Radio silence (continues)

I'll be out of town for a few days trying to reach an elevation where the snow doesn't melt before it hits the ground.  While I'm away, here's some fresh meat to gnaw on—the always-reliable Katha Pollitt gamely rationalizing the numberless failings of her Democratic hero, and imploring him to come back to his True Self.  Here are the paragraph starters, which tell you all you need to know:

How disappointed are the Obama warriors of 2008? "May your love for me not fade as quickly as your love for Obama," read one pale pink e-card making the rounds on Valentine's Day. [...]

I'm still glad I supported Obama over Hillary Clinton. [...]

I'm not even sure how much of it you can blame on Obama. [...]

But let's not go overboard. The real-world constraints on what Obama can do are considerable. [...]

It's true that Obama was elected with the votes of many independents and some Republicans, and he has to respect that or end up building houses with Jimmy Carter. [...]

During the campaign Obama was often attacked as being all airy speeches and noble rhetoric. Maybe he took that criticism too much to heart and made the mistake of trying to rack up accomplishments quickly through wonkery and compromise and deal-making, the normal things politicians do--only unfortunately the Republicans aren't interested in governing, and the Blue Dogs are mostly interested in themselves. [...]

What is the point of Obama being conciliatory and careful if his opponents are reckless and don't want to conciliate?

Aww, that's just sweet.  And she's right; it's really a shame that Obama's reckless, unconciliatory opponents have forced him to carefully murder hundreds of people with drone strikes, increase the ferocity of the rape of Afghanistan, collude with Israel's every crime, hand our money over to the banks, submarine action on global warming, adopt and even expand Bush-era assaults on civil liberties, etc, etc.  Damn those reckless opponents for forcing him to act against his better nature!

As Chris Hedges wrote about useless liberals:

The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his "true" self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

Though in fairness to Pollitt, this abject, cloying letter was only about Barack Obama, not to him.

Comments

[DancingOpossum]

My favorite part of that Pollitt column was her twisted explanation of how voting for Obama instead of Hillary Clinton saved us all from misogyny. Because it would have been so hard for our tender, delicate little hopiated souls to endure any meanness from the Republicans directed at our female president. We might even have cried. So...Thanks, Katha! You saved us all!

[James Ferency]

Bravo, John. You nailed it.

[ethan]

Better building houses with Carter than committing genocide with him...

[vastleft]

Maybe I should share My Own Private Obama with her...

http://www.correntewire.com/my_own_private_obama

[Jenny]

And of course he goes right on to praise the real americans- those brave troops- haw. If he's a socialist,he should be critical of all institutions,yes?

[Rosemary Molloy]

I just had a dreary conversation with two good liberals who simply cannot bear to believe their hero is a conscienceless pol, just like all his contemporaries in D.C. After all, he's black--he must be good (a form of racisn that always makes me gasp). He's being manipulated by his cabinet; as soon as he realizes that, he'll rise up and end the wars and reinstate honesty in the federal government and bless the little puppies, too. We had this talk while demonstrating at a peace vigil!

[InThecity]

I was speaking with my Mom the other day and she was saying "Oh that evil Rahm, it's all his fault!" To which I noted that Obama DID pick him. It's not like Rahm materialized from the ether. Obama knew he was Daley's bagman (look at who Obama consorted with in Chicago for goodness sake) and knew he had been in the IDF. If you hire a bagman of Daley the Younger, you sort of know what you are getting. Add the IDF stuff and come on.

I just have a hard time absolving someone of responsiblity when it was his responsiblity to PICK the BLOODY CABINET to begin with. Ugh. It's the same argument made about Bush the Younger (hmmm, all this is very Roman, isn't).

[Donald Johnson]

I guess we all have friends like this. One of them is fine with me criticizing Republicans, Fox News, the usual suspects. In fact he goes livid on those subjects (as he should). But let me say something almost as harsh about the Democrats in general or Obama in particular or the NYT and its establishment biases and he hems and haws and says I'm in a bad mood. Or he'll concede the criticisms and then go straight for his bottom line--the Republicans are worse. That one point basically renders all other points irrelevant to him.

[Donal Jones]

Oh, sweet bleeding Jesus on the cross! Talk about "sterile moral posturing" ... I think to characterize Obama as a "conscienceless pol " or to rate him as heinous as Bush and the Republicans is unwarranted at this time with little more than a year in office. LBJ strong-armed passage of the Civil Rights Act out of a conviction that it was the right thing to do but also escalated an immoral and murderous war in Vietnam over the course of his presidency (Where does that leave him in your moral calculus? ).

The Republicans ARE worse. Granted, corporate Democrats, on the whole, aren't much better. However, given the choice of seeing people suffer a little less, and preserving the political status quo, as opposed to having the party of the insane usher in the mass suffering of a full blown depression coupled with draconian cutbacks in welfare and entitlement programs and even more war - mongering, I'll grudgingly stick with Barry and the Dims. (Given that scenario could possibly ignite a massive progressive - socialist political realignment like that of the FDR years doesn't make it more acceptable)

I do hope Obama has a hard time getting to sleep thinking about those innocent Afghanis who were killed. By the same token, continuing citizenship in America and participation in the conspicuous consumption that characterizes it is to daily deprive millions upon millions, on a much larger scale than Afghanistan, of adequate shelter, nutrition, healthcare and life. Situational ethics are easier to practice when the collateral damage is so indirect and far removed.

Obama deserves the opprobrium the left and anti-war conservatives have directed at his economic policies and military initiatives. Self-righteous and condescending personal attacks on him, liberals predisposed to want to believe the best about him, and his die - hard "fans" are counterproductive, especially given the current progressive movement's members lackluster track record of doing much more than signing online petitions and bitching and moaning in the comment section of their favorite blogs.

[John Caruso]

We had this talk while demonstrating at a peace vigil!

Oh good lord.

[John Caruso]

I do hope Obama has a hard time getting to sleep thinking about those innocent Afghanis who were killed.

Who he killed, you mean.

By the same token, continuing citizenship in America and participation in the conspicuous consumption that characterizes it is to daily deprive millions upon millions, on a much larger scale than Afghanistan, of adequate shelter, nutrition, healthcare and life.

Yes, having American citizenship makes each of us more responsible for the entire world's ills than Obama is for the killings he personally authorizes in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Pakistan, and Yemen, and...). Let he who is without sin, etc. You should definitely send this argument off to Katha Pollitt.

[Donald Johnson]

"Self-righteous" isn't really much of a criticism. Most attacks on other people's political positions can be termed self-righteous. Democrats who criticize Republicans are self-righteous, especially if they ignore the same crimes when committed by Democrats. And liberals who excuse the Democrats all the time because Republicans are worse are part of the problem. Now as for the solution--I don't have it. I just know that when I vote for Democrats as the lesser of two evils (as I did in 2004 and 2008) I'm also enabling the Democrats to keep shifting rightwards.