Yes, indeed, we’ve seen this movie before. Yeah, you know, the one where hope silences passion and then the passionless wonder why they got nothing. Think: Carter. Clinton. And, now, Obama.
Pass the popcorn, because this horror-flick has got a lot more spiraling twists before it flails for its Phoenix moment just in time for next year’s midterm elections.
Some people never learn. But, on the bright side, I’m pleased to remind you that some of us were never fooled.
Here, for your reading pleasure (and my slacker-blogging ways as I find myself mired in w-w-w-w-ork – have I mentioned I hate that word?), are a couple of excerpts and links to essays I’ve found on the web that help propel the urge to yell “I told you so” in a crowded public space.
First up, Chris Hedges, and his wonderful TruthDig essay, Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere with Obama.
An excerpt from Hedges:
The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.
The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.
And then there’s David Michael Green’s excellent piece from CounterPunch, Guess What? He’s a Terrible President.http://www.counterpunch.org/green08192009.html
Here’s an excerpt:
Both President Obama’s health care plan and his presidency are going down the toilet.
This is well, and right, and just as it should be.
Obama is turning out to be a disastrous president, wholly unsuited for the times and our national and global challenges, and his job approval ratings reflect this.
In Obama, we get all the corporate toadying of the last Democratic president, along with an even greater unwillingness than Clinton – and who would’ve thought that was possible – to name names, call out enemies, and throw a freakin’ punch every other year or so. (We’re also getting a continuation of the civil rights and civil liberties policies of Dick Cheney, as an extra added bonus, but that’s another story.) What makes it even more astonishing this time around, however, is that we’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. There is apparently absolutely no bottom – as the events of recent weeks have reconfirmed – to the pit of vicious lies, brutal tactics, and democracy-demolishing antics of which regressives will avail themselves in their practice of contemporary American politics. In addition to not being prepared for that, Barack Obama is still seemingly unable to raise his voice a decibel or two against the very people who are helping him to destroy his own presidency. Indeed, he is negotiating ‘bipartisan’ (read: total capitulation) deals with them, even as they relentlessly trash him before a national audience.
I’ll be in the woods if anyone needs me…
Well…seems to me like I voted Republican last November. And so did the whole country. Like one of those elections in a Totalitarian state where the dictator gets 99% of the vote. In 2016 the Corporations will probably front a disabled person for President with the slogan: “He/She Overcame lack of health care. So can you. What are ya, wimps?”