https://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/the-stupefying-mediocrity-of-barack-obama/Oh my.
It looks long and dry, but actually it's worth reading every word; the Barry Bashing is awesome.
ZimInSeattle (2315 posts) June 6, 2018 at 9:46 am
The Stupefying Mediocrity of Barack Obama
As a Marxist, I’m not very interested in the psychology of the powerful. I don’t think it matters much, and it tends to be pretty uniform and predictable anyway: self-overestimation, self-justification, moral rationalizations for every horrendous decision made, brutal callousness to human suffering beneath (at best) a veneer of concern, energies directed to machinations for increased power, cowardly accommodation to the path of least political resistance, a collective insularity of the golden-boy culture gilded with sycophants, etc. On the other hand, as a despiser of the complacent powerful, I enjoy belittling their grandiose pretensions. So sometimes I do like to wade into the muck of their psychology.
A New York Times article on May 30 entitled “How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’” provided an opportunity to indulge in this sordid pastime. According to one of his aides, after the election Obama speculated that the cosmopolitan internationalism of enlightened intellectuals like him had been responsible for the stunning outcome. “Maybe we pushed too far,” he said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” In other words, we were too noble and forward-thinking for the benighted masses, who want nothing more than to remain submerged in their comforting provincial identities. We were too ambitious and idealistic for our flawed compatriots.
~snip~
I happened to watch a video recently in which Norman Finkelstein psychoanalyzed Obama, and his interpretation stuck with me. Not because the pathetic person who was being analyzed is of any intrinsic interest, but because the type he represents is always with us—and will always be popular, and will always be morally and intellectually vacuous. Finkelstein had learned from reading David Garrow’s biography that, as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had a very conciliating style. Whenever arguments arose between the conservatives and the liberals he approached the problem in the same way: he took the interlocutors aside and said, “Don’t get so excited, it’s not such a big deal. Why are you getting so excited? There are bigger things in life.” “Because for Obama,” Finkelstein explains, “there was only one big deal in life: me. Everything else was just small change, except him.”
That’s the key. When your overriding value in life is self-glorification, what you tend to get is the moral cowardice and fecklessness of people like Obama, the Clintons, and, in truth, all centrist politicians. They’ll do whatever they have to do to rise to power, so they can realize their “destiny”—of being powerful. They’ll always try to please “both sides”—a binary notion that leaves out the genuine left, which is to say the interests of the large majority of people—because that is the safest and surest road to power.
More: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/06/the-stupefying-mediocrity-of-barack-obama/
Well now, decent and civilized people always pointed out that the predecessor to President Trump had an ego problem, but you guys were so enamoured of his "blackness" that you didn't listen.
Punxsutawney (2650 posts) (Reply to original post) June 6, 2018 at 10:15 am
1. And in the process end up without a clue as to what's really going on.
“Obama speculated that the cosmopolitan internationalism of enlightened intellectuals like him had been responsible for the stunning outcome. “Maybe we pushed too far,” he said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” In other words, we were too noble and forward-thinking for the benighted masses, who want nothing more than to remain submerged in their comforting provincial identities. We were too ambitious and idealistic for our flawed compatriots.”
Clueless, there’s no awareness there of what 40+ years of grinding neoliberal economic policies, of lost jobs, bad trade deals, and a system designed in purpose to shift wealth upwards into few hands has done to average people. How that has caused resentment, despair, and allowed demagogues on the right to stir up racism and hate and distract from the real villains while the Dems wring their hands and actively campaign on identity politics, reinforcing the right’s message, and doing nothing economically.
No the problem was that you promised change to this, and did more of the same, prosecuted fewer bankers than either of the Bushes. That’s why Cheeto is president. It was your own cowardice Obama, or if not cowardice, selfishness in thinking of yourself first and serving power instead of people that brought out the 2016 election results.
tularetom (2483 posts) (Reply to original post) June 6, 2018 at 10:39 am
2. He only rises to "mediocre" when compared to his successor
If Trump hadn’t been elected we’d be talking about what an absolute disaster Obama was.
God, we were stupid, electing that asshole twice.
^^^born and raised in Georgia, but a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley.
^^^way up there in years; pretty old.
