Two very different descriptions of the impact of imagination in the U.S. in relation to the presidential election.

The first is from Fouad Ajami, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.

The second comes from Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times:

Stories require restraint, too. Restraint engages the imagination, which has always been stirred by the American idea, and can be once again.

Me? I tend to the latter. We are free to use our imagination to conjure a better place in our mind and use opportunity to realize our dreams.

letter to NYTimes editor, 17 October 2008

This line, "Given the fact that he is not, in fact, a white male," from the magazine article, Working for the Working-Class Vote, represents a retrograde view of race in this country. Because the simple fact is that Obama *is* a white male, at least every bit as much as he is a black male.

The phrase used harkens back to the time of the "one drop" rule; that any drop of "black" blood stains the whiteness of a person. This idea is so preposterous, it leaves me flabbergasted when I consider it. Yet, here it is reflected in this article, stated as if it is an obvious truth.

Maybe there is no easy way to classify the race of Obama. I, for one, would rather see clumsy attempts at getting it right, rather than relying on easy phrases that give room to old prejudices in our contemporary discourse.

high school teacher's strike

I attended Crestwood High School in Dearborn Heights, Michigan and graduated from there in June, 1978. At the time, it was a three year high school, so I entered in the fall of 1975. During the prior scholastic year, students in the district missed a lot of class time because of a teacher's strike. At some point before I entered high school, the majority of teachers were fired.

One effect of this was to vastly reduce the effectiveness of my high school academic experience. There were many new teachers in the school, a number of classes were cancelled (I signed up for Russian language and ended up with auto shop) and there was a real sense of disarray for a good part of the first semester.

In the end, I ended up without taking any physics or chemistry classes and no advanced math. This created a challenge for me when I entered college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.