Tuesday, January 20, 2009

My thoughts were so loud

I watched the inaugeration while I was at work today, with the members of the public relations office and several deans of the college. During Obama's speech they kept throwing in "as I learned when I was giving the commencement speech at Knox College..." between sentences and pointing out every politician wearing a purple scarf (purple is one of the Knox colors) as if it represented our school. It was interesting watching with a bunch of old white people and then going to my literature by Chicanas class which has considerably more diversity. Of course, everyone was impressed with Aretha Franklin's hat. My Chicana lit professor pointed out the connection between her hat and the great African American women Sunday church hat tradition.

I've become too cynical. Nothing that is being done politically feels like enough. Yesterday during the Martin Luther King Jr. program that Knox held, one of the speakers quoted Martin Luther King Jr. talking about the label of extremist, where he says it's okay to be an extremist as long as you are an extremist for the right causes. I have to agree. Most of my views would be labeled as extremist (the word extremist often follows words like communist and feminist), but to me they don't seem extremist at all, they seem logical. I've reached a point of no-empathy, which is bad. I don't understand conservatism. People with extremely conservative views have become an unreachable other. I'm not saying that is okay or people should think that way. I've just been in too many liberal bubbles. Maybe as an experiment I should immerse myself in conservatism.

1 comment:

Jamie said...

that's not a bad idea if you can be open minded about it, seeing what the other side has to say and if it's of any value, but why bother if it's like lab rat experiements? i dunno. i'm a big fan of moderation and compromise. this is difficult in the arts.