Like millions of others i watched the Obomber take the stage in Chicago that November night of his election. All those beaming young worshippers, the tears of Jesse Jackson, he had a chance at that moment to change history and he blew it. For sure he's a great orator, his speeches throughout '08 were spellbinding, i was definately a believer. Guess that's what happened, we were all spellbound. Many of us, the believers, eager to project our vision of change into the empty vessel of his rhetoric, saw in him an oppurtunity for 'real' change. We were self eluded chumps, again.In the first days after his electoral trimuph he selected Rahm Emanuel, fixer/compromiser extraordinair. It was his first big decision, his first huge mistake. But Obummer coulda survived Rahm's insider bullshit i told myself. Then came Geithner and Summers and the stomach's of millions sunk in unison. How could he pick the same guys to fix the Wall St./bank bullshit that created and nurtured it? Stunned by Obummer's early moves we all clung to the faint hope clause, maybe he was just gathering momentum, but no, like Evel Knievel at the Snake River Canyon, he had been at the top and was catapulting to infaminy.
Our Obummer seems such a bright guy, so well spoken, a craftsman of words. How and why did he let that asshole Cheney reframe the torture debate from a moral issue, 'right vs.wrong', to an expediency issue 'did it work'? It happened in a day or two, Obummer still had huge poll numbers, he'd debated at Harvard's Hasty Pudding, he knew the framing of any question determined its answer. The acceptance of the Bush era's history of torture as an expedient opened the flood gates, the 'knuckle-dragging Neanderthals", smelled blood, Obama blew it and they knew it
It just kept happening. The links below by well written correspondents outline, far more eloquently than i can, the list of the Obomber's capitulations. Please read some or all of them, if you haven't already. If peak oil doen't get us or the recession or endless war, if we live through all this maybe being informed about the self delusion of our projections into an empty vessel can save us from the next demagogue, left or right, who'll undoubetly try the same tactic.
Obama blew it. he had his moment, he had his chance, he can talk the talk but he doesn't walk the walk.
Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate Version 2.0 by Dave Lindorff
Obama's Big Sellout: The President has Packed His Economic Team with Wall Street Insiders
Now I’m Really Getting Pissed Off by David Michael Green
