Tim on the choice that presently exists for President Obama and his merry men and women:
make. Doing the right thing (one could call that ‘respecting his oath
of office’) will bring on a political shitstorm as every Republican
down to the student government level declares that the government has
gone commiefascist and starts digging bunkers in their back yard. If
Obama doesn’t want that fight then he has to keep innocent people in
cages and tell the courts and the international community to go f*ck
themselves.
Our punditry likes to make this hard, aided by critters such as Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham. It’s not hard. Republicans have zero power right now. None. They don’t seem to care about it, either. They’re busy fighting amongst themselves over whether Sarah Palin is the awesomest ever or just regularly awesome, whether the Earth really is 6,000 years old, whether tomorrow will bring us all economic ponies, and what to do with the Ron Paul signs in the garage. Not to mention that they haven’t got a moral pot to piss in thanks to everybody taking Argentinian mistresses for great justice all over the place. So as to Republicans, I can’t see they mount any threat equal to the whole “keeping innocent people in cages” karmic double-down we seem to be engaging in these days.
And not for nothing, but I think Tim’s being a little reductive when he talks about Obama only telling the international community to go fuck itself by staying his present course. He’s telling a majority of Americans, who voted for him and campaigned for him and donated to him and care about silly things like the rule of law, to go fuck themselves.
Not that I didn’t expect him to do just that, but let’s just put to bed the notion that a) like we didn’t know this and b) this fucking sucks and c) we should say out loud it sucks as often as possible can’t all exist in our minds at once. We contain multitudes, and this sucks.
A.
Word. Every single one of us needs to write a personal letter to Obama telling him he knows better and if he takes the dark path, he might as well have signed off on torture and opened up Gitmo himself. Because, in failing to fight against it, he tacitly approves it.
Just a hunch, but Romney’s “we need to double Gitmo” line from primary season last year may come back to haunt him. I think we’re slowly coming around on the issue, presidential efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.
Another primary vignette: ChrisRock telling his fellow African Americans to be on “the right side of history.” Does the president not realize what side that is with respect to civil liberties and human rights?
I don’t know, A. I completely agree we all knew he would disappoint us but did a lot of people really assume he would repeat/uphold so many of the Bushco regime’s plays?
I know that I assumed he’d be v. middle of the road, even on the right side of the middle of the road. I know I assumed he’d pander to the Republicans to a certain extent.
But I didn’t assume the things that have happened re torture, upholding FISA, etc.
Totally agree.
Not to mention that the cost of not correcting this is so much higher than the cost of correcting this.
Also, why are the repubs fighting this so hard? Could it be that they know enough about what is under the bed to be very, very, afraid for themselves?
Virgo, honestly I expected the pandering to be a little more blatant on some of the social issues and not on this. But I knew this wasn’t his major kink, either, not like it was Dodd’s.
MapleStreet, I think they’re fighting it hard because it’s one last way to cling to the only electoral strategy that has ever worked for them: Calling Democrats pussies.
A.
If Obama’s gonna be another Jimmy Carter, we need a real progressive to be his Ted Kennedy in the 2012 primaries. Dangerous? Hell, yes. But we should send the message right now that a smarter, less obviously evil version of DickSmirk, L.L.C. is not a lock for renomination. At least if we had voted for Hillary, we could have expected this. The tragic disillusionment of so many young progressives is the most disheartening thing about Obama’s betrayal of the progressive left that got him both the nomination and the office. The spineless, backstabbing Dem losers in Congress we expected.
Write them letters, eh? To congresspeeps and to Obama and, yes, to Biden, as well. Over and over and over and fucking over. Again and again. It’s most certainly what the Right has done – repetition seems to work.
SD
FUCKIN’A: