So he’s trying to tell TPP how not to get SOPA’d?
If there’s anything Obama never seems to fail at it’s disappointing me. He’s such a fucking corporatist…
Would it be possible to harness this spinning as a form of alternative energy source?
From all of his broken promises, to killing US citizens without a trial or even formal charges and continuing to shred the US Constitution, to having the most secretive administration in US history, to his selling out the US people and government to corporate interests, to his complete failure to lead on global warming that will haunt us for generations, I continue to be amazed at how disappointed I am in him as a man and as a leader. When history remembers him, I hope it remembers not only his lies, murders, and failures, but also how he made US citizens of all ages hope and believe in change again, to believe that they can make a difference, only to drive them into even deeper despair when they realized they had been fooled once again.
I hope it remembers not only his lies, murders, and failures, but also how he made US citizens of all ages hope and believe in change again, to believe that they can make a difference, only to drive them into even deeper despair when they realized they had been fooled once again.
We should be disgusted with Obama and it’s certainly disheartening. But, I also think more Americans should look at the plus sides of past voting and work from there. For example, we’ve already shown that grassroots efforts really can help to get someone elected and even reelected despite having a powerful, wealthy opposition. No doubt that Obama was massively funded by our enemies (financial sector, Goldman Sachs, etc.), but that alone didn’t get him elected.
If Obama had kept more of his promises, we’d be in a pretty good position right now. The fact that someone who ran on a somewhat progressive platform and still won the presidency by a healthy margin (and despite our horrible electoral college system) is a very good sign. It just goes to show that the majority of the American public are progressive and really do want a single payer system (once they understand it) or at the very least a public option, along with less war profiteering and less wealth disparity.
Obama flaked out after getting elected, but what he did show is that it’s possible to get the person (he promised to be) elected. Now what we need to do is find someone who will follow through and start a grassroots campaign to get this person elected to our highest office.
Not that the corporatist mass media wants to talk about it, but Occupy Wall Street already helped to do it in the largest city in the USA. Evidence:
Here’s a great butthurt headline that I really enjoy:
Commie Mayor Bill De Blasio Appoints Occupy Wall Street Activist As City Council Speaker (Awesome)
Is Bill De Blasio and the new City Council speaker, perfect? Nope, but it’s a start. Of course, De Blasio got money from the Washington establishment and is certainly no outsider, but like I said, it is a start.
Considering the mountains of entrenched, corporatist walls that were in place to keep awareness of disparity and corruption out of many Americans’ collective consciousness, I’d like to see someone else come up with a better plan than what OWS accomplished. Especially a plan that would have worked in such a trivial amount of time as it did. Despite what the corporate media says, Occupy Wall Street was a success and it isn’t dead, it’s diversified.
People like Bill Maher who repeatedly disparage the Occupy movement never really “got” OWS in the first place and still don’t today. It’s time to stop comparing the tea baggers’ ability to shove numerous, harmful corporatist appeasers into office with what OWS has accomplished. Of course it’s vastly easier to get tea party idiots into office, they are not a threat to the status quo like OWS is. By its very nature, OWS is and always will be a long term struggle.
Nonetheless, there’s been a tangible sea change of awareness among Americans that wasn’t there before.
Evidence:
Most Americans Think Income Inequality Is A Big Problem: Poll
Unfortunately, the pessimist naysayers aren’t going to look at the positive side and they’ll continue to be defeatists. But, like usual, we’ll have to work past them.
Some solid groundwork has been laid. What needs to happen next via entities like the folks at Boing Boing, etc. is to combine forces with other influential progressive entities to put a massive, concerted effort into finding a presidential candidate that we can trust. Find that person, vet that person out and put the same effort we saw with things like the fight against SOPA to get this person nominated and put into executive office.
There’s already work being done on the local level, but that needs to be ramped up with support as well.
It’s time to stop acting like weak outsiders who only want to influence and beg paid-off politicians to do our bidding. It’s time to take over this nation. The groundwork has been laid and it’s time for action. Cowards, defeatists and naysayers be damned.
Except I’m far from sure Obama actually proved it’s possible to get [someone like the person he promised to be] elected; surely the big interests he’s currently serving knew all the pretty noises were so much fluff.
IMO it’s time to scrap the old system and hammer out a fresh one with none of that legacy crap. We have the technology.
And the science.
Also: FUCK you, Obama. Con-man par excellence is a dubious honour indeed, scumbag.
Except I’m far from sure Obama actually proved it’s possible to get someone like the person he promised to be elected; surely the big interests he’s currently serving knew that was so much fluff.
I mentioned that above about Obama’s funding, but my point is that the votes are there once we vet and find a truly grassroots, progressive candidate.
What Obama’s election showed is that the quantifiable votes are there for a progressive agenda and they are there in large numbers. We just need to find our own candidate and put all our support into that person instead of waiting to see who they pick for us.
IMO it’s time to scrap the old system and hammer out a fresh one with none of that legacy crap. We have the technology.
There may be the technology to scrap our entire system, but there’s not enough will just yet to make that feasible in the near future. All you’ll do right now with that kind of talk is scare off moderates and be left sitting with a small, radical group that can’t get any traction nor gather the kind of solidarity we saw with Obama’s initial campaign.
Work on long term structural change for sure, but in the meantime within our current reality we’re going to need enablers that we infiltrate into the current system via grassroots campaigns. We need local and national candidates. People like Lawrence Lessig, etc. And, if anyone wants to say people like Lessig aren’t experienced enough, then one only has to look at Obama’s sparse record before his presidency.
Trying to constantly work from the outside hasn’t been incredibly fruitful thus far. We need to stop complaining about the system, stop focusing so much on distracting pipe dreams that scatter leftists and moderates and start injecting our own into all levels of government.
We’re already attacking the system from the outside, it’s time to flank the corrupt from the inside as well.
Unfortunately, this sort of activity only produces entropy, so attaching it to the power system would probably lead to a brown out.
You seem to be discounting the system’s apparently infinite ability to corrupt.
Lawrence Lessig has accomplished so much more in his career than Obama did pre-2008, the comparison is not even close. His emphasis on getting rid of corruption in our system is something which I think can cross progressive - libertarian - conservative lines and lead to a real achievement.
When I hear someone bemoaning their disappointment in Obama, I tend to ask them, “Which, exactly, of Obama’s achievements prior to running for President led you to believe he could successfully bring about the right sort of change??”
If I’m feeling testy, I sometimes follow up with “So did you base your hopes for Obama on his history of accomplishment, or were you just buying into his self-marketing??”
I wonder how many of the people complaining in this thread voted for him. I didn’t: it was obvious from his previous actions what would happen, and it did.
People who voted for him said I was throwing my vote away voting Green. Guess who really threw away their votes, by not voting for real change instead of a proven con-man. . . .
Band name, called it!
I must say, you play a pretty significant role in your disappointment, more so than the President does. What did you expect? Revolution?
I expected less of the same. Not the “even more of the same” that we got instead.
So, who lied to you, then? A politician, from Chicago? Quelle Surprise.
Nobody thinks they’re the ones falling to propaganda.
A lawyer from the ivy league wouldn’t go around and lie, cheat, and steal, would they? That’s never ever happened before, ever.
iswydt
I can’t really bring myself to criticize anyone who voted Obama in 2008. 2012 is another matter.
