The explanation doesn’t seem much better than the original
Senator Obama said some things the other day that some consider controversial and out of touch with the values and lives of Americans and others deem merely a blunder. Here’s part of what he said to explain his remarks:
What I was saying is that when economic hardship hits in these communities, what people have is they’ve got family, they’ve got their faith, they’ve got the traditions that have been passed onto them from generation to generation. Those aren’t bad things. That’s what they have left. And, unfortunately, what people have become bitter about — and oftentimes have told me about, as I traveled through not just Pennsylvania, but I was referring to states all across the Midwest, including my home state — is any confidence that the government is listening to them. They don’t think that government is listening to them.
“They’ve got family, they’ve got faith, they’ve got the traditions that have been passed onto them (guns, social conservatism?)…that’s what they have left.” At least until a government program comes along, apparently. Why do we keep feeling that a certain Senator learned some of his American history from watching movies like The Grapes of Wrath? Or maybe from reading a critique of Hegel? Question: what percentage of Americans now think this way about their country and their countrymen?