audacity of contradictions

AUDACITY OF CONTRADICTIONS

 

This morning a well-known writer asked for advice.  After indicating he would give a major speech on Barack Obama’s presidency and American democracy, he said “I need to tell the truth.  And be balanced.  What do you advise?

 

Summoning moral courage, I wrote to him:

 

You should speak a balanced truth, although your message will be bittersweet.

 

A.       Barack Obama the man, the husband, the father is a person we can admire without reservations.  He has a good heart; he possesses the virtues of faith, love, charity, and hope; he is a good American citizen.  He is a candidate for earned rewards when he dies.

B.      President Barack Obama is a different person, a different case.  In his second term, he has swiftly learned to project himself as a master of Machiavellian politics and as a superb servant of the hypocrisy that does dirty work behind the mask of angelic democracy.  He is obedient.  He willingly stains his hands in blood and does all the reprehensible things that anyone who occupies the Office of the President is required to do by the global cartels that call the shots. Like all Presidents of the 20^th century, he spits on virtues and does what is pragmatic and effective by any means necessary. His rhetorical postures do not match his disguised activities.

 

Tell your audience that each individual is condemned to deal with this glaring contradiction between A and B.

 

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

March 8, 2013