Agreed. I’m really hoping that Obama has the influence and ability to get through to America on some of these things, and break the spirals. I think he can spell it out, and while it is not hard to understand why he chose not to get into these issues during his presidency, but the failure to deal with them is now clear. He may not have been able to do much at the time, regardless, because America wasn’t ready to hear it, and I think he hoped it would not have to be said. He believed it might be possible to focus on efficiency and material well-being and be satisfied with that, pinning hopes on rational self-interest, civility, and perfecting existing systems. But you could always see his philosophical grounding and general perceptiveness made him wary, and now he knows that worldview isn’t serving the purposes it was intended to. There is way more to people, good and bad, that has to be addressed. I think he gets this, in all its ugliness and potential, and may be able to communicate this to others who are stuck in that worldview or other self-defeating ones anywhere on the political spectrum.
