Feb 22 2008
Two things about Obama I’m currently tired of *** Revised***
***Note: I’ve added more commentary on this post and brought it to the top***
1. Senator Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can”, “Change” and “Turn the page” sloganeering.
After the second or third reiteration of the same old catch-phrases and listening to him give the same stump speech with his superciliously inclined head gazing down to the crowd from on high, you get kind of bored.
My weariness isn’t derived from all the fainting, swooning, febrile people in the crowd. It’s how these seeming innocuous phrases, like “Change” and “old politics versus new politics”, are used. Instead of trying to foster conversation and debate— as in, “How do you want the country changed? Into what?”— it’s used as a means to shut down, to silence debate. When one asks these obvious pedestrian questions, instead of being greeted with a ready quick-drawn answer as one would expect from a politician pushing this line, one receives either hostility or more platitudes. You’re talking the politics of the past, an Obama supporter would say, not the future.
This is not serious debate. This isn’t even a platform. Of course, what little policy I’ve heard him say is overt, outright national economic suicide and laced with more contradictions than you have fingers.
Okay, okay. Obama is for “Change”. Let’s move on please.
2. Did I say “Hope”?
I’m not opposed to “Hope” as a concept. One has to have hope in one’s heart in order to prosper and love, as I hope on others and hope on the promise of our resurrection and of Christ’s return. But I don’t like “Hope” being used in a vacuous, rhetorically neutral manner as Obama uses it because it means nothing at all. Truly, what does “The Hope and the Audacity” mean? What does it mean when he and his wife declares that “Hope is making a comeback”? Was it ever gone? Or have they that little faith when not referring to themselves?
“Hope” after the manner in which Obama uses it is a vague emotive description that doesn’t convey anything, and such usage, I fear, would destroy the meaning of the word over time, which is still potent to say the least. I suppose you can say that it’s doublespeak refined to an art since he uses “Hope” as a club to beat down his opponents, and should you be unfortunate enough to protest, he’d accuse you of rolling around in the mud and that you’re trying to drag him down. This is, of course, the very opposite of hope’s meaning.
Perhaps others will also become tired of these slogans and cheap gimmicks after a while. November is a long ways off and Obama hasn’t even stated his full platform yet…
Imagine that. A major Presidential candidate winning multiple primaries and you don’t even really know his platform yet. I guess Change and Hope has a lot of mileage.
However, it must be noted that not all the people enthralled to the cult of Obama believe in his politics. One of the major themes to come out of the primaries thus far is the people’s yearning for change and to be heard. It would be mistake to surmise from the current fanfare surrounding Obama that his supporters are part of the unilateral disarm crowd, or that they are even pacifists.
After the illegal immigration debacle, after our government’s refusal to expand energy policies to reduce prices (They can do this at will. ANWAR is still right there and huge oil deposits are still stilling on our continental shelf.), and after refusing to listen to our concerns, our Congress and a mum, non-communicative President Bush has driven American patience to the wall. I think this “Change” movement (or whatever it is) might be an anger against our elites.
I’m sure there are some Obama supporter who is doing it out of straight up bloody-mindedness, and perhaps some are rolling the dice with him even knowing that his policies would be national suicide.
One British observer, Gerard Baker, noted:
But if you listen to Mr Obama’s speeches, it is not the lack of substance but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans. His victory speech after his latest primary win in Wisconsin this week was a case in point.
There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education. He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist. He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.
While he speaks of the need for Americans to move beyond partisanship (“We are not blue states or red states, but the United States” is a campaign meme), when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party. If you think about it for a second, it’s not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.
And he ended his article with a rather uneasy questions:
America is certainly moving left in the post-George Bush era. The long period of conservative ascendancy is clearly over, buried by a Republican Party of recent years that has preached intolerance and practised incompetence. That a new era in American politics is beginning is not in doubt. But are Americans really ready to leap all the way across in one go to embrace a European-style Left?
To withdraw from Iraq, to slam a steep tax hike on our shaky economy and to divert military funding to schools and more entitlements even as the world’s venom against us increases— this is madness. And a sizable portion of Obama’s supporters know it’s madness, don’t agree with it, and are choosing it anyway.
It’s madness because many of them still remember what happened when Vietnam fell. Our positions around the world was challenged and attacked. Our embassies burned worldwide and our military dragged down to the point where 1 out of every 10 bombers were armed. We nearly lost the country over it, and some historians called it, “America’s Suicide Attempt”.
Also, by rolling back the tax cuts and to increase even more taxes on top of it but only for the rich, and he says he’s going to do it in an economy that is about ready to smack its face on the pavement is crazy to say the least. This could potentially be the difference of an economic recession and an economic depression.
After withdrawing troops from Iraq, Obama wants to divert military funding to building schools and teaching kids literature and music. In the face of China’s military build-up, in the face of Russia and Iran’s military build-up, in the face of Islamofascism sweeping most of Europe and attacking us on all levels, Obama wants to cut military funding.
And yet, some of supporters see the madness in this and say they’ll vote for him anyway just to get away from the status quo. I don’t like Obama’s policies but I can’t fault his supporters for this because I felt just this at times as well. But I don’t think such frustration should be translated into national suicide.