Let America be America again...

The Left is becoming respectable. Anti-Bushism is not only getting mainstreamed, it has become commercially viable. Even while blacks are pushed to the ghettos of abject poverty and big corporations call the shots
Sanjay Kapoor Washington

(We are reproducing an article from the archives of Hardnews (September 2007), because it seems relevant in the current context of sharp shifts in American politics and electoral trends. The article reflects a serious insight into the contemporary American mind, the politics of anti-Bushism, and the rising popularity of Barack Obama. The writer is Editor, Hardnews, and the picture below shows him with Obama in Washington in July 2007.)

Just at the edge of Washington's historic U-street, scene of the violent race riots of the 1960s that were triggered after the assassination of Martin Luther King, a new hangout with unlikeliest of names - Bus Boys and Poets - has come up to celebrate political diversity, informed debate, Epicureanism and anti-Bushism. Promoted by an anti-war activist and Iraqi entrepreneur, Andy Shallal, Busboys and Poets has been a roaring success in the few months that it has been in operation - evidence that anti-Bushism is not only getting mainstreamed, but it has also become commercially viable. It is also a manifestation of the steady rise of the Left in the US among the young (17-35 years) who are desperate for change and looking out for a leader who shares their concerns to build a more inclusive and humane order.
Busboys and Poets, inspired by poet Langston Hughes, as Shallal is known to point out, is located at the very point from where the first stone was thrown by protestors against those who gave legitimacy to the killing of Martin Luther King. It is the inclusive spirit of Washington that revels in the movements that brought about greater integration among the blacks and whites. The café fulfilled the felt need to have a place where people disillusioned by the flawed and draconian policies of the government could sit and discuss ways to soothe their brutalised souls and connect with the like-minded.
The symbolism of this place would feed myths in the coming days, if the efforts of many of those who hang out at this 'crossroads' see the return of a more democratic and responsible government. They want to re-interpret the meaning of 'patriotism' away from the divisive laws that have flowed out in the name of 'homeland security' by bringing it closer to the words of Hughes inscribed on the café's wall, "Let America be America again, let it be the dream it used to be."
It was, therefore, not surprising that the café was the venue of a major fund-raising for a democratic candidate, John Edwards, who came there after an intense debate amongst other presidential democratic candidates at the nearby Howard University auditorium. Edwards got a good round of applause for his views on Iraq and how President George W Bush was botching up things both at home and abroad. Most of $250 seats in the café were sold out and it was possible to see great enthusiasm for the candidate.
Talking to some of the young people in the café surfing the net there - wireless is free in Busboys - it was clear that the favourite of the young was the wiry-coloured lawyer from Illinois, Barack Obama. Even when he was speaking at the Howard University, the crowd seemed to hang on to his every word. He may have disappointed many in the predominantly black audience as Obama was circumspect and did not speak what they wanted to hear about their miserable state in the country, but he spoke with passion and authority on health, immigration and Iraq. Quite evidently, Obama did not want to be seen as just a black leader and wanted to take along the whites, too, who were pained by the manner in which the Bush-Cheney duo were running the administration.
A recent survey conducted by the New York Times, CBS, MTV seemed to confirm this growing fascination for the Left and the support for Obama, who seemed to be the most popular followed closely by Hillary Clinton. There are more people opposed to Clinton and that is a major indicator that there is less hostility towards Obama, despite the fact that he is dark with no gubernatorial administrative experience. In overall ratings, Obama is a distant second to Clinton, but these are still early days before the party has its convention to decide on its nominee.
The extent of Obama's popularity can be gauged by the success he has attained by using web communities like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and Orkut to enlarge his support base and raise more funds than anyone else in the presidential race. Support to Obama, many enlightened Americans feel, is a way to heal their souls after the way the blacks have been treated in the country.
The fact that his appeal cuts across race and regions was evidenced when this correspondent saw him in action while talking to his constituents from the state of Illinois in Washington. Accompanied by his political mentor, Senator Dirban, Obama fielded with considerable ease many of the queries posed by a predominantly white audience. On some issues he seemed to be a touch unsure, but thoughtful intervention by Dirban carried the day for him.
Obama, a few days earlier, had criticised the quality of Indians who were supporting Clinton and understandably drawn flak over it. He was hinting at the likes of hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal who had criminal cases against him in India, for supporting the former first lady.
Obama may have criticised Clinton's Indian friends, but no presidential candidate is immune from the influence that big corporations and their lobbyists bring on them. Obama was forced to own up that he used to hang around with the lobbyists. Hillary Clinton tried to make light of her association with members of the K-street (famous for housing the offices of lobbyists. But it was clear that everyone had benefited from the big money put up by large corporations to compromise the next president. The important thing was that there was growing realisation that this money was hurting public policy, skewing the business of governance in favour of large corporations and damaging the cause of the poor and the needy.
The presidency of Bill Clinton was the proof of how good intentions and a resounding mandate gets hijacked by big money. His state, Arkansas, saw the first move towards forced integration when in 1957 President Dwight D Eisenhower sent troops to its capital, Little Rock, to compel the state administration and its segregationist Governor Faubas to allow nine coloured students to attend classes in Central High School. Eisenhower was trying to implement the famous Supreme Court judgment on Brown vs Board of Education which disallowed segregation in schools. Under the supervision of the army, the 'Little Rock Nine', as the nine children were called, may have got to attend the school, but there is no denying that those efforts made 50 years ago have not had the desired results.
Under the governorship of Bill Clinton and later his presidency, one would have expected more inclusiveness and integration, but a walk down Little Rock shows the miserable state the black Americans are in. Little Rock and other southern cities lend meaning to statistics that suggest that majority of the homeless, jobless and sick are blacks. They are the ones who quietly slip behind tourists to ask for cigarettes or a dollar. Many of them are obese and in urgent need of medical attention, which the country's insurance driven health system cannot really provide. Local people are quick to caution outsiders from stepping out: "I would not move out if I were you."
After more than 50 years of integration in schools and civil rights movement, one would expect people to get used to mixed neighbourhoods, but talk to local people here and they still refer to the ugly phenomenon of 'white flight'. "Every time a wealthy black American shifts to a prosperous neighbourhood, many of the whites just move to some other area," explains an Arkansan. Even segregation in schools is being practised in a very sophisticated way. New schools are coming up where the tuition fee is so high that the blacks just cannot afford to send their kids. Only a few children of rich black parents are given admission to sidestep any objections from the administration.
Successive administrations have used legislative fiats and court orders to integrate the blacks, whites and the new flow of Hispanic immigrants, but the process is turning out to be too slow even in capital Washington let alone in the small cities of the south. Washington, too, has its share of homeless and jobless who hang out near corner stores listening to their walkmans and Ipods. Those who find time remove their ear plugs and return to the real world - many of them show up to be an angry lot. Routinely, one comes across in subway trains, angry young blacks cursing the world.
If this article is painting a dismal and seamier side of the US, this has more to do with what one expects from this great nation that has the Statue of Liberty beseeching in the words of Emma Lazarus, "Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp besides the golden door."
The United States of America, after 9/11, is none of this.
Although its economy has done well under George W Bush, the ordinary American is scared and suspicious. He is being routinely made to take off his shoes at every airport, body-searched by unrelenting security personnel, he is suspicious of immigrants, fearful of outsourcing and unsure of his country's moral authority in a terror-ravaged world.
The ambivalence about who should govern them shows up every time the alert level goes from friendly green to edgy orange. When the terror siren goes up and armed policemen hit the roads of New York and Washington, that is the time citizens and visitors begun to wonder what terror has made of this great country. Would their fears rest easy if the Republicans go away and the Democrats take over or would the world carry on as if Bush never left White House? Many Republicans blame Bill Clintons for not doing enough to counter Al-Qaeda and Islamic terror. "If only he had acted, we would not have had to go through 9/11."
Indeed, it would take a lot of effort to put together the America of a common man's dream after Bush demits office. At the moment there is near unanimity that a democrat may succeed Bush. The next president could be a woman or a black - it will make history when it happens - or it could be someone who is a much married cross-dresser - Rudy Giuliani; but the fact is that whoever it is, she/he would find it difficult to undo whatever Bush has done in the last seven years of his rule.
By waging wars in different parts of the world, the Bush administration has lent primacy to the military-industrial complex and reordered the world in such a way that his successor would find it difficult to go back to the days when the US was not the creator of the clash of civilisations. It was an open society allowing people to chase the American dream.