Posts Tagged ‘barack obama’

[This was originally posted as a private journal entry, but I decided to go ahead and share it.]

Rachel Ben-Avi: Dear Barack [via HuffPo]

The whole article hits me square in the gut, but ESPECIALLY the part I quote below. This expresses very well how I feel about politics and the possibility of change these days. I will direct my passions toward creativity, justice, and compassion and always continue to hope that lives can be positively affected. But I will never again buy into the notion that I can help elect a person to political office who is capable of bucking the system.

I’ll let Rachel’s words finish out my whine-fest, then be done with it.

My heart is broken, and this time the break is permanent. The disappointment is cosmic.

I am diminished by this disappointment, I am shrunk; my heart has folded in on itself like a psychotic origami, it is trampled beyond repair. Picture the blood wrung from it. Picture the just recently thrilled throbbing muscle, now empty, limp.

No, I am not waxing hyperbolic.

Put aside shattered love. Shattered love is an everyday occurrence; everyone has been disappointed, everyone has suffered the broken heart; but the tragedy here is: I have given up. The tragedy is deeper, more to be pitied than a broken heart. The tragedy is surrender. Shoulders shrugged, palms facing black holes. Multiply me by all the people who feel as I do, and we add up to a carpet of horizontal bodies stretching from shore to shriveling shore, too impotent even to sit up.

We shouted YES WE CAN, and actually believed it. Carried signs that said CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN.

We are stunned mute. We’ve thrown up our hands and trudged away into caves, to curl up, to “let” whatever happens out there happen. We had the illusion that we had input, but we are so far out of what makes change in this country, we might as well be ants.

I am a cynic now. You’ve had a real impact on me.

There will be no magical appearance of an even-better-than-Barack after you are done doing whatever it is that you will do. Or whatever it is that you will not do. And if, after you, there comes another image of one who seems like the real thing, I won’t fall for it. Not me, not ever again.

via Rachel Ben-Avi: Dear Barack.

I can’t find anything in this post by Debra Dean Murphy that doesn’t deeply resonate inside me.

Afghanistan and Advent « Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics.

I read somewhere recently that in order to truly hate someone, you must first have loved them. I don’t know if I think that’s actually true, but I do know that I never loved George Bush or Dick Cheney, but I have loved Barack Obama.

And these days, the inner turmoil I feel about Obama’s politically-calculated betrayal of his own stated ideals is weighing on me far worse than anything I ever felt about the Bush administration.

I ranted and railed and voted against Bush’s lies from day one. But this time, here and now, where we find ourselves … that’s a condition I helped bring about.

Leah tried to warn me. She told me over and over again, “He’s a politician, just like the rest of them. He can’t possibly do what he says he’s going to do. Political reality won’t allow it.”

I knew she was right – I didn’t actually expect Obama to succeed in all the changes he was proposing.

But I DID expect him to try. In that, I thought he’d be different.

I was wrong. And I’m sick about it.

Another shareworthy laff-fest about our beloved PoTUS, discovered courtesy of a tweet from Mighty Mur Lafferty:

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To ‘Savage Sword Of Conan’ #24 | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

Hee Hee. I needed some ticklish giggliness after my my morning dump about family drama, so this was really refreshing.

I’m as big an Obamaniac as you’re likely to find, but still, this is really funny because, well … come on people, lighten up.

Andy Borowitz: Poll: Obama Even More Awesome Than Originally Thought.

Feelin’ pretty Wookieefied tonight, so I’m tossing my cool new Obamicon around the Aethernetz, just for pleasure.

Behold and be afraid, Sithlings, Hutt, and NeoCons.

Rejoice and take hope, misfits, rebels, and progressives.

Change is coming.

Joe Biden. Experience. Name recognition. A knack for blunt unvarnished honesty (at least as much as any politician could muster).

Go Team Obama!

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Sen. Barack Obama is risking his brand as a political reformer, according to reports today in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. In recent weeks, he has moderated or changed positions on a number of politically-charged issues, leading to criticism from demoralized Democratic activists and charges of “flip-flopping” from conservatives. The Times reports: The Post reports that those who should be his strongest supporters are taking this as a wake-up call:

EDIT: It’s not so much the specific issues that Obama has begun to embrace as it is that he seems to have made such a shift from bucking the system to gaming the system. Maybe this is the sort of thing any politician needs to do to win a general election – but shifting to the center and making very calculated political choices in order to appear tough and manly and “uncowerable” is still a deviation from his “change” movement and thus a blow to the progressive principles he was espousing before.

Do I think Obama should be confidently strong on national security? Sure, but I thought he had a pretty strong thing going last month – so to undercut himself now by going all hawkish on the telecom immunity stuff in the FISA bill, that’s sad, and in my opinion totally unnecessary.

Do I think Obama should strongly assert his faith and smack down the false crap that gets spread around about him from the radical right? Sure, but I don’t see why that means he needs to make sure there are no Muslim-looking people in-frame behind him while he’s making a speech, or why he can’t say something like “I’m not a Muslim, but even if I were, what would be wrong with that?”