A Promised Land Not Promised
I have just finished reading A Promised Land, Barack Obama’s first presidential memoir. Weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, it tells the story of his life before the presidency (in summary) and most of his first term (in detail). The presidential action starts in 2008 with the financial crisis and finishes with the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. I am not reviewing the book here, but rather focusing on something right at the end that I found sad and also a confirmation, if any were needed, that the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is not going to be delivered conventionally by the establishment, even when the most powerful leader on the planet is charismatic, progressive and apparently on the side of a fairer, greener, more sustainable world.
The passage in question comes as Obama reflects on his nation’s response to the killing of Bin Laden. He reflected on the complex, many-handed effort that went into the operation and the unifying, empowering effect he observed it had on the American population (I know there will be people reading this who did not feel that way but I can forgive him for painting with a broad brush). And then, as he did many times in the book, he reflected on the bigger picture, and I quote:
“With these thoughts came another. Was that unity of effort, that sense of common purpose, possible only when the goal involved killing a terrorist? The question nagged at me. For all the pride and satisfaction I took in the success of our mission in Abbottabad, the truth was that I hadn’t felt the same exuberance as I had on the night the healthcare billed passed. I found myself imagining what America might look like if we could rally the country so that our government brought the same level of expertise and determination to educating our children or housing the homeless as it had been to getting Bin Laden; if we could apply the same persistence and resources to reducing poverty or curbing greenhouse gases or making sure every family had access to decent day care. I knew that even my own staff would dismiss these notions as utopian. And the fact that this was the case, the fact that we could no longer imagine uniting the country around anything other than thwarting attacks and defeating external enemies, I took as a measure of how far my presidency still fell short of what I wanted it to be - and how much work I had left to do.”
The last sentence shows Obama analysing his revelation as an indictment of his own shortcomings. Sadly, having read the whole book, I would have finished the paragraph as follows:
‘…I took as a measure of how impossible it is to imagine how this world-system, built on a story of separation, can ever hope to evolve into the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.’
It was a salutary reminder that we can’t look to the existing global establishment to answer our prayers and deliver our dreams. Almost as important as imagining a fairer, more sustainable world is dreaming about the way, the route or the method by which that world can become a reality.