Jacob Bacharach has an interesting mini-thread here declaiming Obama as anything special as far as critical or "adventurous" thinking. It's worth thinking about because, as with the buffoons that preceded and succeeded him, as with every imperial custodian since the founding of the republic, Obama is simply a reflection of the people who put him there.
I can easily think of a dozen or more things right off the top of my head, in foreign and domestic policy areas, that Obama could have handled better. But he's still the "best" President of my lifetime, by a considerable margin, objectively on his job performance and certainly as a person. That he generally seemed intimidated or reluctant to confront the vituperation directed against him may be less of an observation on his character, and more a realization that as a black man, he always had to watch himself and his responses, check his anger.
That's on all of us, on our shithead corporate mediot gatekeepers and the people who keep them employed.
Even as it was, obviously one of the more frequent criticisms of Obama was that he was too cool or professorial, which translates from dipshit as high-handed -- or worse, smug. You can't win for losing with this fucking country. Obama visited all ninety-nine counties in Iowa, eating their corn dogs and kissing their pigs and all that horseshit that reveals nothing about a person's competence, only what they're willing to put up with. But he did it, and then as soon as he got in, an entire industry geared up to play to the rubes' generational strain of rabid anti-intellectualism coursing through their veins.
More to the point of the tweet that originally sparked the mini-thread, Obama certainly does seem much more self-reflective or even self-critical than most other presidents of recent years, excluding perhaps Carter and Nixon. Whatever flaws I might have found with what Obama said or did in certain areas, one thing I appreciated about him was that he clearly had what is actually the most vital characteristic that a chief executive must possess to be effective -- he knew his weaknesses, shored those areas up with people who knew more, and he listened to them. Seems simple, until again, you compare him with Bush and Trump, two spoiled brats who never heard the word no, and made the world pay for it.
So no, Obama wasn't really the once-in-a-generation world-class thinker his fans praise him as. Compared to the current turd, he's Einstein. But even if he had been this super-genius, he would have had to hide it. They went after him for wearing a tan suit, for putting Dijon mustard on a sandwich.
It's not exactly a secret that a significant part of the electorate -- certainly all of Trump's base -- boils down to you think yer better'n me? They want to spend the rest of their lives drinking shitty beer and watching hillbillies drive billboards in circles at 180 mph. They want to watch nobodies air their sex lives on teevee, because they don't have the guts to watch porn or Faces of Death. They want a life that demands as little of them as possible.
Obama's primary flaw, like that of all true idealists, was this teleological belief that all people are inherently "good" and want to do the "right" thing. But when they encounter people whose concepts of good and right don't jibe with their own, they have no answer. When confronted with moral monsters like Rupert Murdoch, who would literally rather watch the world melt and its people murder each other than pay one percent more in taxes, they don't know what to do. It doesn't occur to idealists that some people, as the prophet John Cougar Mellencamp once sagely observed, ain't no damn good, you can't trust 'em, can't love 'em, no good deed goes unpunished.
In the end, that'll be Obama's legacy -- having to watch a cloven-hoofed oaf tear apart everything he spent eight years building, for no other reason than to show that he could, while Obama watches coolly from the sidelines, staying out of the fray because we are the change we're looking for or whatever.
Well, no, we're not. Most people are overworked and underpaid and struggling in this magnificent gig economy the billionaires have bestowed on the peons. Nearly forty percent of American households can't handle an emergency expense over four hundred dollars. So when they vote for someone to get in there and handle the problem, they don't expect to then be asked to pitch in somehow and help out. No, that's why we voted you into office, pal.
But the deeper, darker truth is that too many people are leery and distrustful of someone who appears too smart. It's the root of every ill and every demagogue we ever have or will see.
I can easily think of a dozen or more things right off the top of my head, in foreign and domestic policy areas, that Obama could have handled better. But he's still the "best" President of my lifetime, by a considerable margin, objectively on his job performance and certainly as a person. That he generally seemed intimidated or reluctant to confront the vituperation directed against him may be less of an observation on his character, and more a realization that as a black man, he always had to watch himself and his responses, check his anger.
That's on all of us, on our shithead corporate mediot gatekeepers and the people who keep them employed.
Even as it was, obviously one of the more frequent criticisms of Obama was that he was too cool or professorial, which translates from dipshit as high-handed -- or worse, smug. You can't win for losing with this fucking country. Obama visited all ninety-nine counties in Iowa, eating their corn dogs and kissing their pigs and all that horseshit that reveals nothing about a person's competence, only what they're willing to put up with. But he did it, and then as soon as he got in, an entire industry geared up to play to the rubes' generational strain of rabid anti-intellectualism coursing through their veins.
More to the point of the tweet that originally sparked the mini-thread, Obama certainly does seem much more self-reflective or even self-critical than most other presidents of recent years, excluding perhaps Carter and Nixon. Whatever flaws I might have found with what Obama said or did in certain areas, one thing I appreciated about him was that he clearly had what is actually the most vital characteristic that a chief executive must possess to be effective -- he knew his weaknesses, shored those areas up with people who knew more, and he listened to them. Seems simple, until again, you compare him with Bush and Trump, two spoiled brats who never heard the word no, and made the world pay for it.
So no, Obama wasn't really the once-in-a-generation world-class thinker his fans praise him as. Compared to the current turd, he's Einstein. But even if he had been this super-genius, he would have had to hide it. They went after him for wearing a tan suit, for putting Dijon mustard on a sandwich.
It's not exactly a secret that a significant part of the electorate -- certainly all of Trump's base -- boils down to you think yer better'n me? They want to spend the rest of their lives drinking shitty beer and watching hillbillies drive billboards in circles at 180 mph. They want to watch nobodies air their sex lives on teevee, because they don't have the guts to watch porn or Faces of Death. They want a life that demands as little of them as possible.
Obama's primary flaw, like that of all true idealists, was this teleological belief that all people are inherently "good" and want to do the "right" thing. But when they encounter people whose concepts of good and right don't jibe with their own, they have no answer. When confronted with moral monsters like Rupert Murdoch, who would literally rather watch the world melt and its people murder each other than pay one percent more in taxes, they don't know what to do. It doesn't occur to idealists that some people, as the prophet John Cougar Mellencamp once sagely observed, ain't no damn good, you can't trust 'em, can't love 'em, no good deed goes unpunished.
In the end, that'll be Obama's legacy -- having to watch a cloven-hoofed oaf tear apart everything he spent eight years building, for no other reason than to show that he could, while Obama watches coolly from the sidelines, staying out of the fray because we are the change we're looking for or whatever.
Well, no, we're not. Most people are overworked and underpaid and struggling in this magnificent gig economy the billionaires have bestowed on the peons. Nearly forty percent of American households can't handle an emergency expense over four hundred dollars. So when they vote for someone to get in there and handle the problem, they don't expect to then be asked to pitch in somehow and help out. No, that's why we voted you into office, pal.
But the deeper, darker truth is that too many people are leery and distrustful of someone who appears too smart. It's the root of every ill and every demagogue we ever have or will see.
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