Chomsky on Obama: "No relevant change and not much hope."
- Thread starter Berniewood Hogan
- Start date
NZA
LOL
he did this so much he may have to come out of the closet as trans-racial
Obama wasnt perfect by a long shot, but we also held him up to a standard that was impossible for him to achieve. Now we stand on the sidelines and vilify him like he made things worse.
We wanted him to be like Trump, and do whatever he wanted, but also work within the checks and balances of government. That's an impossible task. Governing correctly for all the people is about compromise.
You want a left wing version of Trump? That's fine, feel free to criticize Obama.
Noam Chomsky has his views and he says what he says. If he wanted to, he could be the left wing version of Robert Mercer, but he choses not to manipulate on that scale...at least so far.
Never embrace people who know how to manipulate minds without establishing what their motives could be.
We wanted him to be like Trump, and do whatever he wanted, but also work within the checks and balances of government. That's an impossible task. Governing correctly for all the people is about compromise.
You want a left wing version of Trump? That's fine, feel free to criticize Obama.
Noam Chomsky has his views and he says what he says. If he wanted to, he could be the left wing version of Robert Mercer, but he choses not to manipulate on that scale...at least so far.
Never embrace people who know how to manipulate minds without establishing what their motives could be.
afterlife2009
Superstar
"Never embrace people who know how to manipulate minds without establishing what their motives could be." ????????
this was when I was done with Obama lmao
this was when I was done with Obama lmao
critique obama for policy decisions you dont agree with, but let's at least be intellectually honest.
acting like the rise of the far right had nothing to do with a republican sponsored xenophobic knee jerk response to a black man as potus and changing demographics, their unabashed hyper partisan pledge to hurt his presidency even when their own constituents catch strays, and illegal gerrymandering is important to point out.
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reading this thread i find it interesting why people won't contextualize some of the "failures" in obama's presidency until it's pointed out to them. i'm sure it's just brushed off as excuses...until similar challenges burden their candidate or eventual potus elect.
the current admin is running the country almost like a dictatorship with the assistance of the senate and abuse of power throughout the executive branch. i wonder if this has people even more jaded against obama for not accomplishing what they wanted?
critique obama for policy decisions you dont agree with, but let's at least be intellectually honest.
acting like the rise of the far right had nothing to do with a republican sponsored xenophobic knee jerk response to a black man as potus and changing demographics, their unabashed hyper partisan pledge to hurt his presidency even when their own constituents catch strays, and illegal gerrymandering is important to point out.
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reading this thread i find it interesting why people won't contextualize some of the "failures" in obama's presidency until it's pointed out to them. i'm sure it's just brushed off as excuses...until similar challenges burden their candidate or eventual potus elect.
the current admin is running the country almost like a dictatorship with the assistance of the senate and abuse of power throughout the executive branch. i wonder if this has people even more jaded against obama for not accomplishing what they wanted?
Obama's the best president of my lifetime and it's not even close. Republican obstruction was nasty and deplorable.
But Obama still governed as a corporate dem. At no point did he make any serious attempt to change the system. He did the same thing other center-left dems do, just more competently, without the personal scandals, and in the face of racism. That makes him a lot more admirable than, say, Bill Clinton, but Chomsky's analysis is still correct. The Republicans were only blocking Obama's neoliberal agenda, they weren't blocking any groundbreaking change.
The bank bailout? The refusal to go after the execs who caused the financial crisis? The corporate-friendly healthcare expansion that did little to change the problems in the system? All of that was done with a supermajority.
And White racists can be blamed for the far right, but neoliberals also created the conditions that the far right needed to flourish by continuing to serve their wealthy masters first and refusing to address the issues that have made people freaked out about their futures in this country. If Obama had even tried to govern as a populist liberal like he usually pretended to be before getting elected, then at least we could say that he tried. But he didn't try. He rolled with the same agenda that Nancy Pelosi and every other mainstream white dem has always rolled with and we see where it led.
i have a hard time believing the case that obama was any more responsible for the economic conditions the far right needed to flourish than the administration who set the table for economic collapse prior to his election.
the tea party patriots, conservatives, and far right conservatives have proven to be hypocrites that were not interested in fiscal responsibility. they were only concerned about making sure obama's agenda failed as miserably as possible.
none of that is to apologize for obama's allegiance to corporate america, although that is standard fare for all politicians. i just don't agree obama's policy actions set the table for rise of the far right.
I don't believe that Obama was more responsible than Bush. I think that the Republican and Democratic mainstream are both broadly "neoliberal" in their manner of pushing a globalist top-down interest-based economy that primarily serves the wealthy and ignores the consequences on everyone else. The corporation/mainstream Democrats are quite a bit less evil than the Republicans in how they go about it but at a big-picture level they're doing the same thing and having the same long-term effect.
Basically, Republicans are trying to drive us off a cliff at 60mph and better than their wealthy elderly white constituents will enjoy the ride and die before the rest face the consequences, or be able to parachute themselves out. And the mainstream Democrats come in and try to say, "Hey, can't we pump the brakes a little so we only fly off the cliff at 30mph?"
We're still going off the same fukking cliff.