Obama in Independence

Barack Obama gave a speech on patriotism yesterday in the small town of Independence, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City.

Like Unity, Pennsylvania, I'm certain Independence, Missouri was chosen in large part because of its symbolic name. But people living outside the state may not realize how significant its location was as well.

Missourians like to say that Missouri is really two states: Missouree and Missourah. In heavily populated urban and suburban Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia, where college campuses and night clubs bustle, highways rumble, and four or five different languages might be heard at one time on a city bus, residents are apt to use the textbook pronunciation of the state name. In Missouri's biggest cities, home to union factory workers, Monsanto biologists, latte-sipping college professors, and the urban poor, voters have preferred Democratic candidates for decades.

But drive just a few hours out from the center of any of these cities, and suddenly, you're surrounded by open skies and fields of corn and soybeans. In rural Missouri, the economy is largely agricultural, politics are conservative, churches, mostly evangelical, are the heart of a town, and the state name is pronounced Missourah.

We make something of a sport around here of watching politicians try to come up with some sort of pronunciation that's in between.

Just outside of Kansas City, Independence, Missouri sits at the cultural crossroads between Missouree Blue and Missourah Red. Between a place where Barack Obama overwhelmingly beats John McCain in the polls, and a place where a significant number of people really worry that he might be a secret radical Muslim operative who won't say the pledge of allegiance and hates the American flag.

Obama famously said, in the 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech that propelled him into the national spotlight:

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

And during his presidential campaign, he has often returned to this same theme: that the divisions between liberals and conservatives in this country have been falsely exaggerated, to all our disadvantage; that the only way to solve the most serious problems that confront us all is to come together despite our differences in recognition of the values and goals we do share.

Many voters who do not consider themselves to be Democrats have responded well to Obama's call for unity; independents lent Obama support during the primaries in state after state, and a growing group of disgruntled Republicans, renaming themselves Obamicans, have very visibly joined his campaign. Some traditionally red, largely rural states, like Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, resoundingly endorsed Obama in their caucuses.

But as right-wing spin artists continue to encourage suspicion of Obama by exploiting his multicultural background and foreign-sounding name to fan the flames of xenophobia in decidedly monocultural rural towns, a Senator descended from Kansas-born grandparents who represents the Corn Belt state of Illinois has found himself at times struggling to connect with rural voters in some parts of the country. Constantly assailed by accusations that Obama is unpatriotic, and elitist, and repeatedly confronted with distortions of his biography and his words, many voters in places like Independence, Missouri have a hard time sorting out what to believe. 

And that's why I think Obama's choice of Independence as a location for his speech is so crucial, beyond the name. It sends a message to Missouri's rural voters that he believes they are willing to listen, despite the mistrust some may feel toward him as the outsider many of his opponents have painted him to be. That he trusts them to be able to sort through fiction to find facts, and make up their own minds, despite constant fearmongering by conservative operatives who fear that Obama's call for unity could dismantle the engine of division that has kept them in power for nearly eight years.   

All too often during the past several years, conservatives have tried to shut down liberal candidacies and liberal policies— and to get away with bending or breaking the Constitution to consolidate their own power— by attacking any policies that disagree with their own as unpatriotic. And liberal politicians have shown a lack of trust in American voters' ability to respond to reason by bowing to this sort of crass manipulation of public opinion without even trying to call it what it is. But in his speech in Independence yesterday, Obama did. Recalling our nation's very foundation by leaders who refused to capitulate to tyranny solely because tyranny was being perpetrated in their government's name, and our proud history as a country that thrives on discussion and dissent, Obama explicitly exposed the fallacy being peddled by the right that it is somehow unpatriotic to disagree with one's government, and reminded his audience that the true definition of patriotism in this country has always been considered, by our best and brightest leaders, to be a love of and a willingness to defend our core values, and not a blind love of leadership: 

Now, most Americans never bought into these simplistic worldviews, these caricatures of left and of right. Most Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic, and most Americans understand that there's nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America's traditions and institutions.

And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often, our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments, a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.

Given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions. None of us expect that arguments about patriotism will, or should, vanish entirely. After all, when we argue about patriotism, we're arguing about who we are as a country and, more importantly, who we should be.

But surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.

And surely we can arrive at a definition of patriotism that, however rough and imperfect, captures the best of America's common spirit.

What would such a definition look like? For me, as for most Americans, patriotism starts as a gut instinct, a loyalty and love for country that's rooted in some of my earliest memories.

Obama also quoted Missouri's native son Mark Twain, saying, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

This kind of forthright rhetoric is exactly what we need to cut through the deceptive propaganda being formulated by those who stand to profit from keeping our nation divided, keeping the public confused, and keeping neighbors suspicious of neighbors.

Now, if only Obama would step up to the task of applying his keen logical sword to the Gordian Knot of twisted rhetoric the Right has been wrapping around their attack on American citizens' Fourth Amendment rights through flawed legislation like the PATRIOT Act and the current FISA/telecom immunity bill making its way through the Senate.

I know it must be daunting even to imagine trying to explain the logical and historical bases for Constitutional protections of civil rights to the American citizens who often seem more interested in American Idol than American History and Government 101, while enduring an epic onslaught of accusations that to even question the Bush Administration's spy policy is to embolden the terrorists.

But you know, I think if anyone could do it, Obama could.

When Jaelithe isn't encouraging Obama to listen to some Mamas, she also writes at The State of Discontent.

Updated with more accurate transcript info from The New York Times.

Visit these links for first hand accounts by bloggers who were there:

Blue Girl, Red State

Show Me Progress

Comments

[Daisy]

Quoting Mark Twain was a great idea. Almost every town and city in Missourih (how's that for an in-between pronunciation?) has a Mark Twain school. And then the quote being right on topic - Senator, you and your speechwriters rock.

[cynematic]

Jaelithe, wonderful frame for a wise, literary speech. As Daisy points out, Twain is beloved for a reason. He had so many witty and truthful things to say on war, imperialism, slavery, and human nature.

I can't help but root for a writerly president Obama, even as I patriotically disagree with him about FISA.

[jaelithe]

I must remain constantly vigilant against swoon in the face of Obama's command of language and knowledge of our best literary and political traditions. He gave an interview immediately after this speech in which he casually tossed out the word "doldrums" in reference to the economy and I just about died of happiness that a presidential candidate would know how to use such a luscious word in casual conversation, without anyone prompting him with it via earpiece.

Of course, the fact that I find his rhetorical skills dreamy does not mean I agree with him all of the time.

[rebecca]

I find it funny that I have to turn to this national site to find a post written by you-- who lives a whole 20 minutes away from me in a city with major media markets-- that aptly describes my home state. None of that conversation is going on elsewhere. And that is why I love me some MOMocrats.

I also think this is a fantastic post about true patriotism, especially after you got called out for being unpatriotic in a previous post of yours!

[jaelithe]

Ah, don't forget, Rebecca-- I got called out for being TOO patriotic AND for being unpatriotic over the very same post, in the very same thread. Apparently I am capable of both at the same time. I must have superpowers.

[Glennia]

Jaelithe, we always knew you had superpowers--super brain powers. Now to find you are the Unpatriotic Patriot's true identity? Too cool. You continue to kick ass for truth, justice, and the American way.

[Amelia Sprout]

Is it right to have a happy warm fuzzy feeling after reading this? Now I just need to get the Kansas relatives to read it.