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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Idealizing ourselves while demonizing others

 William Greider of The Nation captures one of the essential attractive qualities about Mr. Obama that was especially apparent in his “More Perfect Union” speech:

In psychological terms, what’s extraordinary is [Obama’s] refusal to split off himself and his own experience from those others. So he embraced them, knowing the risks. Then he tells us – audaciously – that we are capable of doing the same. Yet most of us do the opposite in everyday life, defining ourselves in contrast to the others we are not, idealizing our own selves by demonizing the others. Obama knows all this. He still insists we can do it. He has seen it happen in life.

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