Three Obtuse Conclusions About the Past Week

The Latin verb obtundere means "to beat into bluntness, flatness, or insensibility". There should certainly be a handy noun such as "obtusion" available to us in English--something signifying the state of being beaten as dull as an old anvil. The wake of this week's election suggests several cases of obtuse response.

Obtusion One: That our nation's residual pockets of bigotry will churn out a certain amount of resistance to Barack Obama. No, just the opposite: polls indicated that those whose vote was influenced to any degree from the slight to the preemptive by considerations of race voted FOR Obama. To put it another way, many, many more people voted for the President-Elect simply because he is black (somewhat) than voted against him for the same reason. One could even say uncharitably that Obama's victory is a triumph of bigotry. I personally would not go so far. I can understand that people of color would breathe a sigh of relief merely to see the spell denying high office to those of their kind broken. But the sigh may prove costly--the nonsensically spendthrift positions of this particular black man in a time of economic calamity may end up trumping the happy fact that he is a black man.

Obtusion Two: That the nation is veering toward center/left values and away from the conservative variety. The neocon panel at FOX News was quick to float this absurdity. The fact is that many Republicans who lost seats (e.g., Elizabeth Dole) had recently angered voters by drifting left, while many new Democrats--especially in the South and West--are of the "blue dog" species, having convinced voters that they stand to the right of their Republican adversaries. Issues such as securing the border do not break down neatly along party lines. Between the presidential candidates themselves, one would have been hard pressed to choose which was more indifferent to American society's coherence and the American worker's pitiable plight. Obama at least enjoys the advantage of having contradicted his sweet-talking of La Raza-type audiences with solemn promises to audiences of legal workers without steady jobs. McCain has a substantial track record on such issues, and it reveals an unremitting contempt for "America first" values.

Obtusion Three: That a thirst for change has swept the land. Obama garnered about as many votes as did George Bush in the previous election. Some of us stayed home, dismayed at a choice between two equally deadly toxins; some of us went to the polls and simply voted for local candidates; some of us chose third parties. Whatever thirst is sweeping the country--and there may be one, and it may be a craving for change--failed to register as a burst of electoral support for Barack Obama.

Thank God it's all over at last! The new president isn't getting any honeymoon. In his zeal to step forward and display publicly his preparations to take charge, he has drawn all ears to his uninspired pronouncements about our economic meltdown. Wall Street and Detroit are not throwing him any ticker-tape parade: the hard realities of bad credit, mass sell-offs, and vast lay-offs cannot be postponed by a general euphoria or beguiled by the harps of Camelot. Obama's evasive answers about his taxation plan immediately deepened ripples in the market, and he has already been forced to smooth out the effect by ever-so-slightly turning his back upon his socialist constituency. If he wants to succeed, he will have to talk clear and straight, and to do so at once. Otherwise, he is likely to be shredded by his own blue-collar footsoldiers before the summer--and all the fluff-headed students and weed-impaired professors in the world will not put him back together again, if that happens.