What ever happened to Obama?
Obama is still cool edit: 2010-02-28 I’ve just learned that Obama has voted to extend the Patriot Act. A greater wrong, he could do not do in my eyes. Goddammit Obama. At least, he’s still super-intelligent and has the makings of a great leader. What he has behind him are, unfortunately, Democrats. Say what you will about Republicans, but those fuckers get shit done. Obama is wasting time on things like “the democratic process” and trying to get “bipartisan support”.
Jon Stewart had an insightful bit about it. The powers of the executive branch have been expanded well beyond what they ever were supposed to be with the last administration, but Obama is taking advantage of none of that. He’s still wasting time respecting “the constitution” and sincerely believes that we live in a global economy, even culture, when he should be ramming Americanism down the throats of our enemies AND allies.
The horror! The horror.
But of course my “quotations” are surely meant to illustrate the irony at the heart of the whole problem. Do we want our guy to resort to such dastardly tactics? Do the ends justify the means? You ask, “what happened to Obama?” What the fuck every happened to Ron Paul? I fear that these idealists and true believers are left no room, and have no role to play in a system that is choking on its own corruption. And to further explore such a bitter sentiment, I turn to recent conclusions I have come to in the theater of war, which seems to remain a constant and global production.
So that's what he's been up to...
I fear that the reason we will never obtain peace in this world is because the world as it is couldn’t function without war. War is the Ace-up-the-sleeve of the American President, and it is played often. Clinton? Scandal? Send off fighter jets to bomb the Sudan. Bush Jr? Lowest approval rating in history? Use 9/11 as an excuse to invade countries that had nothing to do with it. Roosevelt? Global depression? Time to get into that World War. Of course I’m simplifying things greatly. There were many reasons for America to go to war in the middle of the 20th century. But I guarantee that not least among them is the booming business that war represents.
This has nothing to do with anything, but I still love the sentiment.
And that final scenario leads me to my next sad reason why we will always have war. It drives our economy like nothing else. Liberals can cry about how, if we only stopped spending so much on our military-industrial complex, we would have more than enough money for education, poverty, health care…
The sad fact is, if the wars stop, the entire industrial sector of America will collapse, which will lead to the collapse of the economy in general. Talk about “too big to fail.” Such changes rest on the complete re-tooling of the global economy, and an eradication of entrenched greedy companies that have thrived on death and oppression long before there was ever a Nazi state. There were Nazis in power long before Hitler’s Germany.
This can’t be the kind of happy and entertaining post you hoped for, eh? It is sad to see the hippy in myself die a little. It is not that I have lost my desire for peace, it is that I see the reality that is opposed to its existence living large and living strong. I don’t see such changes possible for mankind before a spiritual change that not only sweeps through our culture, but through the hearts and minds of the individual. Every individual.
It all comes full circle
It has long been my hope that December 21st, 2012 would be the beginnings of such an epoch. Maybe it will be. Maybe it will be the tiny pebble, cascading down from great heights that eventually becomes an avalanche. This is my crazy dream.
Replace WAR with SPACE PROGRAM and all of those defense contractors would be doing fine. It wouldn’t be hard to re-tool almost any of the weapons manufacturers into civilian use. Hell If we decided to go Nuclear most of the companies making ICBM and Missiles could just remove the explosives and start firing our nuclear waste into the sun. It is not war that is really necessary but fear. You ratchet down the fear on terror and ratchet up the fear on Climate Change, we don’t need to invade but innovate, the lobby groups buy politicians for making whatever bullshit technology won’t really help, congress will still be affectionately inept and corrupt, and most importantly the corporations that drive the economy remain virtually unaffected.
As for Obama, my opinion is that he will be the best “former President” we’ve ever had. The trend has recently emerged that Presidents simply accomplish a tremendous amount of good in the world after they leave office. Jimmy Carter is the prime example. Obama is young enough, and a good enough speaker and leader that he will likely be making more headlines every year for the 30 after his presidency then he will during his last two years in office. The same way Bill Clinton is doing far more good a job at foreign relations than his wife is.
So we are to let history be the judge, a la Georgie Porgy? OK, so maybe critiquing the president by way of a children’s limerick isn’t my finest hour, so let me see if I can ratchet down MY fear and talk about this plainly. I haven’t lost all faith in Obama – I expected the world of him, and of course, reality being what it is, he is falling short of those expectations. I’m fairly sure that he is a principled person, insomuch as a politician can be, but the renewal of the Patriot Act really gets me down. I have no idea what his reasoning for renewing it might be, unless he really thinks it is necessary to “protect” us from all the nasty bogeymen. I love to hear the man speak, and he has single-handedly turned our reputation abroad around. And he even won a Nobel Peace Prize! Not sure what for, but no one is. Let’s just say that the Europeans love him and leave it at that.
So do you think he will get a chance at a second term? Just how big is the Tea Party movement? Is it really a joke like I perceive it to be? Have you heard that there is now a Coffee Party movement? Politics are hilarious.