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Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, is living in the wrong century.
As far as can be seen as yet, his greatest flaw as a President is the strength that got him elected: he's a statesman, not a politician.
He placed his faith in his people, in the strength of rightness over expediency, in the promise that the degeneration of governance could be arrested and repaired.
But the reason our campaign has always been different is because it's not just about what I will do as President, it's also about what you, the people who love this country, can do to change it.
That's why tonight belongs to you. It belongs to the organizers and the volunteers and the staff who believed in our improbable journey and rallied so many others to join.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.
Yes we can.
It was three words that swept him to the Presidency. Yes, we can. Thousands, tens of thousands of people, chanting together. Yes, we can.
A campaign promise, to end the power of lobbyists, to bring the American government back into the service of the American people.
A promise that the American people have not kept.
Obama pledged to end the bitter partisanship that is tearing Washington apart, and he has tried, desperately, to the point where his quest to bridge that divide risks destroying everything else he seeks to accomplish, even as he took office in a country that was in crisis in too many areas already.
He said, from the start, that he would need the help of the American people, that it was the American people who could overcome the lobbyists and special interests who are destroying America.
Barack Obama appears to be in a uniquely ironic position, for an elected politician: he believed what he said during the campaign, and the voters treated his campaign promises like a convenient, pretty fiction to get him elected.
And now he's trying like hell to fix this, and coming under attack for not succeeding even from the same people who last year chanted, "Yes we can."
Maybe they could, but they're not.
America desperately needs health care reform. They spend enough of their GDP on health care to cause serious damage to the economy, and yet, so many people receive inadequate care, or no health care at all, that the indirect cost is greater than the direct cost. Even for those Americans who do have access to health care now, that access is too fragile, and too risky, except for the rich minority.
And yet, the voice of opposition is strong, frenzied, and millions upon millions of people are silent or even complicit in the ploys of the lobbyists to destroy this chance at reform.
"Yes, we can. But we won't bother."
It goes like this.
If you went to a rally for Obama, if you chanted that slogan, but you haven't contacted your congressman since the election - to voice your support, to speak in opposition to the lobbyists - then you lied.
If you voted for Obama, you signed on to the implicit contract of an election - that you are signing on for the promises of the campaign.
And if you voted for Obama, the odds are pretty strong that you've broken your promise, because millions of Americans cast their ballots for Obama and have done nothing since then to help him.
In a democracy, it is said, the people get the government you deserve. In America's case it rings fairly true - America has almost no democracy at all, because for all that there are elections, Congress is bought and sold by lobbyists who control the government for their own benefit, and the American people just keep letting that be true.
Obama can't change that. Obama adheres to the Constitution, and the representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled, are a co-equal branch of government; he can try to persuade, but he can not and should not control Congress.
And when he's struggling to persuade even Democrats to support his attempts at health care reform, Congress is working against him in ways he can't constitutionally overcome.
The only people who can fix this nightmare are the American people, speaking up, speaking as loud as the teabaggers and FOX followers.
They're not doing it. They're letting him down, they're letting their country down, they're letting themselves down - the American people need to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide: Do they want a better America? Do they want reform of health care, reform of Wall Street, a future less desperate and uncertain?
Or do they want to sit back and wait for someone else to negotiate, somehow, through genuinely impossible obstacles without a fraction of the support he was promised?
Sadly, it seems that question is already answered.
ETA: This entry was, briefly, switched to private; the reasons why this was are not actually germane to anything in the content. It's certainly not because I don't stand behind my words; I do, especially since the criticisms so far appear to amount to: "... YOU'RE NOT AMERICAN SO YOU DON'T GET TO SAY STUFF THAT'S SO MEAN."
To which I answer: Truth hurts, apparently. Suck it up.
There's a separate discourse on the hypocrisy of accusing me of cowardice for "not standing behind my words" in a private message - with return messages blocked. That's freaking hilarious. There's an eye-rolling aggravation in the same anonymous cowards returning, apparently unaware that I can trace a goddamn IP address.
What there isn't is anyone actually showing any signs of anything better than the exact same problem I'm talking about: it's easier to whine, and complain, and get angry at the very idea that someone might expect more than this. It's easier to make believe that "you're not American" is a valid counter-argument to a statement about America; if nothing else, have you ever encountered the phrase "the onlooker sees most of the game"?
Not that I'm saying I, personally, do; it's more that the argument is fallacious to the point of being asinine.
Grow up. I have more important things to deal with than this, or you, and ultimately, a big part of the reason why I decided not to bother with this post any more is that it's clear that the subset of American people who actually do need to sack up and try to do their part has a strong correlation with the subset of American people who are fuckwitted douchebags with entitlement complexes, and they're just not my problem.Current Music: Queen - Football Fight (Flash Gordon soundtrack)
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