Different Day, Same Shit.

There are plenty of cynics among us, especially those who are bitter about the president not being able to give them everything they ever wanted on a silver platter in the first 100 days of his administration. That bitterness takes over when he finally manages to get something done in the face of a completely insane and obstinate legislature. Frankly, we could have kept this from being a problem back in 2010, but hindsight is 20/20. Which is why reading how this guy didn't get his pony exactly when he wanted it pissed me off to no end:

At first I was just going to ignore this travesty, because it’s a move so clearly calculated to drum up attention among the gays that really it should just be ignored. I mean, big words, big deal; put your legislation where your mouth is if you want to impress me. But then the blissed-out, adoring responses started appearing in the media. And on Tumblr. And on my Facebook feed. “My hero!” trumpeted one acquaintance on Facebook. “Such a brave move for Obama!” announced a Tumblrite. Again, are you kidding me? The man is the president of the United Fucking States. Have you guys ever read that little “Declaration of Independence” thing? It’s 2012, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t some backwater redneck hick who’s suddenly seen the light of day. We’re getting this excited because a Columbia- and Harvard-education lawyer from Chicago supports the idea of equal rights? He hasn’t actually done anything yet - he’s just not opposed. And everyone’s acting like this is some huge ethical revelation or act of moral clarity. Seriously?

And it goes on and on. Seriously, I lose respect for people who choose to stamp their feet and throw a shit fit when they're not instantly gratified.

Obama’s 100 Days should have reflected that slogan. He should have gone into the White House four years ago and done exactly what he received a mandate from the people to do - shake shit up, and fast. Obama’s should have pushed harder, more immediately, and further on health care. He shouldn’t have surrendered to Congressional Republicans so quickly. Once he had a health care reform in his pocket, he should have worked quickly and aggressively to solidify the coalition that had put him in office. DADT should have disappeared within the first 6 months of the Obama administration. He should have worked quickly and aggressively to undo Bush-era policies on abortion, HIV, and education, which would have put the gays, the feminists, and the teachers’ unions firmly in his pocket. If Obama had had any true vision beyond “Change” as an empty slogan, or if he had had any loyalty to the people who believed in and supported him to begin with, he would have worked first and foremost to fulfill those campaign promises.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a mandate from the American people to shake shit up and get things done when he came into office. Most of the changes he helped push through during his first term were spat back out. If Obama had charged in hard and fast like many people wanted him to, chances are the blowback would have been so fierce that it would have left the rest of his term in shambles and the GOP that much more dedicated towards blocking practically every "socialist" legislation he had in mind.

The net effect would had been a one-term presidency. But that's okay, since he martyred himself upon the altar of uncompromising progressiveness. I'm fed up with people wanting the president to martyr himself in the name of emo-progressive purity.

In short, Mr. President, I’m thoroughly unimpressed by your manipulation of my identity group for your own political gain.

And I'm thoroughly unimpressed by your temper tantrum. Give the man some time to get the shit you want done...done.

I was about to post a bunch of links that made for interesting reading and call it a day. Until I read the following comment on Joy-Ann Reid's enlightening experience with a Ron Paulite (or Pauloid):

A Ron Paul presidency means that tens of thousands of African American men will be returning to their families, communities and churches. They can begin working and re-building their lives. That is revolutionary! That is precisely what will happen when Ron Paul ends the Drug War, pardons non-violent drug offenders, and returns narcotics policy back to the states.

A Ron Paul presidency means that the bombs and drone missiles will stop dropping on Arabs, Africans, and Asians.

A Ron Paul presidency means that the Federal government will no longer threaten the interests of gays who want to pursue marriage in their respective states. No Republican or Democrat (not even Obama) is promising these things; they neutralize the “Ron Paul is a racist” charge, and they expose Obama (and the GOP) for the damage they have allowed the War on Drugs to do to African American communities.

There's something about the above comment that just draws in people who want to have hope. They want to believe that there's someone out there who can just wipe the slate clean and put right to what went wrong, just like that. People want the failed War on Drugs to come to an end. They want to see the hundreds of thousands of people who've been locked up behind it (for relatively minor non-violent drug-related offenses) come home, especially the black Americans whom the War on Drugs has disproportionally affected. We all want to see our troops out of harm's way and an end put to the bombs, the drones and the missiles. We want to see an end put to hassling same-sex couples that want to get married. So it's no wonder people are so willing to throw their weight behind a guy who's been played up as being the ultimate alternative, the guy who seems most likely and most willing to get all of these things done, and more. It's the way most people saw Pres. Obama, at least until it became apparent that the executive position in the Oval Office does not operate by unilateral fiat, no matter how much George "Dubya" Bush attempted to make it so.

And there lies the problem. The moment Ron Paul steps into the Oval Office as President is the moment he comes to realize that there are a labyrinth of channels and legislative checks to go through just to get anything done. This includes 435 representatives, 100 senators, 9 Supreme Court justices, dozens of cabinet members, a massive number of government agencies, 50 state governors and last but not least, plenty of American voters who may or may not take umbrage at Paul's attempts to change policies. Oh, and there's Paul's own supporters to deal with. He won't be able to please all of his supporters all the time, no matter how much he tries. It's what Pres. Obama is going through - many of his supporters are pissed that he can't please them all of the time, and they're ready to take their electoral frustrations out on him.

But let's get back to outlining the reasons why the above comment is thoroughly rooted in pie-in-the-sky idealism (no matter how good it sounds):

1. Ending the War on Drugs may be popular for some, but for others, the failed attempts at prohibition and enforcement have been a profitable boon to many. Federal agencies such as the DEA and ATF, state agencies and local sheriff's departments have benefited from the media coverage and valuable proceeds that drug and drug-related seizures bring. It also expands their budgets and selection of nice equipment and vehicles. Anyone attempting to bring all of that to a halt will face the wraith of many throughout the law enforcement community, as well as that of the sector lobbyists. Ron Paul may even get tarred and feathered as being "soft on crime."
2. Ron Paul might be able to steer the ship of foreign policy somewhat, but not to the degree that his supporters expect. America might be able to reduce its involvement in foreign entanglements to a degree, but it won't be anything big. Paul might be a bit reluctant to knock over the overseas chess board and say "Game Over," especially with neo-conservative interests and their friends in the defense industry to consider.
3. I didn't quite understand this third point. Saying that the feds "will no longer threaten the interests of gays who want to pursue marriage in their respective states" implies that such decisions will fall solely on the states. And if you haven't noticed, there are plenty of states that are looking to put a stop to same-sex marriages. Gays have a better chance of enjoying their full civil rights as partners under a federal umbrella than they would taking their chances on individual states. If Ron Paul pursues the "let's leave this shit to the states" theme as President, lots of people will find their civil rights under question (or nonexistent) if they happen to live in the wrong state.

It's interesting to see Glen Greenwald equate the actions of Pres. Obama in regards to foreign policy and the War on Terror with that of former dunce-in-chief George W. Bush. Apparently, Pres. Obama forgot that he was supposed to repudiate the entire concept of the War on Terror - in other words, he was supposed to take what Bush started and kick the entire mess in the trash can, damned what the rest of Congress, the military, his advisers and most Americans thought. At the very least, he was supposed to play the Professional Left-mandated role of soft touch when it came to terrorism, as evinced by Greenwald's lament of how he should have merely arrested Osama bin Laden as opposed to simply disposing of him. I think Greenwald, like many others in that particular circle, are simply too damned uncomfortable with how Pres. Obama's taken a much harder line on terrorists. In fact, they're very uncomfortable with how Pres. Obama is running things so far.

A lot of people were disappointed that Barack Obama was not their Magic Negro™. And since he didn't revert decades of damage caused by conservative policies within a year of his being in office, these same people are now out for blood, doing whatever they can do dissuade others from supporting and voting for him the next go around, even at the cost of having another conservative as president, who will most likely continue the damaging policies that these people were against and wanted to fix in the first place. To them and to Greenwald, that's far preferable to another four years of what they see as a "phony."

Barack Obama was supposed to be their anti-Bush in every single way. But his governing style was far too pragmatic for the Professional Left and emoprogs to tolerate. As a result, he's considered no better than Bush. Greenwald and company are operating on a nine-year-old's logic.

Meanwhile, Greenwald and others are praising Ron Paul as a champion (of sorts) of civil liberties. As other bloggers have pointed out, his opposition to "warmongering" makes him a pretty good shoe-in for "good guy" within the PL and emoprog circles. It's too bad that these people can't, for the life of them, see how Ron Paul's stances are merely for his own ideological convenience:

But the nature of his anti-war stance is fundamentally different from that of liberal opposition to any given war. The tipoff is in his opposition to foreign aid, and his anti-United Nations position: he's anti-war because the rest of the world just isn't worth it. His is not the pacifism of the anti-war movement but the nativist isolationism of the America-Firsters; Paul is "to the left of Obama" the way Lindbergh was to the left of Roosevelt. (That may be true in a fairly literal sense, although I wouldn't trust anything from Big Government without further corroboration.)

Similarly, Paul's positions on civil liberties issues aren't actually about civil liberties as we understand them; they're about his opposition to Federal authority. (An opposition that is somewhat conditional, it should be noted.) For example, in talking about the death penalty, he makes clear that he opposes it only at the Federal level. His opposition to the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, and domestic surveillance come from the same root as his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He has no real objection to states violating the rights of their citizens; it's only a problem if the Feds do it.

The assumption underlying this is that people are freer when states (as opposed to the Federal government) have more power. Now, it may seem obvious to some of us that the distinction between one arbitrary administrative unit and another isn't exactly a human rights issue, but let's just consider for a moment: does state or local control actually translate to more liberty?

In short? Ron Paul only cares about civil liberties when it brings him to the goal of eliminating federal interference in most aspects of governance. He could care less about what the individual states do. After all, that's his thing. How does that effect liberals on the Ron Paul bus? Well, lets just say that the individual states are a hell of a lot more conservative than guys like Greenwald give them credit for. See Alabama's HB 56 and Arizona's SB 1070? Most states, left to their own devices, are prone to stripping out and reducing civil liberties. No more same-sex marriages, abortions, Planned Parenthood or civil protections for homosexuals and transsexuals. No more protections against racial discrimination, either. But Greenwald and others can't see this forest bereft of actual civil liberties for the anti-war trees.

How far does the selective omission of Ron Paul's policies go in regards to support from Greenwald, et al.?

Remember, Greenwald says Citizens United is good for civil liberties. But what he means by those two words is very different from what most of us have in mind when we say them. The president has been consistently supportive of voting rights, for example, but that is elided from the Greenwald definition of “civil liberties;” he also elides the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Fair Sentencing Act, the overturn of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the president’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the US Commission on Civil Rights, etcetera.

Contrast that to Greenwald’s treatment of Ron Paul’s record. In his op-ed, Greenwald makes no mention of the congressman’s racist newsletters, his public stance on the Civil Rights Act, his attempt to strip Iranian students of federal financial aid, his evident homophobia, his numerous assaults on abortion rights, his desire to repeal the “Motor Voter” Act, his attacks on the 14th Amendment, etcetera. I regard his stance on the gold standard as a repeal of economic rights — one that William Jennings Bryan would abhor as a cross of gold.

In Greenwald’s story, not one of the issues in those previous two ‘graffs — not even the fight over voter ID bills that would disenfranchise millions of African Americans — count as civil liberties issues, but the supposed right of an American citizen to be free from harm while directing harm to other Americans does.

That doesn't matter. Ron Paul's anti-war stance and overall appearance as the "anti-Obama" and liberalism's "last pure hope" is all guys like Greenwald need to get on board and start waving "RP" pom-poms in front of a packed crowd.

There are some people out there who genuinely believe being on the bottom is a lot better than being on the top.* They're people who'd rather rage against The Man™ rather than be The Man™, or at least be in a position where they just yell and flip birds at The Man™ instead of being in a position to act against him. People who'd rather remain the lovable losers in life rather than go on any sort of winning streak.

I've noticed this within the Democrat party. There's always a cadre of supporters who'd rather play the role of perpetual underdog. They see some sort of beautiful purity in being the perpetual punching bag of opposing forces, where each blow rendered is treated as an absolution of sorts, the same way the Flagellants treated every lash as self-mortification of past and present sins, both real and imagined. For the rest of us, this "beautiful suffering" sucks greatly, as it interferes with other things. You know, like winning elections.

These people don't like President Obama much. They don't like him because he failed in his obligations to play the Magic Negro that most emotional progressives (henceforth known as "Emoprogs") expected him to be. Others don't like him because he doesn't describe to the "beautiful suffering" bit that many perpetual underdog Democrats (henceforth known as "PUDs") subscribe to. He refuses to fall on his sword in grand disgraced samurai style for not bringing the results Emoprogs expected, nor has he shown any inclination to jeopardize support from moderate circles in the pursuit of the PUDs and other groups that have confined the Democrats to electoral loserdom.

A lot of people don't understand that you can't do jack-shit if your people don't win. The Teabaggers, God bless those assholes, understand this well. Sure, they appear to be jokes (because they are), but when Election Time rolls around, they pound the pavement, crank up the Wurlitzers and get their people out to the polls. And after they've won, then they attempt to put all of their crazy plays into motion. Meanwhile, the PUDs are busy thumbing through their Rolodexes in search of the mythical pure candidate who can do the "beautiful suffering" bit on cue with flawless precision.

The PUDs are so pissed with Pres. Obama that they're ready and willing to give him the heave ho at a time where the American people can least afford to do so. To wit, Obama is and will remain an electoral shoo-in, an incumbent who, despite all he didn't manage to do, did far more. With his "11-dimension chess game," he managed to unmask the Republicans as a sorry bunch of obstructionists who are ridiculously obsessed with kicking him out of office, even at the risk of leaving Americans unemployed and uninsured. He gingerly stepped out of the way of the Teabagger bus and watched as the wheels fell off of it in grand fashion. The GOP candidates are a mess and the nominee will most likely be someone who will end up having his head handed to him on a silver platter come November 4, 2012. Democrats have this election in the bag.

And yet there's always someone who can't wait to dump the contents of said bag out on the floor and tear the bag into tiny strips, all because it happened to be a paper bag and not an "environmentally friendly" cloth bag. Which brings me to the brouhaha over Naomi Wolf's op-ed.

As mentioned before, the only crime Wolf can be successfully tried, convicted and flambe'd on is using a bullshit news article to springboard her own sensationalist piece to popularity. And people are still talking about it. In showbiz (or was that public relations?), they say bad publicity is better than no publicity. I'm only surprised at the level of energy being expended on this woman and her crap op-ed, presumably to stop a story like this from becoming accepted gospel.

And why? Apparently because, as Sarah Jones of PoliticsUSA explains:

Why are progressives hawking a right wing rumor? In the best of worlds, I suppose it’s because post-W, we are all government-leary and the Right knows how to stoke this fear in us and use it to scatter us into fragments of what we could be. But just as in any other relationship, a constant attitude of mistrust to such a degree that we believe any smear no matter how unfounded will not lead to positive change. It’s impossible, in fact, to create positive change when you’re hampered by the power of fear and hatred. These are emotional diatribes, at best; at worst, they’re cynical ploys to be King or Queen of the movement.

The Emoprogs and PUDs have this knack for following only "approved voices" when it comes to stuff like this. The Naomi Wolfs, David Brooks and Jane Hamshers of the world. You know, folks like those. Ever since slowly making my way through to the liberal/progressive end of the political spectrum after spending my formative years in Freeper Hell, I've tried my best to divine exactly what about these people that makes them such an anathema to ordinary left-wingers but just perfect to the PUDs and Emoprogs. Unfortunately, my natural tendency to just disregard these people as not being important enough to even bother with hampers my ability to do just that, but I keep trying.

Perhaps it's the condescending manner to which they speak to others and of others who are outside of their personal and political frame of reference. Perhaps its their love of being the darlings of the cocktail circuit, where it is OK to be contrarian, to a point, just not contrarian enough to piss off those who financially or socially butter your bread. Or maybe its because when push comes to shove, these people are far too wrapped up in the art of being a "beautiful loser" and a "lovable underdog" to actually effect any sort of meaningful change to the way things are done in this country. A lot of these people love the current status-quo -- it works out for them, and to change that would mean screwing up a good thing.

The story of Pres. Obama allowing the DHS to run roughshod over the civil liberties of the OWS and 99% fits perfectly with a lot of narratives from the Emoprog and PUD-end of things. Obama is evil because he lets the Homeland Security dickwads encourage local police to wail on and hose hapless protesters with OC spray. Therefore, Obama must be shown the door. No one ever bothers to answer the following question: "Replace him with who?" No, just some throwaway answers about how Elizabeth Warren or Ron Paul would do a better job and so forth.

No one ever manages to connect the dots between weakening Obama's electoral support and having another Republican president in office. In fact, such an event suits the PUDs and Emoprogs well. Both groups can continue to practice the "beautiful suffering" and "lovable underdog" routines without having to deal with the responsibilities that come with actually effecting positive change to our political and social institutions. Meanwhile, the GOP is left to its usual routine of practicing cronyist ineptitude vis-a-vis governmental affairs while allowing the free marketeers to sell the nation off for wholesale prices, one factory at a time. Status-quo achieved. The Brooks and Hamshers of the world are pleased as punch.

As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of perpetual underdogs.

*Let's get those homosexual/prison jokes out of the way right this instant.

This comes courtesy of Balloon Juice's "Too Many Jimpersons," in response to the whining from the "emoprogs" for a primary challenge of President Obama:

Dude, if you don’t like something Obama has done—or hasn’t done—then by all means call him on it. He said as much way back while he was still running. Nudge him further the way you’d like him to go.

But for fuck’s sake, do it in a way that helps rather than hinders. Don’t start screaming about primary challenges because he hasn’t done everything you wanted. Don’t go all over Fox and screech that he’s a sellout and as bad as Bush was.

Those were a few handy “don’t”s. Here are some “do”s:

Go out and work for the candidates in the primaries who fit your bill. Show up at their offices and do shitty, dull work for them. Trudge through the rain canvassing on an October Saturday when you’d much rather be at home. Send them some money. If you don’t like who’s running, run yourself.

Those are helpful tips. But before you do all that that I suggested, here’s another “don’t”:

Don’t work for some Democrat you love above all else if it means you’re likely to badly weaken the Democrat in office who votes as you’d like 9 times out of 10, or even only 7 or 8, or even only 6 or, yes, even only 5 out of 10, if—and here’s the thing—the 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 out of 10er is the best you can get. Examples: O.K., we all know Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson are irritating assholes. But before you go out and work your ass off for Louisiana or Nebraska’s version of Dennis Kucinich, bear in mind that Landreiu and Nelson are the best we can hope for in those states. Yeah, I’d love it if Louisiana sent somebody who speaks and votes like Al Franken to the Senate. But that isn’t going to happen. The choice isn’t Mary landreiu or Al Franken; it’s Mary Landreiu or some dickwad who votes like David Vitter. There are reasons Minnesota sends people like Franken to Washington and Louisiana doesn’t. Those reasons are called “voters”.

I live in Virginia. In 2006 and in 2008, I worked for Jim Webb and Mark Warner when they ran. If Virginia were a place where somebody like Franken or Sanders or Sherrod Brown could win statewide, I’d happily have worked for them. But it isn’t, and no amount of wishing by me will make it so. So I worked for the best I could reasonably hope for. And much to my delight, I got two Democratic senators in the last two elections we had here. They aren’t as liberal as I am; they aren’t as liberal as I would like them to be. But none of that matters. I live in Virginia in the early 21st Century, not some fantasy world where everybody thinks the way I do.

Now as for Obama, well, you know what? I would like it if he were more like Al Franken or Sherrod Brown. I’d love that. But right now, it’s hard to get somebody like that into the presidency. It isn’t going to happen right now, however much you might want it to. So, yes, maybe Obama does what I’d like 8 or 9 times out of 10. Guess what? I lived through 8 years of George Bush, who did what I would have liked 0 times out of 10. And Rick Perry and Romney would also do what I’d like them to 0 times out of 10.

0. 8. 10. Those are the numbers to keep in mind next year, 0, 8 and 10. There are, to be sure, fantasy candidates who would give me what I want 10 times out of 10. (Nader sure as hell isn’t, however many people wrongly think of him as some kind of liberal crusader; he’s only an egoist who wants to throw fits and show everybody how wrong they were. If he got in, he might well appoint somebody like Palin just to stick a thumb in our eyes. I don’t trust him or anybody who works with him.)

Anyway, 0, 8 and 10. Keep those in mind. Maybe President Franken would give you what you want 10 times out of 10. But that means nothing. He’ll never be president, not in this country, not as it is. This is a country that chose George Bush 7 years ago, knowing fully what it was getting. So 10 is an important number because it’s what you—we—won’t be getting. That leaves 8 and 0. What we have to choose from is getting our way 8 times out of 10 or no times out of 10. Maybe you don’t like that. Tough shit. That’s what you have, and whether you’re happy with it has nothing to do with the world as it is.

Do you want to get your way 0 times out of 10 as long as you can happily, smugly tell us all about how pure you are and how devoted to The Cause—whatever it may be—you are? Are you willing to live with that? Or would you rather have somebody who does what you like 8 times out of 10? That isn’t as good as 10 out of 10, I know that. But what if these are your only choices? Then what? Are you going to work to get Rick Perry voted in so you can feel like you’re one of the few who are really, truly committed to doing what’s right, even though you might have to take a few lumps for it? (Keep in mind that you are unlikely to get any lumps; it’ll be some other poor losers, but, hey, eggs and omelettes and all that, right?) Or will you take the 8 out of 10 and be willing to be let down once in a while for the sake of all of us? Because these are your choices. These two. Forget about 10. Forget about President Franken. Forget about President Sanders. Forget about President Kucinich, and for the love of God, forget about President Nader. Can you do that? I hope so, since you’ll never get them. Understand that: You will never get them. It won’t happen. You get to choose between President Obama andGovernor Perry, or between President Obama and Governor Romney. That’s it. That’s all.

And if you work for Nader or some other asshole in the primary, all you will do is weaken President Obama and make the likelihood of President Perry or Romney that much greater. That’s what primary challenges to sitting presidents do. It happened in 1992. It happened in 1980. It happened in 1968 (Humphrey was running more or less for Johnson’s third term). It happened as far back as 1912. Each time—each time—the challenging party got the advantage and each time it won. That’s what happens when you run a serious primary against a sitting president: you help elect somebody from the other party. We can’t afford that.

Now, before anybody weeps and wails about “Don’t I have the right to vote for whomever I want? Isn’t this a democracy, don’t you believe in democracy?” let me just say: Yes, you have the right to vote for whomever you choose. Yes this is a democracy. And yes, I believe in democracy. Yes, yes and yes. Nobody is telling anybody else, “You have no right to vote for Nader,” or anything like that. What we are saying, what we are asking you people who have legitimate criticisms of Obama, is to put your own feelings and your own egos and your own need to feel holy or to feel like martyrs to the cause to the side. That’s all we’re asking. We’re asking you to take a good look at what’s going on here in this country, and to swallow your pride for a little while, and to get over the bruise Obama gave your ego when he didn’t do everything just the way you wanted him to.

We aren’t telling you; we aren’t ordering you. We aren’t shooting you or threatening you or jailing you or hosing you down with fire hoses or beating you. We are asking you. Yes, sometimes you (collectively; people like you) piss us off and we call you mean names and say intemperate things to you. But, Lord in heaven, get over it. If you can’t even take a few nasty comments without crumpling up and whining about how this is just like what Martin Luther King or somebody had to go through—and there are manic progressives who go on that way; I am not saying you are one of them—then you really aren’t the fearless liberal warriors you like to think you are.

So, again: Please do not work for or encourage primary challenges to President Obama in 2012. If you do, you greatly weaken his odds of winning next year, and if you do that, then lots of other Democrats will get highly pissed off at you, and we withhold the right to call you mean names. If we do that, then live with it. It’ll be the least you’ll have to worry about.

This could be a blog post in of itself. Powerful stuff.