很有意思，他当政的8年里，我对他大概一分钟的关注都没有。他的那8年可圈可点的很多，众说纷纭。但令我不解的是，怎么会有那么多人对他恨之入骨。。比起小布什，克林顿，他的政策基本上中规中矩。好像也没有什么丑闻，笑话。 没想到的是在他刚刚离开的这几年里，我就开始关注了。 Becoming是一个角度，这本书是另一个角度。嗯，都是能写，会写的人，书自然好看。 “Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different. The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.”
― Ben Rhodes, The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House 今天听到书中的这段话时，就想着要找出来再看看。。还有这段： “I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved—the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn’t want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn’t going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn’t going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as “takers,” incapable of making it on their own. The “last person who ever thought that Barack Obama’s election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some “end of race” in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person’s concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line “And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States.” But he couldn’t offer up absolution for America’s racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years.”
― Ben Rhodes, The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House 记得The Guest Book 里Reg的那些话么？60多年了。。。。 其实，书里讲到的种族问题篇幅不大。。更多的是当时的国际问题，有些我有大概的印象，有些几乎都不记得了。不过，听起来都很有意思。 噢，有个印象挺深，他们那些人都很年轻！ |
