Obama & the Legacy of Pragmatic American Metaphysics

[alice wellintown]

The dominance of those who can control the attention of a nation of
thanatoids, exhibitionists, violence enthusiasts, and nostalgic
gnostics, now  threatens to make of America a people who inquire into
inquiry, who look into, or expect leaders to investigate
investigation, not to find what the case is or cause and effect or to
determine anything, but to prolong protracted debate of ideas, to
wally in the indeterminate,  and thus maintain the staus quo. Inquiry,
as we learned from Robert Jackson after WWII is a controlled and
directed transformation of the indeterminate into the determinate.
What we perceive and what we conceive must be united so that problems
identified may be given solutions. Dewey & Co did run from controversy
and conflict, but met it head on and were determined to ascertain the
causes of conflict. Conflict, debate, disagreement are not a problem
in themselves and are, indeed, indicative of a healthy democracy. If
we stop debate on health care, on education, on energy, on banking, so
on, we will stop democracy, but we must find the causes of
disagreement and then, rather than take one side or the other, find a
deeper, intelligent, more inclusive solution than either side is
advocating or putting into practice. We needn't be nationalists to
acknowledge that America is a great experiment in democracy. And our
pragmatism has served us well. Obama, it seems to me, is an American
Pragmatist.  He is, as he said in the speach on Rev Wright and Race, a
story that is not possible in any other place in the world. He may not
be a shining light upon a hill, but he is a pragmatic president and
that is what we need now.