Robert L. Borosage: Obama's "Bend Toward Justice"

[babylonsister]

Robert L. Borosage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/obamas-bold-stroke_b_1505691.html

Obama's "Bend Toward Justice"
Posted: 05/10/2012 8:23 am

"I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?"....
"I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.
"How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
"How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow....
"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Dr. Martin Luther King
March 25, 1965
On the steps of the Alabama State
Capitol

Barack Obama put himself on the side of history yesterday. By supporting the right to same sex marriage, he did what the best leaders do: he tugged on that arc of history to help it bend towards justice.

The media and the left naturally are filled with often cynical views of the president's motives.

His statement is dismissed as a political calculation, forced by the need to raise funds from Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and the desire to rouse the young. It's decried as too little, with the president leaving states in control where 30 have enacted bans on gay marriage. It's criticized as too late, coming a day after North Carolina just passed a constitutional amendment with the ban, not before.

But much of this reflects the natural tension between politicians and movements. Obama is a politician, not a saint (notwithstanding my doctor's recent effusion that he "walks on water&quot . Movements press for justice; good politicians calculate how to get there.

snip//

Personally, I salute President Obama for his statement, for speaking out for equality. This was an act of courage, no matter what the calculations. But this act makes it more important for the president to champion a big argument on jobs, and drive a populist message about the need to take on the entrenched interests and change direction. He needs to prosecute Wall Street's crimes, not cover for them. He needs to be the defender of Social Security and Medicare and not the advocate of a "grand bargain." He needs to champion making it in America, not peddle more corporate trade pacts.

He has to make it clear that he knows this economy is not working for working people -- and in contrast with Mitt Romney's failed recycled trickle down tripe, that he will fight for a new course to rebuild the middle class and revive the American dream. Without that, he could well win the young and the liberal, the professionals, blacks and Latinos, and still lose the election.

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. Absolutely.

I've been reading "The Information" by Gleick, which recounts the beginnings of the information age. It strikes me how world changing ideas come in dispensations, like the are delivered at a certain time. Newton and Leibniz coming up with Calculus simultaneously at different locations without communicating. I think there is an element of divine inspiration to genius.

Anyway, its really interesting to consider that in the context of WWII. You have Hitler killing Gays and Jews in concentration camps, and who did the inspirations come to for the tech that beat the Nazi's and won the war? Well the letter from Einstein, a Jew telling the US president about the possibility for the atom bomb is a matter of public record. But the war with Germany was won before it was developed. Why? According to Gleick, the technology that did the more to win the war was that which allowed all Nazi codes to be cracked, developed by Alan Turing, a gay man. His inspired realizations led to the invention of the computer, or more specifically the Universal Turing machine - the mathematical basis for all computers which made the whole thing possible, to this day.

So these genius inspirations that stopped the eradication of gays and Jews at Hitler's hands, and made the US and UK so powerful came to a gay man and a Jew.

While Einstein was honored, after the war Turing did more than anybody else to win, his life was ruined, he was forced to take injections, and he eventually killed himself from the oppression from being gay.

But what did GOD see fit to do? What happened is that the invention of this gay man spread, transformed the world, even to the extent evangelicals believe its part of the plan because it helps spread the gospel.

Its easy to talk about "what God wants" and use that to tell other people their living their lives wrong, but to me its more informative to look at what God does. And what God did was to use a gay man to transform the world. The arc of the universe DOES bend toward justice.

[babylonsister]

2. Thank you for this; I like how you put all

that together and gave me a history lesson to boot!

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. Sorry for to rant. Its been said before here, but I can't get over what happened to Turing. nt

[jaysunb]

3. Very nicely put.