Unrecognizable

by paradox

A Supreme Court justice vacancy must be filled this summer, the SEC actually acted like a regulatory agency, alleged financial reform bubbles away in Congress, the New York Times published polling data on our cher cousin Teabaggers, and we all have our personal lives crowding in on the present current political agenda, yes, but it’s quite important we pause to look back only a little, to the Obama executive order of assassinating an American citizen. Something has gone very, very wrong here that’s part of an overall pattern requiring constant citizen attention.

The Democrats aren’t wimps! Maureen Dowd classically gushed from her distasteful Ivy gossip perch when healthcare finally spun out of the mud and passed last month, perfectly encapsulating the sneering, DC village mindset to those spineless pushovers who just weeks before had been so classically, totally bullied over ACORN. Democrats want peace, they worry about civil rights in wartime, they’re petrified of what the media has and will do to them, they’ve never known real unity discipline. It’s vitally important in this whole story of tribal DC posturing to understand how this contemptuous sneering regarding Democratic Party bravery pervades federal political and media environments, how disastrous it is politically for the Democratic Party in a society still, unfortunately, fairly rigid in its patriarchal hierarchy systems.

The Obama Administration knows it and fears it, there is no other explanation for a team that ramped up a useless hopeless war, increased defense spending, exempted defense spending from a spending freeze, engages Iran with a swaggering, simian bellicosity, effectively looks the other way whatever militarism our proxy bully Israel engages in, and still will not—gesture to the liberal and LGBT community of partner hospital visits gratefully acknowledged—engage in the ultimate wimpy liberal act, allowing gays to freely serve in the military by eliminating DADT.

All of this of course behind a background of endorsing and continuing some of the most heinous and distasteful abuses of the Bush presidency nightmare, the ludicrous military commissions, “secret” prisons, Guantanamo Bay still open, prosecuting a whistle blower (Jesus Christ), and the last doozy of approving assassination of an American citizen without due process.

Ardent Obama supporter, disappointed liberal, uninterested independent, whatever, there is no way—none—any American can look at the Obama Administration defense and civil rights record and not come to the conclusion that something has gone very, very wrong.

Those not convinced would do well to remember our lovely Christmas interlude of the hapless crotch bomber, not at all different from the equally clownish shoe bomber. Except when the terror of underwear seized America with vicious tentacles of terrible power the Republicans hissed and puffed out of the woodwork about how terribly the Obama Administration was failing the country with their liberal socialist wimpiness. At every ludicrous twist in the Fox/CNN hysteria the Administration shouted back we’re at war! We’re at war!

Not even a million Americans are in the active service, there’s no draft, no one is ever asked to sacrifice anything for a war that never ends because it can’t be won. A George Bush war of defense industry payoff that delivers enormous political dividends appealing and manipulating the very worst in the human character.¹

Obama defenders would also do well to remember Candidate Obama, the constitutional law professor who soundly rejected the ludicrous legal underpinnings for all this. I don’t recognize where this Obama came from on civil rights, there was never any indication policy would strive to out-do Bush here. Something has gone wrong, very wrong.

In crude simple terms one could say the Obama Administration made a decision never, ever to give the impression that on military and civil rights issues they wear the ever-present Democratic Party patina of wimpiness, by God they were and are men, men ready to kill and crush rights on a dime to protect the Father, er, Homeland.

That seems about right to me. Judgment is not as easy to grant as one thinks here, we never would have been put in this spot if the Republicans hadn’t gone berserk and our equally heinous media carried their water for them. Perhaps if I was in the Executive Branch I would be extremely cognizant of bullies in the atrocious 24x7 media machine and act accordingly. I doubt it, but the pervasive intense pressures of the DC bubble environment should never be underestimated.

The fact remains that on a candidate and Party level the Obama Administration is unrecognizable on a constitutional and moral plane when it comes to civil rights. We have so lost our way.


[1] Actions and policies based upon no principles inevitably lead to vicious traps, there isn’t any escape when one based it all on nothing. The current grimly amusing example in the Obama Administration saga of out-doing Bush in civil rights is whether to hold 9/11 terrorism trials in New York or not.

The grossly wearisome “conservatives” have bloviated and beat their chests trials can’t be held there, New York will be a target, it can’t be done correctly, bleah bleah bleah. Never to give the appearance they aren’t bad-ass butchers of the constitution like manly men, Holder had it leaked they’d likely go along with it.

A predictable and justified hurricane of criticism whaled forth from every reasonable mind in liberal and Democratic circles, to give in to assholes to absurdly prop up the appearance of toughness while shitting on the rule of law of course generated calls of the base wimpiness it represents.

Wimps if you do, wimps if you don’t. Many of our Republican and media actors are low, disgusting humans, Mr. Obama, Axelrod and Rahm, oh yes I know, but you still asked for this. We’re still watching, too, the internet doesn’t forget.