***NOTE: This piece is still being revised as I spend more time with it. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.***
Also, don't get me wrong. I am still much happier with an Obama-Biden administration than a McCain-Palin. For one, Ms. Palin would have just been a disaster from the get go, even though an article this weekend came out saying that she was "more than qualified" to be Vice President of the United States.
See the following:
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2009Apr16/0,4670,PolarizingPalin,00.html
Really? The woman doesn't believe in evolution. She shoots caribou from a helicopter. She supports abstinence only safe sex programs that don't even work for her own daughter. All of her politics aside, this was a woman who we wanted to represent the United States? Another article this weekend, describing the current plight of the republican party to stay relevant, touches on the reasons why Palin was such a bad choice in the first place. When you can't divide your politics from your religious affiliations, there is a problem. When we elect people who have an obvious religious agenda in a country that has a constitutional ban on merging church and state, we have a problem. When we are in a war with people whose image of us (U.S.) is a bunch of gun wielding, gum smacking christian hypocrites, and then we elect that personification into a level of authority, we have a problem. Despite my obvious objections to McCain himself due to fundamental ideological differences, I'm beginning to think that if he had picked his daughter for his VP, I would have been much more willing to listen. At least she seems a little more braced in reality.
However, Naomi Klein's Huffington Post article this weekend on the Obama hangover is something I also have been beginning to feel, despite my attempts to stay hydrated on hope. Yes, perhaps Ms. Klein is a bit premature in her accusations: I myself have to keep on thinking that the man has been in office for less than 6 months - tremendous pressure was put on him to lead the country out of its current situation into the holy land. I mean, if you think about it, it took the Jews at least 40 years to reach it and it took Jesus 33 to save all of humanity from its sins, so maybe we should cut the guy some slack, especially after inheriting what he did. However, as Ms. Klein suggests, there are little warning signs that keep on going off in my head every now and then about the administration and the way it chooses to handle things. It almost appears to me now that what we have in office is Obama-lite, like the iPhone apps that have a free version and a version that costs 10 bucks. Somehow, instead of getting the one that actually cost something, we somehow got stuck with the one that doesn't really have any cost at all. Sometimes, all it is is glimpse into what could be if we shell out a little more.
And I would like to reiterate that I am not a politician. And for as much bitching as I do about politics, (because hey, as many people try to deny it, politics is still personal and I'll get to more of this in a minute), I don't have any better solutions. But someone just recently said to me that just because you may not have a solution to a problem doesn't mean you can't recognize that a problem exists and call it out. And there are problems that continue to persist.
I, for one, miss the Obama that had a zeal and a fire - I miss watching him and getting goose bumps by the things he said and by the conviction he had in his voice. I miss him taking a stand. The Huffington Post (yes, the very self acknowledging liberal and conservative bashing publication) had a coverage of the ridiculous TEA parties that happened through out the country on Wednesday, that appeared to be a reunion of white middle classers who were more concerned with their continued dwindling of privilege than of actually being taxed. As the Huffington Post reports, the TEA parties became rallies for anti-gay, pro-NRA, pro-republican, pro-conservatism, pro-Christianity, pro-white middle class than for anything else. It was like a bunch of white people needed to band together and talk about why they were still relevant in a country and a global community where the focus is shifting off of the Caucasian and FINALLY onto who the the global population really is: EVERYONE.
Yet in this, Obama was silent. I heard nothing from the commander about how ridiculous this whole facade of patriotism was, nor did I hear anything about the blatant racist and homophobic notions that was the underlining to all of it. I mean the American Family Association sponsored some of the parties for Christ's sake, how much more does one need? And this brings me to another realization: that the old saying of the feminist movement in the 1970's of "the political is personal" is in no way dead. Instead it needs to be revived. Because for those of us who elected a president thinking that he was going to bring about the change we desired in one fell swoop of his hand, we were deluded. One of the main things that Ms. Klein points out is that our fight is not over: the change has to again start with each of us, it isn't going to happen only because we elected someone into office who promised it. And perhaps that is the main thing that is wrong with American society: that we expect everyone else to do the dirty work for us. It's like after 8 years of complaining about rights being taken away from the American public left and right, and for 8 years fighting to hold onto whatever rights we had left, we thought that the fighting was over. It isn't. When Krystof Wodizcko, the famous artist, was speaking at Mason a few weeks ago he said that the struggle to maintain a democracy is what makes a democracy so. Without the struggle, without the fighting, without the constant determination to ensure one's rights, the form of government you may have, either good or bad, is surely not one that is free. Just because we elected someone who was the right choice at the right time does not mean that we are to give up and put the responsibility on him. We, as American citizens, still have the responsibility to fight to make sure we are free.
And with that notion, I take Ms. Klein's article to heart, because it is becoming very apparent that the fight for freedom is not over. The fight for equal rights, both nationally and globally is not over. And the silence I hear from the white house sometimes is deafening. One example is the U.N. Anti-Racism conference, which the US didn't even attend over objection that crazy uncle Mahmoud was speaking. I don't mean to belittle Mahmoud or his presence in the global community, because I realize that he does have power and sway. But come on. The guy is crazy. However, he's not that kind of crazy in which you just sit back and shake your head and laugh it off as him just being stupid. He's crazy in the kind of way that is extremely dangerous. He's Kim Jong Il crazy. He's Heath Ledger's Joker crazy. He's the kind of crazy that you just can't ignore. And for that reason, we should not only be listening to him, but engaging him, because despite the fact that he's a fanatical lunatic, the guy is right about a few things. Even his rants on homosexuality last year that caused him great scrutiny in the Western World, are actually kind of true. Homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran. Why? Because crazy uncle Mahmoud says it shouldn't. And he'll kill you if he thinks you are doing it. That's scary. And it's scary enough to try to engage him, because the more we ignore it and the more we hope it will just magically go away, the more deep it will get. We tried to ignore crazy uncle Adolf and look what happened there.
And this goes back to ignorance, one that I feel Obama has a love/hate relationship with. I mean, on one hand, he's at the Americas Conference this week, where he and Aunt Hillary were talking to and engaging crazy uncle Hugo, but there is a line drawn with Mahmoud? Why, because Venezuela is rich in oil? And Iran has the whole Israel stickiness? Then, we shut down Guantanamo Bay only to allow Blackwater to still operate in Iraq, only now under the name of "Xe", pronounced "Zee" . . . What is this, the artist formally known as Blackwater? Are y'all going to change your name to a symbol next, in order to "distance" yourselves from a "negative image?" Well, let's think about how y'all got a negative image in the first place. Yeah. I feel like in many ways it's just two steps forward and three steps back.
Now, just today there is the talk of Obama "leaving the door open" for possible prosecutions in the Bush administration for war crimes in the war against terror. And while I have a bag of mixed emotions based on this for other reasons, the main concern is that again, Obama was not the initiator in this, but instead it was left up to the American public to push for change. And perhaps this is what this administration should be, and what all presidential administrations should be: having the public that they represent be the force behind the decisions that they make. However, when a man runs on a platform of change and is elected into public office based on that promise, the questions remains for those who voted him in: when does change start in the government and when does change start with the people? Why do we, as a society, look for other to initiate the change when in a democracy, we are supposedly the ones with the power? Why are we always willing to cast the blame of stagnancy onto someone else other than ourselves? When do we stop blaming others and take our own responsibility?
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