I like President Obama. He's a good man, a generous soul, and he seems like a good father/husband. He rose up from meager beginnings to become a successful scholar and Senator. But at what point does my liking of Obama stop discounting the consistent, underwhelming, frustrating, and outright hypocrisy.
From keeping Gitmo open (which he promised to close), to giving us a watered-down health care bill that's actually just a insurance-bill with penalties to average citizens for not signing up with corporations (he campaigned against this), to expanding a drone war that kills countless civilians in other countries while violating other country's airspace, and now an unprecedented spying with no checks and balances, it seems as if we are living in a new age of Orwellian logic.
It isn't that President Obama is totally at fault. Many of these things were started under the previous administration. But he campaigned specifically and deliberately against these various tactics for an entire year. Not only has he not closed them, he has boldly expanded almost every policy and practice that violates basic Constitutional rights.
What makes us credible as an educated Republic is that there's consequences for lying, committing perjury, and breaking the law. These consequences apply to both our friends and adversaries. If there are no punitive results for breaking laws, then people in power will continue to become more brazen in their defiance to following any procedure of justice.
The call for justice doesn't mitigate President Obama's accomplishments. He's been exceptional in some areas of his job and a steady force of leadership over five years. But these are offenses against the Constitution.
Are these offenses okay because he's a Dem, Black, because the previous president was so awful, because we're so scared/beaten down/ cynical, because we just care about getting a job, because he's an outsider and needs to 'prove' himself to the military industrial complex? But when do we get that president that campaigned 2008, that so eloquently spoke on freedom? When do we get that president who invoked the names of Kennedy, MLK, and Gandhi instead of this ultra-conservative technocrat?
At what point does continual, habituated disappointment turn to national sorrow at a man lost, a promise unfulfilled, and a dream deferred?
From keeping Gitmo open (which he promised to close), to giving us a watered-down health care bill that's actually just a insurance-bill with penalties to average citizens for not signing up with corporations (he campaigned against this), to expanding a drone war that kills countless civilians in other countries while violating other country's airspace, and now an unprecedented spying with no checks and balances, it seems as if we are living in a new age of Orwellian logic.
It isn't that President Obama is totally at fault. Many of these things were started under the previous administration. But he campaigned specifically and deliberately against these various tactics for an entire year. Not only has he not closed them, he has boldly expanded almost every policy and practice that violates basic Constitutional rights.
What makes us credible as an educated Republic is that there's consequences for lying, committing perjury, and breaking the law. These consequences apply to both our friends and adversaries. If there are no punitive results for breaking laws, then people in power will continue to become more brazen in their defiance to following any procedure of justice.
The call for justice doesn't mitigate President Obama's accomplishments. He's been exceptional in some areas of his job and a steady force of leadership over five years. But these are offenses against the Constitution.
Are these offenses okay because he's a Dem, Black, because the previous president was so awful, because we're so scared/beaten down/ cynical, because we just care about getting a job, because he's an outsider and needs to 'prove' himself to the military industrial complex? But when do we get that president that campaigned 2008, that so eloquently spoke on freedom? When do we get that president who invoked the names of Kennedy, MLK, and Gandhi instead of this ultra-conservative technocrat?
At what point does continual, habituated disappointment turn to national sorrow at a man lost, a promise unfulfilled, and a dream deferred?
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