The Present of an Illusion

You know I know some good old academics on the self proclaimed progressive side of the political ledger who were so excited to vote for Obama thinking as they always do, thanks to their pie in the sky smiley faced liberal mentality, that the big O really was progressive and that he really was different. I wonder if they think that Colgate is really different from Crest too?

Obama did give liberals their hearts desire, health care, even if what he gave them wasn't (and couldn't be given reality) the desire of their heart and will, just as Clinton's would have had it been passed, in the end benefit big pharma. In foreign policy, as has been the case since 1945 even if the right, looney or demagogic as they are, doesn't realise it, Obama is much the same as his predecessors. Surprise, surprise. Not for me. When are those on the progressive pole and the looney bin pole going to recognise the reality that that is the price of empire.

And to top it all off many on the brain dead progressive side still want to believe in a reforming Democrat so much that they continue to blame Nader, who really was different--look at his track record on consumer rights--for giving us Bush when, in reality, Gore, not to mention Clinton, wasn't that different from Scrub and that Nader really wasn't the scapegoat they made him out to be? But hey, reality calling, ideology, ideologies that are often extreme in their fictions--I give you ethnocentric Mediterranean monotheistic religion--often create the realities humans want to live in place of the real ones. And given the world we live in, the world of genocide, mass murder, mass Western narcissism, xenophobia, and extreme divisions between rich and poor, who wouldn't prefer to live in the mental comfort of an illusion?

Now don't get me wrong, I do realise that contemporary Democrats are marginally different to and probably marginally preferable, in general, to a Republican party that has been taken over by the truly looney and truly frightening Dixiecrats and their latter-day "saints". There simply aren't as many looney Democrats out there who want us to return to a time when we debated birth control, who want to take us back to a time when abortion was dangerous, who want to close planned parenthood clinics, who want to teach creationism in the schools, who believe homosexuality is a heinous sin, and who want to use the power of the state to tell us how to behave (ah the old Mediterranean religion I'm OK, you're not OK, if you want to be OK you need to think like me mentality). But are they really that much better than the Democrats who are so ideologically all over the map and thus, to quote the divine Mrs. Slocombe, weak as water? 

By the way, isn't it sad what those Republicans in name only, those Dixiecrats cum Republicans have done to a party that once stood for civil rights, for unions, and for government regulation? And isn't it sad that the Republican and Democrat cartel have a strangle hold over the American political process?

Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand up Bibliography
Tom Junod, "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama", Esquire, 9 July 2012, http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812
Jo Becker and Scott Shane, "Secret Kill List Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will", 29 May 2012, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1