So many of James Carroll's articles speak my mind. Perhaps it's because we are about the same age, lived through the same time. I don't know, but the following article is one of them.
"One of the joys of the current season is to see a fresh generation respond to the promise of Obama without reflexes of worry. Young people have a right to uncomplicated hope, and Obama is himself young enough to nurture it."
"But for many Americans, ghosts haunt the house of politics, a hovering threat for which, until recently, there were no words. That is the background for the shudders felt when last week's presidential debate turned to the ugliness of what this campaign has surfaced. John McCain complained about "unfair" criticisms by Georgia Congressman John Lewis of slurs shouted at some McCain-Palin rallies. Obama replied that he had distanced himself from Lewis's comments. But he explained that Lewis was expressing concern at McCain supporters shouting, as Obama put it, referring to himself as the target, "things like 'Terrorist!' and 'Kill him!' " "
'There it was: Obama himself using the phrase "Kill him!" Obama naming the threat of his own assassination. He went on, "And that your running mate . . . didn't say, 'Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line.' I think Congressman Lewis's point was that we have to be careful how we deal with our supporters." "
"McCain swung into a manic defense of his supporters, displaying tone deafness to the unnerving chord that had been plucked by his own campaign. McCain is of the generation that was traumatized by the murders of 1968, but that year he was undergoing a separate trauma of his own in Hanoi. He is not seized, perhaps, by the visceral dread out of which Lewis was speaking, and which so many recognize. However irrelevant the youthful nihilism of William Ayers, its full horror cannot be grasped without reference to the social breakdown that preceded it.
Obama has shown that he understands the positive and negative legacies of the 1960s, but he is defined by neither. For me, his calm and reasonable demeanor was never more welcome than when he repeated that phrase "Kill him!" Unlike me, Obama is not afraid to put the threat into words, as long as doing so opens into deeper understanding. The threat thus spoken of is defused."
"A Republican mantra has been, 'Who is Barack Obama?' But he has been showing us. His courage runs as deep as his wisdom. For some Americans, he represents, in addition to everything else, the unexpected possibility that we can find release in middle age from what took us hostage when we were young."
James Carroll, The Boston Globe, October 20, 2008
