The end of the year is generally accepted as a moment during which we're allowed time to reflect on the previous twelve months. It's during this final week of the year that news outlets look back farther in time than a few days, and what we as viewers are given is a second serving of headlines devoid of analysis and popular faces devoid of soul. In the subtle smirks of our television anchors we see a kind of existential incredulity negated only by the promise of the chance to do it all over again. And at the conclusion of the week, when we've paid our fleeting respects to Tahrir Square, Casey Anthony, Iraq, DSK, Lebron James, Joplin, Missouri, the Federal Budget, Wisconsin, the OWS, etc., we usher in the New Year blitzed under the influence of forgetful springs of alcohol and look with glowing eyes ahead at the changes we've promised each other and ourselves.
Sadly for the sane, we're in midst of election season, and one thing the progressively-minded must remember going into November '12 is President Obama's onerous track record during his tenure in office. With the New Year upon us, it's far too easy to opt for the forward look instead of the one that looks back. But remember, this lazy inclination was among Obama's first daggers to the heart of his base, when in the spirit of moving forward he refused to sanction an investigation into or prosecution of the previous administration's criminal use of torture.
The need to remember the real Obama is great, since you can bet your ass that Mr. Change We Can Believe In won't be pulling any punches to the sentimental side of the progressive heart in his campaign for reelection.
The following is excerpted from an article by Glen Greenwald. Titled "Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies," it might serve well as an antidote to the joyously positive, inebriated New Year's mind.
The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than
ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.
The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist. And there’s a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.
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