Hammer

"Of course, there is another story to be told, by the millions of Americans who are going about their business every day.  Their lives are full of contradictions and ambiguities.  And because politics seems to speak so little to what they are going through -- because they understand that politics today is a business and not a mission, and what passes for debate is little more than a spectacle -- they turn inward, away from the noise and the rage and the endless chatter.

A government that truly represents these Americans -- that truly serves these Americans -- will require a different kind of politics.  That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived...It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past.  We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds.  And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break."

--Barack Obama "The Audacity of Hope" (2006: pp.24-25)