19/06: An Iranian Addendum: does the President cry during Casablanca?
Category: American Culture
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
In my previous post, I briefly considered the official White House reaction to the Iranian Protest.
In a nutshell, I am not altogether offended by President Obama's caution. By eschewing the traditional American harsh and unequivocal response in similar cases, the President wisely passes up the temptation to make the United States a center of attention in this internal struggle.
Even more importantly, as I intimated, and the Okie Gardener better articulated, we are "not giving unrealistic expectations to the demonstrators." On a macro moral level, the instances in which freedom-loving dissidents rise up, propelled by the false hopes of a decisive United States intervention, have too often concluded with heartbreaking and cruelly tragic misfortune.
On the other hand, by staying mum while the multitudes bravely take to the streets in pursuit of life, liberty, and peaceful change strikes many of us as craven--or at least quite peculiar. It is in our nature to stand up and yell out our support for and solidarity with our brothers in arms across the seas. As I said before, we have been doing this for more than two hundred years.
However, Obama Americanism is not quite that reflexive (at least not in the same direction). It is a studied skepticism for notions like "natural rights" and the inherent benevolence of American-style democracy. Barack Obama is the first president from a generation of Americans educated in the nation's finest institutions of higher learning transformed during the 1970s and beyond by the advent and establishment of a New Left ethos. At Columbia and Harvard one learns to appreciate cultural relativism and give great weight to the murky and sometimes inconsistent history of American foreign policy and the sometimes hypocritical struggle for freedom at home. President Obama comes to us steeped in nuance, irony, and cynicism.
Is that Enough?
Sometimes we want more than the detached cool of the knowing academic. Sometimes we want and need an official cri de coeur from the President of the United States. Sometimes we need some Daniel Webster.
A Thought Experiment:
When I watch the scene in Casablanca in which Freedom Fighter Victor Laszlo orchestrates the public singing of "La Marseillaise," drowning out the Nazis and "Die Wacht am Rhein," I cannot help myself: I tear up (watch here via You Tube--if you have never seen it, seriously, do yourself a favor).
Vive le France!
Vive Michael Curtiz!
God Bless America!
Godspeed to the brave souls in the streets of Tehran!
My Question:
I wonder, does Barack Obama cry when he watches that scene?
Do you get weepy watching that scene?
-----
PREDICTION: For the record, I think the pressure is mounting for the President to come out strongly in support of the protesters. Regardless of whether he feels solidarity in his heart for their cause, I expect an eloquent statement identifying our history with the democratic yearnings of the masses in Iran.
In a nutshell, I am not altogether offended by President Obama's caution. By eschewing the traditional American harsh and unequivocal response in similar cases, the President wisely passes up the temptation to make the United States a center of attention in this internal struggle.
Even more importantly, as I intimated, and the Okie Gardener better articulated, we are "not giving unrealistic expectations to the demonstrators." On a macro moral level, the instances in which freedom-loving dissidents rise up, propelled by the false hopes of a decisive United States intervention, have too often concluded with heartbreaking and cruelly tragic misfortune.
On the other hand, by staying mum while the multitudes bravely take to the streets in pursuit of life, liberty, and peaceful change strikes many of us as craven--or at least quite peculiar. It is in our nature to stand up and yell out our support for and solidarity with our brothers in arms across the seas. As I said before, we have been doing this for more than two hundred years.
However, Obama Americanism is not quite that reflexive (at least not in the same direction). It is a studied skepticism for notions like "natural rights" and the inherent benevolence of American-style democracy. Barack Obama is the first president from a generation of Americans educated in the nation's finest institutions of higher learning transformed during the 1970s and beyond by the advent and establishment of a New Left ethos. At Columbia and Harvard one learns to appreciate cultural relativism and give great weight to the murky and sometimes inconsistent history of American foreign policy and the sometimes hypocritical struggle for freedom at home. President Obama comes to us steeped in nuance, irony, and cynicism.
Is that Enough?
Sometimes we want more than the detached cool of the knowing academic. Sometimes we want and need an official cri de coeur from the President of the United States. Sometimes we need some Daniel Webster.
A Thought Experiment:
When I watch the scene in Casablanca in which Freedom Fighter Victor Laszlo orchestrates the public singing of "La Marseillaise," drowning out the Nazis and "Die Wacht am Rhein," I cannot help myself: I tear up (watch here via You Tube--if you have never seen it, seriously, do yourself a favor).
Vive le France!
Vive Michael Curtiz!
God Bless America!
Godspeed to the brave souls in the streets of Tehran!
My Question:
I wonder, does Barack Obama cry when he watches that scene?
Do you get weepy watching that scene?
-----
PREDICTION: For the record, I think the pressure is mounting for the President to come out strongly in support of the protesters. Regardless of whether he feels solidarity in his heart for their cause, I expect an eloquent statement identifying our history with the democratic yearnings of the masses in Iran.
an okie gardener wrote: