Obama in Seattle

I attended the Obama rally in Seattle on Friday! Unfortunately, I arrived 15 minutes after the doors opened, so I was one of the 3000 people stuck listening outside. Yes, it rained. But it was a fine mist! So me and my mac were ok.

Can you guess what was emphasized in his speech? Besides Hope and Delta: The Green cause of course! Since Seattle is charicaturized by granola, birkenstock-sporting, pro-organic everything, tree-huggers, this Go Green cheer was inevitable. I've never owned a pair of Jesus sandals myself, but not for lack of coveting it. 'Granola' is a term I never heard until a few months ago.

As for the environment thing, I was never into the whole tree-hugging business, and have only recently started caring more about sustaining the planet as well as myself. I have my own reasons for starting to become more conscientious about saving the environment, which is that I've gotten fond of traveling, exploring new places-whether in a city or the wide fields of nowhere- and it would be a shame to let something that makes me happy go to waste.

But if anyone wants a more scientific source of incentive for recycling, here's one: The two- sustaining the planet and yourself- are linked, if we're to believe in the Darwinian concept that our primary purpose is to make sure our genes survive. So if you believe this Darwinian concept to be true, and if you want to fulfill your primary purpose for living- ensuring the survival of your awesome genes-, then you better start recycling and emitting less greenhouse gases! Of course, if this is indeed your incentive for saving the environment, it's also true that no amount of recycling will help your purpose if you don't also commit to the duty of propagating.

Seeing the future President, even from a couple hundred feet away booming into a megaphone for a couple minutes before he headed into the arena, was ultra-exciting! There were tons of young people skipping school and tons of older people taking 3-hour lunch breaks from work in order to come see him speak. People around me were really listening to his words, nodding and cheering when they especially agreed with what he said. It was quite inspiring. And I got to put my newfound stadium whistle talent to action, hurray.

Later, I had this conversation with someone who said she would prefer Clinton over Obama, saying that his ability to inspire masses of people was dangerous because it could lead to a lack of checks and balances if he were to become President (She herself was voting for Huckabee). It's an interesting point, and if it were anyone else up on that stage enthralling 1000s of people young and old, and inspiring them to become engaged in politics and issues, I might give it more creedence. Like, if he had a toothbrush moustache (or any moustache for that matter- you know how I feel about moustaches), spoke with a gutteral h, and had a certain special symbol on his uniform, then I might be worried. Or even if he was squinty-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and spoke in a southern drawl, even then I might consider the idea of over-effective charisma coming into play.

Going off on a slight tangent, while watching the Sopranos recently, I noticed that they (the mob characters, or the writers through the mob characters) kept making the point that the mafia was no different from a business or government. They are both corrupt, and the only difference is that the corruption is acknowledged and accepted by the rest of the Family, whereas in civil society, the government and business leaders have to hide their corruption from their people under smiles and promises. This is totally true! I thought at first. So why do we so hypocritically brand the mafia as the bad guys?

But after a second round of thinking, I decided that openly accepted corruption really is worse than covert corruption, where the people are being lied to. Why? Because the empty 'smiles and promises' I spoke of is merely proof that a checks and balances system exists. (And yes, we need this checks and balances system; just because corruption is inevitable, it doesn't mean we should make it easy for it to exist and spread.) It doesn't feel good to know that our leaders could be being dishonest with us, it might make us feel like fools, but actually, it should make us feel that we have at least some power in our hands because they have to sneak around to try to carry out their dirty deeds. A higher level of dishonesty is an easy price to pay for a lower level of corruption, even though that level of corruption may never reach zero.

Of course, this is all theoretical talk. In reality, the mob is disgustingly corrupt, but equally disgustingly dishonest, and so is the government. Bleh. I'm excited for something new. Right now, at this moment, I'm not worried, I'm inspired!