Barack Obama's betrayal will resonate in history long after he has become just another name on the over-priced celebrity speaker circuit. It is a betrayal of far more than the youthful idealists and loyal progressives who put him in the White House. Obama has unmoored the Democratic Party from its foundations -- philosophical and electoral. No longer is it an expression of the persons, programs and ideas that crystallized with the New Deal and which dominated the country's politics for sixty years. Its future is that of ad hoc assemblage of hustlers and special interests whose sole claim to govern will be that it is not the amalgamated Tea/Republican Party. Obama, by this Oedipus-like act of patricide, has also betrayed the country that voted for an enlightened leader with a social conscience -- a country in desperate need of the opposite to the fate he has laid on us.
Barack Obama was the active factor that has precipitated this tragedy. Who and what he is, therefore, is of the utmost importance. It deserves close scrutiny since his unbecoming traits of personality are not his alone, although he does represent their distilled essence -- and he alone managed to become President of the United States. There are more Obamas, or Obama look-alikes, in our future. What are the most salient ingredients in his private-public persona? Most striking is a behavior pattern that resembles closely the narcissistic syndrome -- even if he is not a clinical narcissist. A narcissist has no convictions other than a total dedication to his own gratification. That gives him the freedom to maneuver without inhibition or conscience with the revered self as the only reference point. All expressions of ideals, of opinions, of intentions are implicitly so qualified. A complementary narcissistic trait is an ease with blurring the line between virtual reality and actual reality. Narcissists believe everything they say -- at the moment they say it. Their declarations are sterile acts that have no pride of parentage nor can they expect honor from offspring. Witness Obama's momentarily rousing support of a labor movement that he has scorned for thirty months. This is the same President who has launched an all-out campaign against public school teachers whose unions serve as the whipping-boy for all that ails American education. Narcissists take as given that they never dissemble or lie -- because to do so is to acknowledge that reality has an intolerably constraining claim on them.
Of course, this last is a feature of contemporary American political culture in general. Facts are taken to be infinitely malleable, the very notion of truth is denied, speaking honestly is viewed as a lifestyle choice, and communication is more a matter of self affirmation than an attempt to convey knowledge, emotion or intention to somebody else. We have externalized navel gazing to a remarkable degree. One consequence is that public discourse is not anchored by common standards of honesty. It is a maelstrom of opinion, emotive outbursts, mythology and primal screams. Accountability, therefore, ceases to exist. There is accountability only where there are benchmarks of veracity, a reasonably rigorous monitoring of what is said and done, and a dedication on the part of some at least to ensuring that these requirements for a viable democracy are met. The abject failure of the media to perform these functions to any reasonable degree is a hallmark of our times. The think tank and academic worlds are little better.
This amorphous environment is narcissist friendly terrain. It is permissive of twists and turns, leaves no record of what was done yesterday or the day before -- much less a year ago, and focuses only on the evanescent existential moment. Case in point is the remarkably uncritical coverage that Obama has received from the supposedly responsible media -- especially those who claim to be upholders of the ideas and policies and interests that he has betrayed. This aspect of the Obama saga is overlooked because of the savage, mindless attacks on him by the crackpot right which now controls the Republican Party. Their excesses were the story, the only story. The instinct to protect Obama was so powerful that it stilled the voices of those who should have been both bolstering and cajoling him to remain true to his avowed commitments. To this day, the hesitation about calling out Obama is manifest -- witness the minimal reaction to his brazen reversal on clean air standards that is required by legal stipulation to promulgate. Pressuring Obama early on also would have been the line of political realism since opinion surveys have made clear that it was the Republicans who were out of step with prevailing attitudes on issue after issue. That remains true today despite the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership jettisoning them wholesale. It cannot last for very long, of course, with the mass defections that have left American politics with only one narrative, the legitimizing of a Darwinian social philosophy, the ensconcing of moneyed interests on the throne of power, and the deference now shown the Tea Party outrages.
The vow by so many not to hold to account a President (the first person of color to occupy the White House) who engaged in one unseemly sellout after another emboldened Obama to go further and further down that road. Only now that the disaster has occurred are a few tentative, mild voices of serious criticism raised about the man, his methods and his politics. They have little practical meaning since the damage is done, the game is lost, the Democratic Party is denatured, and the great progressive wave of the 20th century that reconciled Americanism with the social ethics of the modern world reversed. Free of any mea culpas and lacking a sense of urgency, these mild chastisements fall into the ignoble category of "grandpa reassurances." When many years from now a grandchild asks over Thanksgiving dinner: "grandpa, where were you when they ruined my country?" he can dredge up something he wrote in the late summer of 2011 to show that he was indeed a responsible person on the side of the angels.
That is what public virtue amounts to in today's America in the wake of the great Obama betrayal.
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 |
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
I'm so tired of playing the "evil of two lessers" game.
Not true, he would just have to quote FOUR WORDS from President Roosevelt -- and mean them, of course. Those four words are:
"I welcome their hatred."
THIS is what America's robber barons need to be told. In public, with the cameras rolling.
If Obama showed that he had the WILL to fight, to get back the enormous wealth that was stolen from America's ordinary citizens in the biggest con game ever, there would be no Tea Party opposition worth mentioning.
And what should Obama do about the g-d--mned Blue Dogs? Here, he should channel LBJ instead of FDR. Take these DINO's to the woodshed. Tell them that every earmark for their states WILL earn a veto. Watch them learn to cooperate.
In his defense, the Obama Lovers will say it was the "just say no" repubicans. But in their blind love the would even miss. The "just say no" republican with Bipartisan Obama tactics created the Stimulus, Healthcare, Wars, blue dogs etc. and then blamed him for it.
But as you SAY:
"No longer is it an expression of the persons, programs and ideas that crystallized with the New Deal and which dominated the country's politics for sixty years"
Yet the EXPIRED Bush Tax Cut would have created the Fair Taxation of the rich of Bill Clinton. RESTORING surpluses and the NEW DEAL of FDR.
With NO bikering pipartisan debate at all. Nope, just by Reid and Polosi not bring the bill to the floor it was DEAD on 1/1/2011.
So WHY? He is still not a member of the CFR, Skull and Bones, Masons, Knights of Malta. Or is he. I don't think an American born of Muslim qualifies for Cecil Rhodes "blood diamonds" and British Empire at all. Not a color thing at all. Crusades and even making and supporting the 10th may not get you in. Is what I see. No matter how much you forsake you character and you supporters
Betrayal is the cost or result to the supporters and his own soul
True he stood up with Obama? Defying logic, but then as you say REPEALED Glass-Seagall, and Monica with Ken Star in the front row seat for 60 million of tax payer dollars to prove Star was right since he had no evidence in Arkansas
You have to look that the Puppeteers who own the Corporations. STOCK TRADERS. Money and Power do not have a party
It's on your shoulders.
Besides, will a Perry white house be so different from an Obama white house?
You can't bully people or scare them in to supporting Obama again. Most people know nothing about this web site, much less dkos or DU. They will simply go to the polls and vote for someone besides Obama because he has been a terrible, weak president.
Worse, he STARTS the negotiations by giving away the store!
Cameras rolling: "My fellow Americans, it's time to start the debate on the health care bill that we've been putting off. Today I announce to my Republican friends in Congress that single-payer is off the table, and that Medicare will not be permitted to negotiate drug prices."
What's left for the Republicans to do after that opening salvo, but to prod the body a few times to make sure that it's dead?
As easy and convenient as it is to blame one person for "unmooring" a party, fingering one person and one party just doesn't wash. The Republicans can blame George W Bush for doing precisely the same thing to them, and look where we are. Politics are fleeting, people have short memories. I would have sworn that Bush wrecked the GOP, too.
The problem is the system, and until that is fixed nothing of lasting substance can be achieved. While politicians from both parties delight in putting restraints and controls on We The People, they're not so quick to do the same to themselves.
These people are bought off, yet they manage to convince us that they truly have your best interests at heart. Really? What we need are strict term limits so that these thugs are not constantly selling out to win the next election. These are not gods; they are not special; they can easily be replaced, and should.
Blame one guy all you want; the problem is the SYSTEM.
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"The speech that President Obama is going to give this week will be a big bunch of nothing because he has got nothing to offer. "
That was exactly my response to the Mitt Romney 'jobs plan'. Same old same old FAIL.
Well, not to too my own horn too loudly, but -- MY writings on the matter date back to 1992. I joined the Green Party the first year its California chapter qualified for ballot status, the year after Democrats refused to filibuster the fast-tracking of Gulf War One for George Bush the Elder's benefit.
Don't single out Obama for punishment here. He's just the latest in a long line of Democratic Party leaders who talk a progressive talk at campaign time, only to turn their attention back to their corporate paymasters the moment the election ends.