No one likes to be chump. Being duped never sits well with anyone, and two questions always haunt the chump: Should I be angry at the person who duped me? Or should I be angry at myself for being duped?
I admit it. Confessing like a drunk at an AA meeting-I stand before all of you and say, I am a chump. I voted for Barack Obama. In my defense I never for a moment thought him a messiah but I believed his election would bring sense back to America, a sense that would overturn the 8 year assault on just about everyone, foreign and domestic--except the corporate elite and moneyed class wherever they resided--in terms of policy and direction that the Bush Administration rammed down our throats.
Also, I never thought Jan 20th to be the beginning of the end of empire. I saw Obama's election rhetoric as presaging no true change in American foreign policy, just a face change, the face kinder, the demeanor gentler. I voted for him though my friends on the Left repeated to me that the lesser of two evils is not a reason to give him my vote.
Still, I voted to stop the bleeding. But the bleeding hasn't stopped. The bandage wrapping, briefly fresh, is reddened quickly again with blood--and it drips into the living rooms of those all across America, those who dreamed of new direction for our nation. This same blood drips in the city squares and villages in Iraq, Afghanistan, and yes, forgive me AIPAC, supporter of all things "Israel", but Gaza and Palestine too. For it, as always, is the blood of the lowly, the working stiffs, never the blood of those who wield power.
Other than William Henry Harrison, President Obama has squandered his great political capital faster than any other president I am aware. Of course, Harrison only lost his capital more quickly since he had the great misfortune of dying two months into his term. A cold day and a too long oration his bane but who can spite him for that. But Obama? Now he's another matter. He's given his capital away.
What's that? The Obama supporters say wait a minute, give the man a chance? He is only months into his first term. Well, let's itemize:
- Planning to have 50,000 troops in Iraq until doomsday is not withdrawal.
- 21, 000 more troops when everyone, even my 90 year old grandmother, says there can be no military solution to Afghanistan, is not common sense.
- Bailing out those who created our economic crisis with no substantive oversight and accountability, and no criminal investigations, along with putting the likes of corporate trolls like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to administer this syrupy medicine is asking the foxes to watch your chickens.
- Not allowing a single single-payer advocate to sit in as a "stakeholder" while the real stakeholders drive a stake into the heart of real health care reform is just duplicitous.
- Standing silently by while the dismantlers of the American Automotive Industry hurled invective and lies about the cushy lives of auto workers, all while making those who have given back so much were made to give back even more.
- Backing off renegotiating NAFTA to ensure that environmental protections, worker rights, and fair trade is an assault on workers in any country
- Backpedaling on the Employee Free Choice Act and now saying the business interests, the ones who have helped eviscerate worker rights through the present ineffective laws, need their voices to be heard in the debate is an affront to working men and woman, the poor and the shrinking middle class.
- Not releasing the pictures of those beaten and tortured in the American Gulag system instead of releasing and holding those accountable by criminal prosecution is unbecoming a man who professes to uphold the rule of law.
- Allowing the EPA to give the green light to some 40 or more mountain-top removals in Appalachia while only stopping a half dozen is selling out.
- Holding on and expanding the State Secrets Act, all while stating his administrations would stand for transparency and oversight is hypocritical.
- Promising a new policy toward Cuba, and then putting it back on the terrorist list.
The point is clear. Many who voted for Obama expected more change than seeing a new family living in the White House along with new curtains.
And recent discussions again alarm me. Talk is now moving to Social Security and Medicare, the former having the foxes digging to get in, the latter already having them already gotten in. I foresee disappointment once again on the horizon. I fear neither has much chance of surviving as originally envisioned if Obama's change is like we have seen thus far.
And though, I admit, he has held true to his promise of inclusiveness, it just seems maybe it is about time to include those other than those on the top rungs of the economic and social ladder. With many "hoping" for an imminent parting of the waves by his call for a "Change you can believe in" he might have given us just one taste of the Promised Land. We hoped we might squish our toes in the grassy bank of the other side if for only a moment.
But this the reality. The unending work needs to be taken back up. We, the people, must double and re-double our efforts, inform our fellow citizens, organize, and mobilize, engage in direct actions, such as the Baucus 8 did for health care, do whatever we can to bring real change, engage in the groaning push from below where real change always begins. We rely on no one person, no senator, no congressman, no president to create the world we want. We of the progressive Left give back the chump change. The honeymoon's over, Obama's free pass revoked.
Let's get to work and make Barack Obama be greater than he ever imagined himself.
