mushinnoshin

I saw Trouble the Water tonight — excellent, deeply moving film. I think the tag line sums it up nicely –

It’s not about a hurricane… it’s about America

I mean just damn, what more can be said? Katrina showed us our worst and our best all at once, and they’ve captured it masterfully in this documentary centered around two survivors who camcorded their own documentary as the disaster hit.

On other subjects, I finally watched the debate when I got home from the flick. What’s striking me is all the pundits in the after talking about McCain “winning on points” and such, and I gotta say I just don’t see it. Sure, he dominated the agenda, and spent the whole night throwing punches — but if the punches don’t land, what have you got?

Which ties to a greater metaphor I think for the campaign as a whole. The chattering classes want a boxing match, and their adrenaline starts to pump whenever they see McCain throw a punch, and time after time they throw up their hands and groan in exasperation when Obama declines to punch back, afraid that he’s losing, never seeing the fight for what it is.

Look — I know we’d all love to see that jab to the chin that takes McCain to the mat, but the problem is, Obama can’t afford to pummel McCain. First for the minor reason that as a black man, he treads a fine line when showing aggression. Like it or not, right or wrong, there are a whole lot of subconscious fears about “the angry black man” that he can’t afford to engage. But even more importantly — to be the sort of leader he wants to be, to bring the country together in the way that we need, to make sure that come January 2009 he doesn’t have half the country bitterly engaged against him — he has to win this thing by being the bigger man, not the meaner one.

After the debates, just like during the Palin bounce, the pundits criticize him for failing to give them a boxing match. But Obama’s not a boxer — he’s a martial artist. Don’t waste energy on punches that won’t work. Block when you have to, but prefer tai sabake. Use your opponents movements against themselves, sometimes a mere inch worth of shifting is all it takes to send your opponent careening.

After 90 minutes of bluster, anger, and flailing strikes that never seem to land, McCain was exhausted, flustered, his knuckles bruised from striking the wall. And that’s why the polls tell us Obama won the match, no matter how many “points” Pat Buchanan thinks McCain won.

Sensei teaches us that the ideal fight is won with one single strike. I trust Obama to hit McCain with a solid, pinpoint blow to the solar plexus on November 4th.