Yes, We Got Fooled Again!

As mid-terms approach, here's an appraisal of Obamerica, 2008-present:

The Good: George W. Bush stopped being President.

The Bad: January 21, 2009 - Present.

The Ugly: Afghan surge, 55 days of silence on the Gulf Oil Disaster, opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opposition to Prop 19, scapegoating teachers, empowering Republicans, condescending to the American people (for the sake of personal sanity and organization, I will stop there).

Two years ago the big worry was that Obama would lose to McCain-Palin, or that if he won, he'd get Martin Luther King-ed (assassinated).  As these epic nightmares subsided, they deferred to a more realistic, insidious, and chronic nightmare.

The Agenda Remains the Same.

No, that's not the echo of Robert Plant from 1971, that's me, today, and you know I'm right.  No matter what happens, what approach is taken, bold or patient, working within the system or rebellious activism, America is the land where nothing changes, where nothing good is ever going to happen again.

Let me skip around now since I'm too angry to be systematic about this.  Last week, a front-page NY Times article reported gross discrepencies in arrests for marijuana possession for Black males compared to whites, even though statistics show whites use marijuana as much if not more than Blacks.  So what does attorney general Eric Holder do?  His best Bush-Cheney hardass authoriarian imitation, declaring that the White House will, by god, prosecute marijuana offenses in California, the democratic process be damned.  May I ask how such a move is either politically practical or socially desirable?  One, such a position is conservative, and Americans voted for Obama presumably because they were tired of conservatism and the widespread misery, failure, and destruction it has left in its wake in the name of abstract principles, like morality, "small government" and patriotism.  But conservatives hate Obama's guts, and no matter how much he tries to mimic them or "work with" them, their undying mission in life is to live to see the day he is no longer President, period.

Okay then.  Sometimes politicians do things knowing the consequences will work against them politically, but such moves are socially desirable, e.g. "the right thing" to do.  LBJ has been quoted as saying that he was turning over the entire South to the Republicans when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law during the 1960s.  He knew both he and his party would suffer politically as a consequence of formally endorsing Civil Rights by using his executive powers to make civil rights the law, but it was (and still is) the right thing to do.

The NY Times article on racist enforcement of marijuana laws likened them to Jim Crow laws, and the comparison is not only valid but impossible to ignore.  The law, generally speaking, is a menace to society more often than it is an asset; the law and justice are not the same thing, and the law undermines justice more often than the law upholds justice.  Any rebuttal to this point amounts to circular reasoning.  As King wrote in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" there are just laws and unjust laws.  The former apply to everyone equally, the latter only to a specific group.

Cannabis prohibition is an unjust law on at least two levels.  As the NY Times article makes clear, its enforcement effects discrimination against blacks.  It also discriminates against all recreational cannabis users, who unlike those who indulge in alcohol, nicotene, gambling, and "vices," cannot do so without risk of arrest and the attendant punishments and disgrace.  So we have a legal system that says the drinker can drink, the nicotene-head can blaze down nicotene joints, the gamblers can blow their life savings out on the river boat, but cannabis users can't light up.  Thus, cannabis prohibition is an unjust law because it's a law that apply only to one group and not everyone.  Either vices are legal or they aren't.  It prohibits indulgence in one group's vice but says it's OK for the other groups to indulge in their vice.  If we really want to stop drugs, we have to stop all of them, and end all drug use, not just the drug use that drunks aren't interested in while they pour more money into slot machines and puff on nicotene joints.

Opposing Prop 19, then, obviously alienates liberals, progressives, and whatever other social groups that overlap in the venn diagram of people who are fans of the herb.  But it also is NOT the right thing to do.  Prohibition works against civil rights, equality, fairness, and justice.  It is a bad law, driven by racism, perpetuated by a welfare system for police and the criminal justice system, and sustained by hate-mongering ignorance and hypocrisy.

The height of this hypocrisy is Obama himself, a (half-) black man who wouldn't have come within light years of a public water fountain, muchless the Oval Office, if the previous generation of Black leaders (King, et al.) had the conservative, status quo mentality Obama lives and governs by.  The country is in economic dire straights.  We have an overcrowded, overflowing prison system into which we put way more money than we do our failing and underfunded education system (see Kristoff's NY Times piece, 2010, Oct. 28 (and no, my failure to provide the link isn't because I'm stoned and unmotivated.  If you don't want to find the article yourself, what have you been smoking?  I'm a writer, not a filing cabinet.)).

Perpetuating Prop. 19 is neither socially desirable, nor politically practical.  Continuing cannabis prohibition has no justification in either democratic principles or empirical study of its effects on individuals and society when compared with the effects of the above mentioned legal vices.  The only rationale for opposing Prop 19 is to posture for the arch-conservative establishment that thinks Obama is a Kenyan socialist cousin of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and perpetuate the hate-mongering strong-arm police state we have lived in for the last thirty years.  Perpetuating the status quo seems a puzzling politicial move for a President who got elected on the platform of "change." 

From the standpoint of the institutional racism prohibition perpetuates, Obama's opposition to Prop 19 is a disgrace not even his White House predecessor could match.  This political move betrays the essence of conservatism: not wanting for others what you want for yourself.  Obama is where he is today thanks to the passionate progressive politics of the previous generation.  But unlike the icons of that era, Obama does not want the next generation of Americans in general and Blacks in particular to live in a more just, equal, and democratic world than the one he came of age--and rose to power--in.  Yet, in taking this position, he achieves nothing poltically pragmatic--he will never be conservative enough for the conservatives who hate him.  Thus, his tenure as President is marked by perpetuating socially undesirable oppression, discrimination, and fiscal blindness with no political pragmatism to reap.  When you're failing as both an idealist and pragmatist, it might behoove you to consider that adhering to some ideals--like the social courage that made it possible for a (half-) black man to be President--is a practical thing to do, especially in politics.

Equally puzzling and bigoted is the Obama administration's opposition of a court ruling overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military.  What good does this achieve?  Again, this move is neither socially desirable nor politically pragmatic.  It perpetuates discrimination and degrading treatment of the LGBT community--which supported Obama in 2008--and alienates a demographic that it would seem politically pragmatic to keep in good favor. 

And what has been the political gain of Obama's betrayal of his own race and the other progressive, oppressed groups that ardently supported him in 2008?  Mitch McConnell's pledge that the top priority for the next Congress will be to make sure he is a one-term President.

Meanwhile, Obama and his cronies just issued a statement to educators, reminding them that they are required by federal law to intervene in the kind of bullying that recently drove a Rutgers student to commit suicide, a nationally-publicized tragedy that has brought to light other instances of suicides by young gay people hanging themselves.  The vitriol of homo-haters -- and haters in general -- points to the futility of Obama's attempts at pragmatism, and the great cost in suffering Americans incur because of his inability to put his words and ideas into action.  Regardless of his intentions, those of us who need to see the results the most are not seeing any results that would come from a socially desirable agenda.  Thus, his pragmatism is a lost cause, and social progress has been stalled for yet another two years of human existence -- maybe not a long time if you're Obama, but certainly a long time if you're a gay teenager, or a black man in jail for a joint. 

I'm sorry to tell you, but Obama is a smug jerk.  He has used all of these people -- progressives and oppressed groups of all sorts -- to catapult him to realize a personal dream, and now that he's a member of the club, these people aren't cool enough to hang with him anymore.  What does he tell John Stewart?  "Change takes time.  It doesn't happen overnight."  Well now, that's inspiring and insightful isn't it?  The country is stumbling through the aftershocks of thirty years of conservatism, and Obama wants to cater to the conservative establishment that hates him while telling the rest of us that the change we haven't seen for those thirty years takes time.  What does he think we think "thirty years" is?  The temperature?  As always, Obama's demenour on the Daily Show was smug and reserved, a personality that in no way reflects either the passion of progressives or the urgency of people who's lives teeter on the edge of desperation.  He was on the Daily show for one reason and one reason only: his own political interest.  As soon as he walked off that set, everyone connected to the Daily Show ideology instantly became useless to him. 

Society does not go in cycles like a washing machine.  Society is organic.  Like anything organic, societies can and do grow old and die.  The telltale sign of anything dying is something that cannot recover from what ails it; it cannot revitalize itself; it cannot change because it has become exhausted and thus resigned to being set in its ways, never to go beyond its current status.

I wish I had a pragmatic political strategy for what to do about Obama's betrayal.  Maybe it would be worth the short-term agony of deliberately working against the Democrats who have betrayed us and letting the Republicans regain power as a means of conditioning the Democrats to realize that if they ever want to get elected and hold onto power again, they must be a liberal party.  The only reason anyone votes for them is they don't want a conservative party in power.

But I think 2000-2008 was already enough suffering and humiliation for a lifetime, so here's a somber thought: there may be no winning move.  It's checkmate, and unless you're the King, you're fucked . . . no matter what.

That bit of nihilism aside, whatever approach you take to this coming Tuesday's elections and the American era that continues to unfold at this grim point in history, I would say that you can't expect change from others until you demand it from yourself.