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The former president said everyone was “complicit to some degree” in the current bloodshed and acknowledged the points of view on both sides of the conflict.
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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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When he won in 2008 I was a big lib and even though I wasn't 100% on the Obama train because he did a bit of a slick pol patina - I was very hopeful. Hope is just a four letter word but I only learned that in retrospect. One day I was talking to my landlady about him and what I felt about him and she mentioned a bumper sticker with the key phrase "You'll be disappointed." That wasn't what I expected at all. And because I was still a big lib - I wondered if she was fucking with me a little. I don't remember what she said exactly but it was basically that he was slick and an egomaniac. I knew she was sincere and not fucking with me at all.
As weeks turned to months turned to years - I didn't grow disappointed but very disappointed in him. I should have left liberalism around early 2011 when I had read enough about him to know that when he said "Change has come to America," - he was basking in his own success and he was never going to do anything good because he simply didn't care. And he was and is the most lib/neolib American pol ever.
I think a lot of people (me included) have that origin story. It's really a shame to be honest.
I know Obama was BIG reason I started looking into leftism, in particular the black radical tradition. As grow into adulthood I would honestly say that my left turn came from that broken sense of "Hope and Change™". When reading, listening, and learning about leftist thought I discovered that "Hope and Change" are in fact real (no ™ needed
) ) but can't be found in liberalism and liberals like Obama. Also the real "Hope and Change" are hard, like SUPER hard, but they are at least truly and genuinely real.
It's so frustrating that this dude is so slick, cool, and genuinely charismatic but all in service to the status quo. A status quo that of course upholds the very systems and institutions that make neoliberalism so ugly when you chip away the stale paint.
I'll say one thing about Obama - even before I became a leftist - I had already gotten sick of the lib word fetish. "Obama's speech today was a master class in..." I'm only interested in "master class" stuff that gets shit done.
It's been funny to see libs in r/politics admit that Biden is better than Obama because he did more. Every single time Obama says something like "There is a vital necessity to combat climate change," I want to scream. Why didn't you do something about it in the 8 fucking years you were in office? You awful, awful turd.
I'm a very slow learner. It took Trump's 2016 election win to wake me up. A few months after his inauguration - I realized liberalism was a 100% loser for the public. Libs have entirely forgotten that a lot of them thought the presidency would "change" and "mold" Trump into a different person and he would become "presidential". Fucking ridiculous. It seemed like The Onion to me. Meanwhile I often commented in r/politics that there's a literal Nazi in the White House. He's right up Trump's alley. He's an incompetent, lying Nazi. And here's some articles about him...
Libs forgot Gorka's name long ago. I knew they would and I was right. They couldn't tie him to Russia so they don't give a shit. Charlottesville might float around in their brain once in a while because it can be mentioned in the media as the official reason Biden ran in 2020.
I did a little googling
shellacking obama 2010. The first result made me laughIt's American politics in a nutshell. "Sorry, folks - we got shellacked. But don't worry. We gonna work with the republicans who despise me and want to destroy me. I'm sure in the end they'll do what's right for the American people." Divided government in the US is worse than useless. No matter how many speeches you give and no matter how soaring your rhetoric is. Grab power. For fuck's sake.
If I remember it correctly - in his first two years Obama did basically nothing with his bully pulpit to help the dems try to take the house and the senate in 2010. Maybe from 2012 to 2014 he made a half-assed effort. I just don't remember.