het Zuiden van Chicago.

Het grootste deel van het electoraat begrijpt dat de V.S. is in droevige vorm, die is waarom meer dan 80 percent van opiniepeilingsondervraagden zegt wij op het verkeerde spoor zijn. Toer. Jeremiah Wright heeft niets met om het even welk van dat te doen. Het idee dat zijn onzin het resultaat van deze verkiezing kan gestalte geven is zowel tragisch als absurd…[meer]

VERWIJZINGEN:

Redactie Overzichten: Donkere Leeftijden Amerika: De Eindfase van Imperium

Van Wekelijkse Uitgevers: In provocatief dit, scattershot vergelijkt jeremiad, culturele historicus Berman (Twilight van Amerikaanse Cultuur) Amerika met oud Rome op brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug.

The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a “package deal,” the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans’ ingrained “stupidity” and willful blindness, unsalvageable.

Berman’s attempts to tie every American dysfunction to an all-encompassing sickness of soul overreaches, leading him to lump together serious issues like poverty and the Abu Ghraib outrages with trivialities like annoying cell phone yakkers or the “freedom fries” phenomenon, which he bemoans as “symbolic of an emptiness at the core.” Often stimulating and insightful in its particulars, his indictment, like the jingoism it abhors, is too sweeping and essentialist to fully capture American reality.

From Booklist: A despairing analyst of contemporary America, Berman continues criticism begun in The Twilight of American Culture (2000). One character crystallizing Berman’s thoughts is President George W. Bush, under whom, according to Berman, the U.S. is incipiently, if not actually, suffering a “presidential dictatorship,” a “de facto Christian theocratic plutocracy.” In that vein, Berman undertakes a wide-ranging condemnation of American economic and foreign policy of the past 50 years, which he believes has propelled America into disastrous decline.

That Berman inveighs against free markets and thinks the cold war was partly a dynamic of the Soviet Union acting defensively infuses this work with a solidly leftist viewpoint. In Berman’s vigorous arrangement of evidence, current events are propelling us upon an irreversibly downward trajectory toward a societal situation resembling the Dark Ages. However, Berman offers no positive ideas to reverse this perceived free fall, making his tome more of an alarm than a solution.– Gilbert Taylor

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Smooth and confident, Obama has hoops game — Presidential candidate using his love of basketball as a campaign weapon

Last Friday, he scored four baskets — including a 3-pointer — in a Kokomo, Ind., game tied to his voter registration drive. With cameras trained on his every 46-year-old move, Obama scrimmaged Tuesday with the North Carolina Tar Heels.

“Playing ball makes you accessible in a way that neither of them are — Obama and Bradley,” said Eric Hauser, a Democratic strategist who worked for Bradley. “They both deal with the reputation of being distant and cool, and basketball transcends race.”

Growing up in Hawaii, Obama considered basketball as a way to find his racial identity in a diverse community.

“I do think you can tell something about people by the way they play basketball,” he told HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” this month. “Here is a place,” Obama told HBO, “where black was not a disadvantage.”

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