I know a lot of people who had the audacity to compare Obama to MLK and Malcolm X, but always caution against "expecting too much" of him. They want his legacy and esteem to be that of a revolutionary figure, without him ever having to shoulder any of the actual expectations of one. The fundamental difference between Obama - not a great black leader by any measure - and historically brilliant, effective black leaders is they worked against the power structure, while he works within it.
And that's just fine. I won't hold him to the expectations of a great leader, as long as we can be honest about who he really is. He's an ineffectual centrist cut from the Bill Clinton cloth. He appeals to the hope and ideology of the left, but he's on the right in terms of several significant issues. We've just lost track of what left and right is, and we're so busy choosing and arguing sides that we can't be bothered to notice that our culture has been so thoroughly corporatized that the left and right are manipulatable positions rather than fixed ones.
Clinton started this shyt. He moved the left toward the right. It made him electable. And it was unintentionally brilliant strategy for the future of the democratic party, because the more the left moved right, the less room it left the right to define itself in opposition to the left. Which is why the right jumped off a fukking cliff and began to take positions so extreme they alienated some of their core and made it nearly impossible for reasonable independents to vote with them. That's politically brilliant, but it doesn't do much for society. It just dumbs down the rhetoric to the point of utter nonsense. Now we have an ultra-capitalist President being labeled a socialist, even as he perpetuates the same policies and hires the same people who drained the nation's coffers and exploited the financial system to destructive ends. We get people who elected Obama because of his promises to scale back war abroad boasting of his missions to assassinate foreign leaders and terrorists. He expands war, and previously anti-war fans of Obama applaud. Because they ceased arguing principles, and are now arguing a side. Which is how the politics of the world are reduced to something as inane and irrational as baseball fanaticism. Obama DA GAWD=GOAT and I have a youtube highlight reel and some selective stats to back it up!
Meanwhile, he's helping to further fukk the environment. The pipeline is moving ahead, on his watch, with his blessing. We're building new nuclear weapons plants - more under his watch than his predecessors. He publicly fretted about the secrecy of Bush's administration, about the abuse of domestic spying... and here he is, significantly worse about both. He runs the least transparent administration of all time. Our data is their data. Our phone calls are their phone calls. His administration, with his blessing, is fighting journalists in court to pass a law that would ultimately provide language to allow the prosecution and indefinite detainment of American citizens and journalists on suspicions of treachery that are undefined and need not be publicly substantiated. In other words, his administration is pushing for the right to arrest and jail citizens simply because they decide to. This is not the sort of policy put in place by a liberal, a progressive, a leftist, or a decent human being. This is policy only a corporate puppet could support. And that's what Obama is. There's no "real Obama" who is going to use his second term to "Hit Em Up" and show you what he's truly about. His supporters ran that baseless assertion into the fukking ground, and when it never came to pass, they just invented a new rationalization for why our great progressive hope is a corporate shill, a war hawk, a status quo politician on race and class. The new rationalization is "he's the President... you can't expect anything from him!" Which is a level beyond Orwellian, even.
Obama's election is something I still appreciate. It said something about our country. It said yes, this country has a deep, historical contempt for blacks... but maybe it actually is getting better. In the aftermath, of course, maybe I even read that wrong. Still, I'm glad I voted for him the first time, and that we elected him. But otherwise? fukk him. I don't feel any special affinity for that man because he happens to be brown. His own words and deeds certainly demonstrate he doesn't feel special affinity for brown people in general. He can issue an emotional statement about a fukking comedian who offed himself within hours of it happening, but has to sit on his hands for days before issuing a namby-pamby statement about the coldblooded murder of a boy at the hand of an increasingly militarized police force. On the heels of many other incidents like it. With more following immediately.
He's a Talkin' Ass Negro. I guess the speeches were charming at first, but as the crude saying goes, don't talk about it, be about it. His supporters would have you believe that his presidency and the actions of local governments are completely unrelated, that he has no power whatsoever, that his job is simply to "manage" and spin and keep everyone from reacting harshly to him. It's truly depressing.
Obama isn't a person to be admired or defended. He's precisely the kind of person in the kind of position King and X fought against. His interests are not my interests. His policies do not affirm my values or my life, they subvert both. The principles he publicly professes are not the ones he clandestinely pushes forward. His drones have killed countless innocent citizens - men, women, children - and there's still so little information about the program that we don't even know exactly how steep that death toll is, and how ineffective the operation has been. We continue to sow more seeds of discontent abroad among allies and enemies alike. In the name of fighting terrorism, we're laying the groundwork for even more extreme fundamentalist groups who will never stop trying to attack us and our interests. Obama has done nothing but contribute to a cycle of war, death, stark domestic poverty, and racism. It's nice that he has done some good for immigrants and gays, I guess - but that doesn't somehow cancel all the other shyt out. For God's sake, this piece of shyt made a public joke about sending a drone to kill the Jonas Brothers. The President should not be taking that issue so lightly, ever. Especially not a purportedly progressive President.
fukk him. And those who shrug and say "you can't expect anything else from the President" are confessing a defeatist, cynical philosophy. They're saying "the world is going to burn and hate will always win and war is permanent and the apocalypse is imminent." Otherwise, no one would ask the absurd question "what did you expect?" I expected something different, something better, something decent, something progressive. I expected that in spite of myself and knowledge of the world. Because pessimism of experience shouldn't mute optimism for human and societal potential, or you might as well kill yourself, because you're a walking dead person inside at that point.
Lemme get this straight, people are pissed a half-white, half-black, Ivy League law grad turned Zionist politician isn't going to do anything about this? This is the same guy that perpetuates the bullshyt War On Terror narrative pushed by the last administration.
you're going to give dubya props even after the Katrina fiasco? His entire run in office was just having fun out there Brett Favre style
