President Santa or Father Christmas, etc. That's who I thought I was voting for. Well that or maybe President Batman. You gets the picture. The problem is he turned out to be just a guy. A good guy, and maybe the best Boss we've had in some decades, but not President Iron man.
Pity.
We forgot that this 'is' a Republic, and that we were not electing an Emperor. I think the lot of us put all of our hopes, and dreams for a better world on Obama. I sure did. Thing is he was saying all along that he was only human, and there was a limited number things he could do if he was elected.
I know because thanks to Youtube I've been re-watching his speeches. In one he confided that we must be "patient". That it would take more than "one or even two terms" to correct, repair the damage. He said it could take "decades".
He said the "D" word.
Of course we were all so 'blissed' out in Obamamania we didn't hear it. After years of either inertia or outright villainy at the highest levels along comes this amazing person. So it was starry eyed love at first sight!
Though now we must face the grey morning after realities. We once again must go neck deep into the trench warfare of slow politics. Slugging it out with the entrenched minions of the "Wall Street Oligarch of Atomic Plunderers!"
('...make a weird t-shirt.)
Not exactly the joyous entry of the generations delayed Age of Aquarius. Still as my comrades remind me both here, and in "real" life, "...it's better than nothing."
Not saying he's nothing it's just that we wanted 'so much' right away.
This country had been in the hands of men that had only their own self interest, and that of their class at heart.
So we expected 'immediate' miracles once they were sent packing.
Obama being elected, and the rejoicing both here, and around the world was historic. I can remember no election night with the kind of celebrations as greeted Mr. Obama.
It was new years eve from coast to coast, and around the world I vividly remember fire works, and ships in the harbor blowing their horns. People in the street celebrating even in my, then temporary, otherwise quiet 'hood.
(I left homelessness on the day Obama took office, a swell omen I thought then.)
That night, *(election night,..apparently now forgotten), was a once in a lifetime event. Like Woodstock or the Moon Landing,..and Yeah We Went to the Bleeping Moon fer Christ's sakes!!
*(America is a nation without a long term Memory.)
So given all that we expected the Golden Age to start the next morning,...we're still waiting. Perhaps it's time to get realistic again. This is a 'long term' process like everything else in the political world.
I guess all I can say is we have to keep the faith.
Keep the faith, and work like hell to prevent the darkness from descending on us again.
Stay Tuned.
1 comment:
Yes, I voted for Mr. Obama. Yes, I am still glad I did. Am I disappointed? Well, not very, simply because I could not work up such high hopes at the time. I was dismayed then at his being treated as some sort of Messiah. He never was that and never presented himself as that. He's a politician, a better than average politician for sure, but still, a politician, and he is facing a supercollossal mess, not very much like any previous mess. Barack Obama is brighter and better informed than the average president, a very decent guy, without the scandals adhering to him that have dogged so many other presidents -- that's why his opposition has thought it necessary to invent scandals at a rate never before witnessed.
All in all, the single biggest thing to be said ,for him is this HE IS NOT BUSH. That is a powerful recommendation. Though he has not managed to get rid of every bushism (that's a big job), he still very clearly is not that guy and does not pander to the same people that did. Slowly, haltingly, and frustratingly, he has been hard at work (probably the hardest working president in my lifetime) trying to improve a thoroughly broken system. Though still think what we have stinks, I am pleasantly surprised at how much he has actually done.
I still tend to be an old-fashioned conservative -- something Bush/Cheney/Palin and the Tea Party never have been -- and that is why voted for Obama, and why I will be voting straight Democratic this election, for the first time since the sixties.
Ultimately, what makes this country great, even with all its dysfunction, is that its administration always ends up being pragmatic rather than ideological. In the last administration, all thoughts of pragmatism were thrown out the window and government was by ideology -- disaster. The GOP, at this point in time, has become an ideological party and has unfit itself to govern sensibly.
ed
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