I've wasted the last time I have on this.
Every. Single. Time. I see someone attacking Obama, it turns out there's a personal pet issue that they've got that is the REAL kicker. In a way I can understand that.
IF WE WERE A BUNCH OF FUCKIN' TEABAGGERS, that is!
Since when did we all become single-issue zealots? Since when did we COMPLETELY THE FUCK LOSE PERSPECTIVE over these single issues? Is that how a coalition holds together? I don't think so. A coalition is people with lots of single issues agreeing to work together so that these issues can be advanced. Sometimes, YOUR PET ISSUE GOES HERE won't get resolved today. Sometimes, YOU HAVE TO WAIT because well fuck, everything can't get resolved at once.
Sometimes, THE OPPOSITION IS DETERMINEDLY AGAINST your issue. I'm thinking of this time back when the very notion of regulating healthcare was a complete anethema to any elected official anywhere.
It is almost as if we ourselves are being driven by the media, who can't remember anything that happened last week because last week's news is no longer new. Obama got Osama. He got healthcare reform passed, many of the provisions of which are just now starting to bear fruit. He's done a great many things that we don't give him credit for . . . and then when someone says "I've had it" with Obama, it turns out to be . . . . ONE SINGLE THING. In a forest of many many other things.
But what I really don't get is any realistic appraisal of how mendacious the opposition is, how rigged the media game is. Obama gets these massive attacks on him because he's already accepted reality and moved on with what he can accomplish. And he's already shown that he holds his cards VERY CLOSE to the chest and you often don't know he's already won because he's six miles in front of you, out of range over the horizon.
People who claim Obama could be an FDR forget -- even in FDR's time we never had a Fox News operation with 24x7 vertically integrated media CONSTANTLY showering derision on anything remotely resembling good news about his administration, and with the other stations vying to be just as mendacious and hyper-critical because that's where the 'market' is.
I've seen a lot of people claim "Obama will fake being Candidate Obama for the 2012 elections -- I won't be fooled again." Well, if you think you were "fooled," you weren't reading very closely. I NEVER expected Obama to be the ultra-liberal that everyone seems to wish he was. I DID expect him to be a rational adult. That is about all you can hope for in today's climate.
But over and over again what I DON'T see in these wailing, gnashing-tooth diaries are any ideas of what TO DO. Over, and over, and over, and over again we have the insinuation that Obama's not good enough BECAUSE ONE ISSUE and therefore we "deserve" Rick Perry.
I'd like people to think very fucking carefully about that before they continue. When I had my own personal temper tantrum over Al Gore (for no real definable reason I could articulate today, I might add), I went and voted for Nader, Bush got elected, and I spent the next eight years sick to my stomach. Thousands of people DIED.
So was that a good little temper tantrum I had? Did my face look better without that big ol' nose in it? I'm sure it did. And I'm sure happy that I taught Al Gore a lesson.
The lesson we taught Obama in 2010 was that he was too liberal. We sucked the support of his party right out from under him, and he reads polls people, but there's one poll you can't "interpret." It just IS, and that's an election.
The election said "You're too lefty." Staying home and not voting does not send a personalized message to your party. They don't really know why you are unhappy because YOU REFUSED TO SAY WHAT YOU PREFERRED.
I don't know how this meme that avoiding voting counts as a vote got into people's heads, but I guarantee the RIGHT loves the fuck out of that meme.
They will also love crushing Obama with a plastered up fake like Rick Perry and finishing the job of turning this country into a 3rd world nation.
So . . . President Perry??
4:53 PM PT: I'll tell you what I will read. Diaries that have IDEAS in them. Hammering on Candidate Obama vs. President Obama is pointless and a waste of time. He is A POLITICIAN. He will disappoint us.
I'd rather be disapointed than horrified. And I'd rather hear about ideas that can get all of our little single issues resolved, than despair that there's no point in doing any of it. That's not how elections get won and that is not how movements gain importance. If we are to reclaim this country from the low information voters and starry-eyed Villagers, we need ideas and we need to stand together against the bastards.