and some more, briefly

I was thinking on my way home about Rudy Giuliani's mocking during the general election of Barack's status as a former community organizer. It was an ugly scene to behold, no doubt, but it is worth thinking about at least for a moment to see if there actually was any meat on those savage political bones.

The risk is, as I stated two posts ago, that the community orgainzer, as an outsider, may himself really desire to be embraced by the community that he organizes- and yet he never can. Giulinani's cynical dismissal of someone who does not practice cut-throat realpolitik is an attempt to expose the unconscious motives behind this kind of communitarian do-gooderism.

I think it feeds into Barack's bold dream for community leadership, since the organizer of the community is by definition not part of the community but stands without it. This is the perverse paradox one saw in yesteryear with Stalin and still today with Hu Jintao. There is such a thing as an organically self-organizing community, but the structure it organizes is not communitarian but hierarchical. This is the case with all mammals and humans are no exception. Communitarian-style communities (excuse me) must be artificially constructed, and their creators must therefore be excluded from the sense of belonging that is inherent in the communal experience. This produces a strange paradox for the outcast social engineer and will likely prove a source of frustration for Barack in his attempt to mobilize the great American center as a community.

Once more I wish him well, but on this particular front I remain wary. The scene from Huckleberry Finn keeps flashing through my head- when Sherburn steps out on the porch and yells at the mob about how they're all cowards and that they only brought half a man with them to lynch him, etc. A wonderful indictment of the weak character of group actors in general, and one that tends to get ignored by - groups.

Communities are certainly capable of great works, and there are innumerable things that can be done by the many that can not be done by the individual. But the struggle between the one and the many is an ongoing one, and it strikes me that America is one of the few places on earth where the individual is given so much room to succeed or fail by his own merits. Herding is natural and easy for most. But for those from whom that instinct is missing, it is a kind of impossible suffocation that stagnates the flow of progress which will inevitably come around and benefit the herds that that individual has left behind.

Perhaps we will find Barack leaving his own legacies of individual genius for the herds to lap up in future. I would like to see his own magnificent character flexed and displayed as a proud individual whose own bootstraps are well-worn from a lifetime of tugging. Let the communities organize around that.