Yes. We. Did. But what exactly did we do? We elected another “leader” who has put the best interests of the American people, and the economic and ecological future of the world, at the bottom of his priority list.
Glenn Greenwald has an Op-Ed piece in The Guardian today which is worth reading. He offers some specifics about how Obama’s actions since taking office amount to a betrayal of the American voters. But more broadly and importantly, he provides surgical insight into the underlying reasons our system of politics, combined with a corporate-supported media and campaign finance mayhem, is failing us so miserably. He doesn’t mention those last two things specifically, but they are ever-present specters haunting the foundation of almost every serious problem we face. Here’s the money quote:
The nature of American politics is that once a policy is removed from the partisan wars – once it is adopted by the leadership of both parties – it is removed from mainstream debate and fortified as bipartisan consensus.
This seemingly casual observation, buried deep in the article, is the fundamental and critical truth which has been so effectively hidden from all of us. Even though he doesn’t hammer explicitly enough on the media on this particular occasion (he does mention the lack of “mainstream journalistic scrutiny” in the follow-up sentence), the statement might as well have come straight out of Herman and Chomsky’s seminal Manufacturing Consent.
The lack of outrage from the mainstream left at everything Obama has done, and is trying to do, is silent proof that we’ve become anemic, pacified, and largely mind-controlled. His healthcare bill was a gift to insurance companies, and his financial policy an invitation for Wall Street to keep hacking away at world economic stability. I have to laugh even harder now at all of the mindless conservatives who claimed Obama was a socialist, and would squander our wealth on giving free rides to the welfare population. Utterly ridiculous. I knew even then, of course (because I am not a moron), that this wasn’t even a remote possibility, for a whole host of reasons. But I had no idea how easily he would fall into step with the banks and other powerful interests, and am beyond shocked that he is now beating the drum for massive entitlement cuts, and that he has happily propagated the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld doctrine of terror and torture.
Honestly, I can’t see how any self-respecting media-addled conservative mind could not love this guy. Donald Trump and all of these other assholes should have been lining up to help get him a forged birth certificate for the one that supposedly doesn’t exist. Hello, young idealistic-but-Republican finance intern? Barack Obama is your freakin’ wet dream. At least based on the short-sighted beliefs with which you’ve been indoctrinated, and think are your own.
I find this all very ironic in the context of the piece I posted yesterday about Michele Bachmann, which outlined a possible scenario under which she could be an unwitting heroine by selling her advocates on the reality of the impending ecosystem catastrophe. Barack Obama, in much the same way, has essentially become an anti-hero and a tool of the elite right, by couching the systematic destruction of everything that made America great in warm fuzzy rhetoric. So few people who have associated themselves with the left are willing, apparently, to actually stand up for what they claim they believe in. If they were, the Democratic Party could not hope to run this joker in 2012 without a massive revolt.
But, as Greenwald laments, “The silence from progressive partisans is deafening.” I agree, and have noted this for a long time. My Facebook friends are a fairly diverse bunch when it comes to political views, but are generally weighted toward liberal viewpoints. When I post a rant against John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, they jump right on board in agreement. But when I disparage Obama, I get blind approval from conservatives, maybe some marginal, hesitant, conditional agreement from a few lefties, and mostly silence. Maybe they too spent $90 on a moveon.org poster*, and aren’t ready yet to feel publicly stupid about how misled they were. I don’t know, but it’s frustrating.
When I posted an earlier, diluted version of this rant on Facebook today, a conservative friend actually assumed that my disapproval implied I was ready to embrace the Republicans, and had finally found my way over to “the good side.” You can be confident a snorting laugh ensued. My opinion of our president is that almost everything he says is good, but that it’s all completely at odds with his actions. Any power he’s able to wield is a danger to us all, and worse because he is clearly intelligent and charismatic. So yeah, I’d venture to say he is “bad” for the country, and the world.
But to draw from that the conclusion that Michele Bachmann, or Newt Gingrich, etc. are “good,” is to stand completely outside of reality, and to remain in the fictional black and white world which our corporate-built government has manufactured to keep us out of their way. The current crop of Republicans are self-interested tools of the system, and they are reckless and irresponsible with our future. In other words, precisely the opposite of what we would hope for. But unlike Obama, they don’t even bother to pay lip-service to the concepts that could advance humanity to a better place. They openly wield their dumbassery for all to see. Their mental incompetence is often shocking. They are like small dogs with head injuries, wagging their tails boisterously as they piss all over the floor and grovel to their corporate masters.
Obama, also, is self-interested, and reckless, and a tool. But he is smart. Charismatic. Insidious. He is more like a plotting feline, who purrs softly, looks good, and doesn’t trouble us much, but then takes a dump in our oatmeal when we turn our backs for a few seconds to change the channel to a different reality show.
Just because we have two very different types here doesn’t mean one is “good” and one is “bad.” I’m pretty sure both of those “sides” are really fucking bad. And that’s just the problem, isn’t it? Why are we setting up “sides,” anyway?? Aren’t we all in this together? Almost our entire world of experience right now is simplistically framed for us, so we don’t have to do the work. Do we internalize Soundbite A, or Soundbite B? Hmm….tough decisi– Oh, Hey! Look! That fun Housewives show is on. SHhhh!
We are made dumber by mainstream content of all sorts, and then our dullness is used to pit us against each other over stupid shit that doesn’t really matter, while the powerful and rich elite make themselves even richer at our expense, and the expense of the future of the entire population. Everything is framed up for us to make it easy to listen to a few soundbites and then choose one “side” or the other. Too complicated to forge out in our own directions. We’re too busy and distracted and ignorant most of the time to realize that there are a whole bunch of letters between A and Z. We are like lazy students who want multiple choice tests, or better yet, true/false ones. We dread the essay question, and the media framework reinforces that at every turn.
I used to spend a lot of time ranting about Shrubbo on internet forums. Consistently, conservatives accused me of being a one-sided W-hater, and said I would fawn ceaselessly over Barack Obama. This is me proving you wrong, dumbfucks. Just like I routinely proved you wrong about almost everything else, even though you rarely realized it. I may never understand this human attraction to the binary…..the comfort we seem to find in the reduction of everything to black or white. I suspect that evolutionary psychologists are making progress into genetic underpinnings of this propensity, but I won’t be happy until they produce a drug which can alleviate that. Preferably without side-effects, unbranded, and covered by a global health insurance plan. 
To anyone who thinks that between Republicans and Democrats we are offered a viable range of social and political hope, I’ve got two words for you, from the late John Belushi:
“Cheeseburger. Pepsi.”
Or in more contemporary terms, for the young readers: “You will eat this shit sandwich, and you will like it. Bitch.”
A note about the image I’ve chosen to go along with this post, before anyone goes all Ayatollah ape-shit over some unintended symbolism: this is the limited edition Shepard Fairey poster that was offered by moveon.org in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic election. I added the blood in Photoshop, to symbolize the blood that is and will be on Obama’s hands for his extreme mismanagement of nearly everything. I’m referring both to actual blood from his new clandestine wars, and from his failure to do what he claimed he would do about the leftover Shrubbo war crimes, and am referring also to the metaphorical blood gushing from the sucking chest wound that American Democracy has suffered over the past few decades, which Barack Obama has done nothing to staunch, but rather, into which he seems to be grinding his bootheel.
*I have one of these posters. I paid $90 for it after the election. I was thrilled with the result, and while I never believed Obama would turn all of our problems around, I truly did have hope that he was an honest and decent man, who intended to work for the people. So much for that. I also thought that one day the poster might be worth a lot of money, since only 5000 were printed originally. Now I am fairly chagrined to even own it, and I’m not sure what will eventually become of it. But if you should one day see me ranting loudly in public, and setting fire to a large piece of paper, you can pretty much guess what’s on that paper.
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Years ago Bill Hicks had a bit about how person A likes the puppet on the left side while person B likes the puppet on the right side. Then they realize that both puppets are being help up by the same guy. “GO BACK TO SLEEP AMERICA, YOU’RE GOVERNMENT IS IN CONTROL. HERE’S SOME DORITOS AND A NEW COPS EPISODE YOU MORONS”
Loved Bill Hicks. He was one of those rare people who saw exactly what was up, and was able to present it with incisive clarity and humor. A brilliant guy.