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.