April 28, 2008: Well, I just finished reading Senator Barack (Barry) Obama's ode, "Dreams from my Father". So what did I learn? Well, the Senator discovered that he wanted to be a black man, he learned that political hustling in Chicago is a given in the black community, that whites are evil, that being black in Southern states was difficult, and that the Senator thinks he's pretty hot stuff.
Hey,I'm not trying to be mean, but that's the perception I got from the book. Of course, the book isn't what you would call a scholarly piece - it was written, as Obama wrote, because his publisher thought a book by the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review - something he mentions more than once - would be a good seller.
The book did make the New York Times Best Seller list, and I would imagine that his target audience bought a few of them, but I wonder how many people were actually able to read this work? It's not the most interesting read around. But the most important thing I didn't learn from "Dreams from my Father" is why Obama should even be considered for the office of the President of the United States of America. Aside from the book,I believe we're losing our perspective about what's really important for Americans now. Listening to commentators and reading magazine articles, you would think that the Environment is the item of prime importance to our peoples. More important than the economy? health and welfare? earning a living? living in a peaceful world? political and economic liberty? Come on...!
Everyone is working so hard to be green (sort of the color you turn when gangrene sets in), that they lose touch with reality. If we're working to make sure planet earth will be in good shape 10,000 years from now, we sure as hell have the wrong perspective on reality. We need more oil - so we should drill for it. Forget carbon footprints, carbon dioxide, and all that good stuff. Of course, if the world would stop producing so many people, the environment wouldn't be a problem. But when land begins to be converted to housing and its required infrastructure, when local governments call for more and more growth, destroying our forests, agricultural areas, waterways, and so forth, of course people are going to yell that the environment is important.
When we decided to produce corn for fuel production, we put ourselves on the road to a food crisis. But after all, if we use corn ethanol, we don't have to drill for oil in Alaska, off the coast of Cape Cod, or any other place NIMBYs live.
Perspective - what does that mean?
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