CHORONZON: I am a dire world, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.
CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.
MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.
CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.
MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy footed.
CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher, bacterium, warm-life destroying.
MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life nurturing.
CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding… planet-cremating.
MORPHEUS: I am the Universe — all things encompassing, all life embracing.
CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds… of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?
MORPHEUS: I am hope.
……..
The above is taken from Neil Gaiman’s classic Sandman series. “A Hope in Hell” was the title of the issue.
The sequence above is the first thing that came to mind when I saw the results of the Iowa Primaries. More specifically it was the first thing I thought of when I heard that Obama won and Clinton came in THIRD.
(edited to add: I’ve got to reiterate my support for Edwards here, but hope is a powerful thing.)
Hope indeed is a powerful thing. I can’t lie, Obama’s speech gave a brutha some goosebumps. I’ve never been effected like that in politics. Interesting times ahead.
i didn’t know you were still in the game kid! it’s good to hear from you.
As I told P6 on his blog, I almost checked out of this world due to illness. But I fought it and won. Now I’m back in the saddle. 🙂
i saw! i replied there, and it hasn’t appeared yet but i’ll reiterate it YET again. “Seeing” you is the second best news i’ve gotten in the new year. Particularly given what you were dealing with, I’m taking this as a sign. I am Hope INDEED.
Xyb0rg brings a moment of abject clarity takes a quantum leap outside the box, and envisions the perfect face of governance!!!
..Is Senator Obama ~ who really has nothing to lose at this point ~ possessed of the raw gutsiness to double his political bets and altogether pre-empt the entire question of America’s willingness to accept a man like himself in the role of CEO, by tapping General Powell as his running mate and teasing the American electorate with the eye-popping prospect of two Black rulers in the West Wing at the same time? Indeed, may the answer to that age-old conundrum not lie on the far side of so brazen a display of sheer political sass? For, what other coupling could possibly match it? What presidential tag team would even come close? The US elections would be over before they had barely begun…
…The breathtaking possibility of two Black men ~ each of the very highest calibre and pedigree ~ assuming power as both president and vice president of a country still so contorted and torn by its ghastly legacy of racial bigotry would dramatize and electrify the United States of America and the world beyond her shores. It would transform the national dialogue in that country and galvanise her electorate as never before. As the quintessential Manichean obverse to Bush/Cheney, the Obama/Powell administration would revolutionise the global identity of America and infuse her with a new momentum and meaning.
A Democrat like Senator Obama and a Republican like General Powell would provide the perfect bi-partisan ideological balm that could heal a divided America and surge her toward a better tomorrow. Such an Obama-Powell Presidency would be nothing short of messianic and would renew America’s purpose in our world.
This possibility cannot be allowed to be a mere “dream”; for America and the world’s sake, it must become reality.
The first thing that came to my mind was a Francis Bacon essay; he often helps me grasp the illusions of change, hope, culturally impartial meritocracy, and moral leadership that are our modern politicians.
“It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding that it can hold men’s hearts by hopes when it cannot by satisfaction.”
–Francis Bacon, “Of Seditions and Troubles”, Paragraph 13
interesting given bacon’s socio-political context.
obama/powell would be powerful.
Obama’s speech,evoke memories of a Baptist preacher stirring the flock to hold on and join the movement, it was indeed special.Now we have an excellent opportunity to examine the fifth estate,will the coverage of Obama’s campaign elicit fair play, or will racism lead the way.The audacity of hope breathes new energy to the American political landscape.
Yet another blog runs that perfidious Gaiman comic; were I really the evil thing he portrayed me as I’d sue him for libel. (I am a xenodimensional shapeshifter, but one shape I’d not shift to for the world and all its treasure would be a servant of Satan who looks like a double-jawed Geraldo Rivera.) Please allow me to get the last word that Gaiman, like an (albeit more talented) Hannity or Bill o’Reilly, always cuts off from the intelligent guests they put on Faux – just to be able to state “uhm, we let the godless liberals have their say, yeah…”
When Morpheus says “I am Hope” the answer I really gave, which in fact won me the game and the bar bet of fifty bucks (and an on-the-house night with Tendrillica the Octopus Harlot, but that’s strictly on the hush…or was, until I just told you) was “I am Reality.”
Hope is frequently portrayed as a good thing. Humans are also frequently portrayed as intelligent. Hope is worse than Bukowski’s helldog of love. Hope is what gets you messed up thinking about things being better when they’re lousy. Nature abhors hope more than it does a vacuum, because it sucks about as hard as one. The reason hope sucks is that when you invest your mind in it, you stop learning to live in the Hell that surrounds you instead of bolstering your strength as a bulwark against Reality, which always pummels Hope in the end. There’s a perversity to the universe, something even the adept Zen-meisters can’t quite wrap their considerably agile minds around; those who abandon hope ironically end up getting what they used to hope for a lot more often. The less you need something the more likely it will be that it will turn up, exactly as you’d hoped for, but while you’re busy hoping, like the proverbial watched pot that remains lukewarm, you sit there thinking positively and acting positively stupid while the perverse universe sees your Hope and raises it two Despair points every turn.
I’m something like a god of Chaos (gods aren’t omnipotent, by the way, whoever taught people that is a consummate liar – we’re just more powerful than people. Sometimes…) And even as a chaos God who’s been around quite a few millennia and who’ll stretch into the next few before slowly fading out and then going nova, this bit with hope was something I only recently learned myself – from my very special symbiont, whose gracious loan of her mind and hands, and this big machine that looks like a TV but doesn’t smell evil like one, allow me to impart this wisdom to you and your readers. (We trade off: she gives me Form, I give her Force. A fine barter.)
I won’t hope you have a great new year; instead, I’ll flat out insist on it.
You have to be insistent instead of waiting around pleading with the universe. Seems counterintuitive, but it’s not.
With grace and sincerity,
CHORONZON (The real one)
Dominating the subversive paradigm since there was a subversive paradigm to dominate…
ps: Barack’s a swell fellow, but since my occult number is 333 and Kucinich is attempting to kick Cheney out under HR333, for that and other reasons, my Lady’s vote goes with him. But my money’s on Edwards, because he has a simple name. Look at all the presidents. Their names are usually one or two syllables and very commonplace. Kucinich’s is hard to say by people who like him; imagine how it is for those who don’t really give a damn when standing in the voting booth. Oughta call himself Den, like Eisenhower was called Ike, then he’d have a chance…Unfortunately Obama sounds far too much like that CIA guy they set up as a stooge to blame 9/11 (and everything else) on…A name can make or break the vote. You think it’s all about issues? This is America. Sadly, a simple name beats out a good platform.
Don’t even get me started on Hillary. The one thing the neocons and progressives can agree on is that she sucks, and that’s her sole value. She’s actually a shop mannequin, which is why Bill went through all the nonsense with Ms. Devil With A Blue Dress On. But she couldn’t carry a state if her life depended on it, so not to worry. Sad, though. She seems to have had her opinions surgically removed.
If we’re getting our E.C. game on here, then it’s imperative that we ask what exactly can Obama change?. Everything else is merely hopeful conversation projected into the ambiguous rorschach blot that got Obama’s personage cast in this role in the first place.
Really doh, it’s got doc so caught up that he’s already tapped Michelle Obama for oversight of a comprehensive retooling of the military industrial complex in the Obama administration….
I’ve said my piece over at your spot…but this is where Choronzon is on the money. Hope is an excellent organizing tool in the absence of something more substantial…but hope CAN be used for anything. Of the three candidates I think that Edwards offers the best chance…but even this chance depends upon a level of ground pressure that I’m not sure can be put on any of them.
People don’t make decisions based on issues, logic, or rational thinking. People make decisions with emotion. In fact scientist have recently discovered that people who are incapable of emotion due to brain injury are unable to make decisions. We need emotions to help us figure out what makes us happy and then choose that course of action. For to long the emotions that have been used are fear and contempt. It is good to see a candidate who is successful because he uses hope rather than trepidation to motivate people.