Tuesday, November 04, 2008

On Obama's Victory

One. It's sad that Obama's grandmother died before she could see her grandson elected President.

Two. This is a great moment in our history in that we have proven to ourselves that we are not a racist nation. In fact, I better not hear anyone ever say that again. It is a lie, and only racists believe it.

Three. Obama is promising to do everything that lead to the Great Depression at a time when the economy is in a very weak state. The Democratic majority in the Congress will more than happily do everything he wants. Redistribution of wealth destroys it, and he has promised to redistribute wealth. My opposition to Obama is and has always been based on his devastatingly wrong economic beliefs. His economics is like having a belief about the ecosystem that if you only bulldozed the forest, you could save it from deforestation.

Four. Obama has the most hubris of any Presidential candidate I have ever known of. Being hubristic, I doubt he will choose good advisors -- but we will see for sure. More important than the obvious Cabinet will be his real advisors he keeps close to him. Know who they are, and you will know what he's really going to do. The problem with a hubristic person is that eventually they find the true end of the rope. Everyone needs to go out and read all the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare's tragedies. Now. You need to know what we're going to face with him as President.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you give us a list of the most important, and in what order to read them, please?

Troy Camplin said...

For the purposes of Obama, may I suggest:

Everything by Aeschylus, but especially

The Persians
Prometheus Bound
The Oresteian trilogy

All of Sophocles, but especially:

Oedipus tyrranus
Antigone

And Euripides' The Bacchai

With Shakespeare, Obama needs to read MacBeth especially.

However, everyone needs to read Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.

In all of these, the protagonists overstep their bounds, and in doing so, drag the culture in behind them. I would recommend reading these more or less in the order given, since they are more or less chronological. A warning, though: with the exception of The Bacchai, Euripides' works are a disappointment after reading Aeschylus and Sophocles. A knowledge of the ancient Greek myths is very helpful in understanding Shakespeare too.