I think this is either spot on the truth about grassroots politics, or it just makes me feel better [via]:
I just wanted to point out that this has always been Obama’s MO. He’s always a step or two behind where his supporters want him to be, getting pulled along by their enthusiasm, rather than out ahead of them where he might get cut off. It’s a community organizer’s MO. You never get out ahead of your constituency. Instead you shape the playing field so that your constituency’s desires flow towards where you think they should go, and allow them to carry you along behind them.
And more from Metafilter, which is on a roll today:
Every single person alive today is descended from murderers and rapists. Which is a sobering thought.
posted by atrazine at 4:06 AM on June 18 [2 favorites +] [Flagged]
Okay, last update from a metafilter sub-site, askMe:
There are two stories I think about, both classical Hasidic stories, interestingly enough, since my problems with hasidism, the modern kind, are not few.
I was about to paraphrase but let’s see what I can find online.
“Keep two truths in your pocket, and take them out according to the need of the moment. Let one be: ‘For my sake was the world created.’ And the other: ‘I am dust and ashes.’”
A famous Chasidic story relates that before his death Rabbi Zusya said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses’ they will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?
They’re both open for lots of interpretation, but to me they mean that in the end, who I am and what I’m doing here isn’t about any kind of relative ranking with other people, and ‘average’ isn’t even a sensible way of talking about individual humans, for the most part.
posted by Salamandrous at 8:18 AM on June 14 [48 favorites +] [!]