Obama, Part Two
I remember being amazed
at how different Obama was at his first press conference as
president-elect. It was soon after the
election and long before the inauguration.
Now we can know a little bit about why.
The CIA Director,
Michael Hayden, flew to Chicago to meet with him, his top aides, and the vice
president-elect. His apparent purpose
was to put pressure on him to keep all the Bush torture policies. Of course, we can’t call it torture – torture
is illegal (wink, wink). But we can call it “RDI — rendition, detention and
interrogation.”
I call it torture.
How I wish that I could
say here that Obama said no and stopped all of it – or even part of it. What happened was that, even though he did
NOT give in and did NOT agree to the demands of the then-director of the CIA,
he later expanded the program and added in more assassinations.
Read more about it:
BUT, as I said in my
former blog (Why I May Never Vote Again), I may not vote again but it’s hard to
stop after all these years. One thinks
about what will happen if his presumptive opponent wins versus what Obama might
do in a second term.
Here are my thoughts:
With the rich folks able
to legally and openly buy an election, I may vote just to be defiant.
International policies of the two major candidates might be the same, buy domestic policies may be very different.
Fact check sites for how
federal spending is actually going down in spite of the opposition saying it is
worse. One source:
Lies? They both lie.
p.s.
One recurring thought that I may write about in a
future blog is a single-term presidency.
It seems that the president may compromise more in his first term in
order to get (the power and money to be) elected to a second term. He can more freely make his place in history
in the second term. Maybe it’s time to
revisit the old idea of term limits for everyone and a single term for the
president. Stay tuned.
===================
Why
I May Never Vote Again
First,
let me introduce myself. I am a senior
citizen from the Midwest. I have always
voted in both local and national elections.
Like others, I have always subscribed to the thinking that if you don’t
vote, then don’t complain. Even in my
more cynical times, when I felt like it didn’t matter – that my vote wouldn’t
really count – I voted anyway, just so it was out there, being counted (or
not).
I
am a voter, not a supporter of a political party. There were times I voted for Republicans
and other times I voted for Democrats. Sometimes,
I voted for third-party candidates, considering that a vote “against” the major
candidates.
I
must tell you, too, that I have grown increasingly cynical and despairing of
our democratic republic. I fear we may
be losing it.
Part
of that cynicism is that I never really believed politicians. While I didn’t really believe candidates, I’d
try to discern which one seemed better in
some ways. Like others, I‘d vote for
“the lesser of two evils.”
In
the days before the Internet, I was deceived by some of them but bounced back
and voted again anyway, even though I frequently felt it was all futile.
Then
along came Barack Obama. I knew he was
an orator. He wasn’t a saint and I knew
he would still fight wars I wouldn’t like.
It was appealing that he is far more intelligent than his predecessor
and a lawyer who had taught constitutional law.
Dare I hope he would put that above politics? He spoke of restoring
habeas corpus, the importance of the constitution, and trying to find our
common ground, even if we didn’t all agree on issues.
He
had worked “in the trenches” to make communities better. He knew what it took. He listened to people.
He
made sense.
I
believed him.
The
fall into despair is greater when you feel misled – fooled - more so than when
you didn’t believe someone anyway or believe in them.
I
believed in Obama.
Now
I’m watching our republic become more and more fascist than I thought
possible. More civil liberties are
disappearing than before - or it’s at least as bad.
I
fear my grandchildren will never know the republic in which we grew up, loved,
got mad at, voted for changes in, protested, and realized, as imperfect as it
was and is, at least most citizens had rights.
Those who didn’t, had a vehicle for acquiring them.
We
can only wonder if Obama was what he seemed and the system “got him” or he was
just better at fooling us.
Some
days, I feel angry; others, I just feel disillusioned.
I believed
Obama and I believed in him. Now, I fear
what he will do next.
But
who else would I vote for in the next election?
The others seem ordinary – simply politicians. They could never make me
believe in anything.
So,
sadly, I may never vote again.
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