This has been a horrible week for America. It was not a 9/11, which was a Verdi Requiem, it was more the unraveling of "great expectations." That this lame-duck president still has to confront the fault-lines which undermine America is really sad. He was supposed to cure them.
Obama's reflective temperament is not suited to the violence and polarization which marginalize, for now, the principles the United States are built on. His obliging, sincere, heartfelt, repetitive condolences hit the walls which are being built at random.
One can be critical of Obama's self-censorship but one cannot doubt his more noble motives. Still, his views sound often too tangential. His restrained appreciation of events starts to be seen as over-intellectualized, more chamber soliloquies than raw emotion. The re-appearance of the racial demon in America's political arena is ominous. President Obama does not deserve this chalice at the end of his mandate.
While US technology is in overdrive, when creativity no longer has boundaries, when the macro-economy scores, Obama looks like Gulliver, shackled by pedestrian politics and lies.
The two contenders for the presidency are flawed but the choice between Secretary Clinton and Benito Trump is self-evident. America is like a patient. The doctor/president is too cautious, the candidates are too reckless. Everybody in his or her true mind will nevertheless miss the cool outgoing man, even if his record often looks large on vision and small on achievements.
At the end of the day, only Bill Clinton was really the first black president, because he felt the pain rather than rationalizing its components. Maybe one has to be imperfect to be able touch the lives and deaths of others.
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