I'd like to post today some (hopefully) educational and philosophical thoughts on a major current event of considerable importance, on which every American should be well informed.
There has been much said of late (by both liberals and conservatives, even on the usually well-informed Daily Show) to the effect that Obama is a war criminal, because his aerial assault on Libya was unconstitutional and had no legal standing. Simply because he didn't get congressional permission first. This keeps getting repeated, by members of congress no less (who of all people ought to know better),
even though it's obviously false to anyone actually aware of the law (much less its precedents: Reagan and Clinton both did exactly the same thing, multiple times, despite being icons of an "ideal president" for both the right and the left).
It's been nearly a year and the common opinion is that President Obama has gotten little done and failed to deliver on any of his promises. Of course it's unrealistic to expect he would in only a year. It took Bush eight years to right and fully screw this country over inside and out. So we should wait for at least Obama's second State of the Union address before assessing him as a president. He has yet even to deliver his first (due this January). So let's not be premature.
Nevertheless, I was buying into the zeitgeist myself until I read some recent articles that really exposed the lie: most of the mainstream media is outright ignoring dozens of things Obama has accomplished, and downplaying the rest with biased terminology like "dithering" (to sane people, it's called careful deliberation) or with biased depictions of his actions as aloof or accommodating (actions the rest of us rightly call bipartisanship, which all those same people actually claim to want, yet when they get it, they condemn it as "accommodating" or "aloof").
Right wing pundits have begun the game of shamelessly lying about Barack Obama. The story they want you to believe (by repeating it over and over again and assuming you won't check the facts--and be honest, bow your head in shame: you weren't going to) is that Barack Obama is a "flip flopper" who is abandoning his principles to appear centrist. In actual fact Obama has always been centrist and has never espoused the radically liberal views he is supposed to be abandoning. However, unlike John McCain, whose reversals of course are so public and undeniable that we even have them on video (and any further fact checking in news archives would confirm them, and more), Obama actually hasn't done what he is accused of, hence there are no records or video to back up what the right is claiming about him.
Of course, they also attack principled reversals as flip flopping, an equally despicable tactic I already denounced (later in my post on McCain's YouTube Problem). For example, Obama has explained quite well why he has reconsidered the offshore drilling problem and is willing to make some compromises on it, just as he has been willing to do on other issues (an example of the very bipartisan compromising we have always been asking for, so it would be rather lame to complain about it). But today I'm talking about flops that in fact were never even flipped (something I mentioned in comments on my previous post on Obama's New Solution, where I also discussed the very similar compromise Obama worked out on FISA, when he once again explained to the public calmly and reasonably why he did that and how he felt about it).
A good general example of this dishonest tactic in full force is in the Washington Post, where right-wing editorialist Charles Krauthammer claims the following (in "A Man of Seasonal Principles" and "The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama"), which I've broken down item-by-item:
Last week I blogged about my lost faith in McCain, as well as the fact that I see two indications this may be the year the People began to take back the political process, if not their country (see McCain's YouTube Problem). There I discussed the first of these indications, the rise of a citizen media, especially using YouTube as a national television network not under the control of the wealthy elite and the incompetent networks. This will forever change politics and public discourse. But there are two pillars of power: knowledge and money. YouTube and the Internet have allowed people to take back control of the dissemination of information. Knowledge is now available. All we need are the skills to separate the wheat from the chaff. But what about money?
I was an Obama man even before hardly anyone knew who he was, back when he was a state senator in Illinois and hadn't even run for U.S. Senate (much less President). He was already so inspiring with his knowledge, candor, and level-headedness, I pegged him at the time as someone I wished would someday run for President. Yet I dismissed that as fantasy, because he was black--as one of my friends said (a police officer in California basing his judgment on a lurking racism evident throughout even his department), "this country will never elect a black man for President."
That was years ago. Imagine my surprise when Obama actually did start a run for President! And his win, though by no means guaranteed, actually looks plausible. Except for the fact, of course, that the Republicans are Evil and will sell any lie to win, as they did in 2004 against Kerry (the Swift Boat debacle) and even against McCain, one of their very own (the Black Baby debacle--even more disgusting than the Swift Boat campaign...with friends like that, who needs enemies?). The American people shamed me with their readiness to fall for such obvious crap--are we such a nation of idiots? More recently, the racism discovered by the press even among Democrats in West Virginia this season was shocking beyond even my cynical expectations, and does not bode well for the upcoming election (see the DailyShow clip, and for more disturbing examples see this video from TheRealNews).
In Georgia they even sold out T-Shirts depicting Obama as a bananna-eating monkey (I sh*t you not). Sad to say, Hillary Clinton's campaign wasn't entirely innocent of race-baiting either (intentionally or not).
But come what may, this may be the year the People took back the political process, if not their country. There are two indicators converging on that conclusion. The first is in respect to the media. The second is in respect to campaign financing. The two pillars of power: knowledge and money. I'll blog about the first one now. I'll cover the second later this week.
