Why Americans are "hopeful" about Obama, Part II

When the picture we have painted begins to show age, wear and signs of decrepitude, one of the likeliest trains of action is to create a new mural; and hope that the finest oils marketed may preclude deterioration in a nascent picturescape after we hang up our brushes. Unfortunately, frequently this "new" work is inscribed over the pre-existing one. Thus, subject to the flaws of the canvas: the small, not immediately perceptible, rents in structure and form. Reuse without reconstruction in foundational cases serves merely as extension with the appearance of differing modus operandi.

So if we draw ourselves to truth in the upcoming elections, the embracing of the wunderkind Obama is one such gambit. We are dismayed by the face we present to the world and to ourselves in all the current crises. We want to redraw the landscape, ritually cleansing the stains of dishonor and blood, renewing the commonweal; but our effort is made in the same frame, unchanged, from which the pain of the past arises. We are restructuring without restructuring. Ours is an age which nears the apex of the diametrical opposition between the written promise of its founding as a nation and the reality and veracity of how we have behaved historically and exercised our will. In a furor of this magnitude, what better champion than one who embodies simultaneously the fruitless antecedent legacy of disenfranchisement and the fruitful pregnant hope of sanitized race reconciliation.

Figureheads make fine statues; but they are metaphoric cyphers, representing without the capability of action. If we are aiming for change, the system must be dismantled completely. Only then can we begin the work which we crave that will be in alignment with the picture of ourselves as we are. The temple of our body is rotten, and must be razed. Like the phoenix, our death in fire can be our renewal in spirit.

One thing is certain: emblems, even those emblazoned in gold, tarnish with time and are subject to all the ravages of natural progression. Better it would be to leave off with representations and plainly be what we are and transform as we choose.