My big question about Obama isn’t why I love him, I understand that (Middle East, postracialism); but why young people are gaga for him. What are the issues they care about? Is this, as I want to believe, a great awakening of American progressivism, a resurgent belief that America must become a compassionate citizen of the world? Mary Zeiss Stange gets at the same point in a fine piece in today’s USA Today that dismisses the creepiness some see in Obama’s ardent following, and looks at it religious terms:
there is something transcendent about any man, or woman, who can move a people
to believe for the first time — or once again. You see it in churches on
Sundays, and we’re seeing it in Obama’s rallies today.Call it enthusiasm, if you will, call it wildly optimistic, exuberantly
hopeful. But it is not irrational any more than religion itself is irrational.
And his followers are not just carried away by lofty rhetoric. They are
actually, increasingly well-informed on the issues. They know what kind of world
my boomer generation is bequeathing them. They have every reason not to
hope, yet they’re audacious enough to try.
I’d like to know what those issues are. Still, Stange’s piece reminded me that in October 1960 Senator John Kennedy, then in a close race for the presidency, announced the idea of a Peace Corps in a 2 a.m. speech at the University of Michigan in which kids were hanging off the balconies to hear his every word. Some say that Kennedy won the ’60 election with the proposal that young people would be willing to give up five or ten years of their lives prosecuting careers here to go off and make the world a better place; certainly it invigorated his youthful supporters, who wanted to believe in an idealistic America, not the Ugly American, the name of a bestseller of a couple years before that had presented the image of an imperialistic, arrogant America.
Kennedy drew on ideas that had been kicking around for years. And Peace Corps by and large has been a good thing (though it’s just two years of service). Just wondering– what will Obama come up with in the remaining months of this campaign? What idealistic fire will he light under the soul of idealism that is so latent now in American public life? What concrete challenge will he issue to his following? ‘Cause we’re ready.
So, Tomorrow Belongs To Me? To Whom, exactly?
"[I]t invigorated his youthful supporters, who wanted to believe in an idealistic America, not the Ugly American, the name of a bestseller of a couple years before that had presented the image of an imperialistic, arrogant America."
The novel was set in Southeast Asia, and showed an incompetent US diplomatic corps and a venal US corporate culture combining to create a noxious brew. Yet Kennedy still took the Vietnam baton from Eisenhower and passed it on to LBJ. JFK may have appealed to altruism through the Peace Corps to win an election, but he also helped give us the Vietnam War. Which had the greater impact?
Also, Phil, you should know the following:
'The term “ugly American”—used to describe boorish people from the U.S. insensitive to those in other countries—bothers fans of the 1958 novel The Ugly American, whose title character was actually sensitive and thoughtful—he just looked ugly. The popularizers of this phrase hadn’t read the book, and judged its message too quickly by its title.'
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It's difficult to find even simple measures to see how the Peace Corps is doing. It cites a total of 190,000 volunteers during its existence, but doesn't provide annual totals which would show whether it's growing, shrinking or stagnant. However, its recent move to recruit retired Boomers suggests the latter.
In an Oct. 2006 obituary, the NY Times revealed that one of the Peace Corps founders was — get this — a former Anti-Defamation League official. Sadly, I am not making this up. And there's more:
————
Joseph F. Kauffman, an educator who helped start the Peace Corps and ran the basic training designed to turn its recruits into effective volunteers, then led the fight against war protesters at the University of Wisconsin, died on Sept. 29 [2006] in Madison, Wis. He was 84.
As training director of the Peace Corps, Dr. Kauffman assigned a training officer to each of the 70 college campuses used for training to ensure at least a degree of uniformity. He designed a six-day-a-week, 7 a.m.-to-10 p.m. training regimen that included technical job skills, language, the dangers of Communist subversion, medical studies and physical education.
In “Agents of Change: A Close Look at the Peace Corps,” David Hapgood and Meridan Bennett wrote in 1968 that the trainees had less autonomy than a college freshman. “He was bedded in a dormitory, tumbled out at an arbitrary hour, fed in a prescribed place at a prescribed time,” they wrote. “He hardly had time to sleep, far less to think — it was like boot camp.”
Dr. Kauffman, who was president of Rhode Island College from 1968 to 1973, began his career by opening an office of the Anti-Defamation League in Omaha, where one of his friends was Theodore Sorensen, then a law student and later a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/obituaries/03kauffman.html
————
So, a former ADL official designs a "boot camp" like program for idealistic college students. Such intensive programs are designed to break down individual values, and substitute group or cult values … such as anti-Communism, and fighting war protesters. And this was decades ago, before the U.S. started running concentration camps and torture cells.
With all due respect, Phil, there isn't a damned thing Obama can propose which would be an "idealistic" program, because the U.S. government is not an idealistic organization. As Chairman Mao disarmingly confessed, power comes from the barrel of a gun.
Students with an idealistic bent might consider going to Ramallah or Rafah, to help repair the physical and human damage that Obama's government has done, and will continue to do under President Obama. They'll have to go on their own, though, because the Peace Corps don't send kids to Palestine.
http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc.northafr
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"And Peace Corps by and large has been a good thing." – Phil W.
Cool! Let me offer an alternative view, from someone named … errr, let's see … Philip Weiss?
"When presented with a conflict of interest between their duty to a dead volunteer (and her parents) and their obligation to help a living perpetrator, the Peace Corps — from the country director for Tonga, Mary George, on up — favored the killer. It is this betrayal of trust that provides the main motor for [Philip] Weiss's crusade."
- Peter Godwin, NY Times, reviewing AMERICAN TABOO by Philip Weiss
http://tinyurl.com/4spmls
Egad, Phil! You've got an evil twin out there (or amnesia).
I have to admit Haygood you are really a unique guy. Not many people can bring up obituaries of dead Jews from 2006 at the drop of a hat. What exactly do you do with yourself when your not ferreting information about the Jewish Cabal. But of course the fact that somehow there might have been a Jew involved in the peace corps makes the whole thing part of the ZOG. Does it not.
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ZOG is your word, not mine, Sword of Gidget.
You couldn't BS your way out of a paper bag, son.
And Gidget was written by a Jew, too. So the name fits you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gidget
I am wounded by you slashing rhetoric Haygood. There is definitely not many people who keep up with the fact that a TV series from the 1960's was created by a JEW. Seriously though, how much of your day is taken up by the JEWS!!!!!!!!!. Do you do anything else with your life or are you just depressed that you missed those great old days in the SS.
Good argument Sword. Do you think you could now tone down the insult level sightly? I think that would be helpful.
Kennedy didn't win the election because of his Peace Corps idea. He won because Mayor Daley succeeded admirably in getting out the graveyard vote in Chicago, and LBJ's political machine did the same in Texas.
Sog, you really need to think about changing your moniker. Sword of Gideon just sounds gay. Are you a Log Cabin Likudicon? Not that there is anything wrong with being Log Cabin it's just that I don't think gays would want a man single handily trying to obliterate the brilliance stereotype representing them here at Mondoweiss. Maybe you should use the moniker Curly. Now get outside and get your stones ready to throw at Palestinian children. It's almost time for school to end. From now on I will address you as Curly.
Coming To Terms With My Possible Baptist Jewishness
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2008/04/coming-to-terms-with-my-possible.html
The Peace Corps budget doubles over five years. PEPFAR, that directly hires PCVs, doubles over five years.
Five year budgets and doubling cost is what PC is doing.