So now the Tea Party folks can make the identity of Obama = Socialism = Corporate bail outs = Progressivism.

tonight glenn beck was saying liberal school and college teachers were worse than middle east terrorists.

wtf?

i think the ascent of obama was a great chance for america to coalesce behind a leader, who until in power, showed every sign, (and then some) of being a new, globally aware, type of superpower leader/guru, possibly ushering a new age of global cohesion and best practice government, an era when calm, rational, affable humanity would become the new way forward, a new model for laid back, progressive pragmatism.

so blaming obama is fruitless (if human), but no-one likes to be asked to STFU just because their cynicism is -maybe temporarily- gagging at the widening gap between rhetoric and reality, while the wheels continue to edge towards the end of the axles.

if his presence and powers on the political scene are too premature, or otherwise inadequate to stir the electorate to re-support his gentle rate of incremental change, or if he senses he does not have a strongly unconditional enough following to vote him in just because...america's ready to accept him as a symbol of its own evolution, a symbol strong enough to drown out doubt about his abilities to do more than sing siren songs, captivating, but ultimately more seductive than useful.

if america had been closer to the brink it seems compelled to keep approaching, perhaps the electorate would be surer that radical change was necessary, but the hologram is still holding together for enough swing voters that they still are loath to risk giving up some of their swindling goodies to any kind of wealth distribution, especially to those darn overbreeding immigrants (snark!!) and their illegal families... these fears are shamelessly dogwhistled by the beckian right.

there's one way to deflect the urge to vilify obama, and that's to blame it on his being ahead of his time, and his over-estimating what he could actually accomplish as president, thinking he would be a good man-in-a-group, rather than a leader ready to step out in front of a group. he hired rahm to be the bad cop, so he could stay sweet, and it hasn't proved smart. who's that fooling?

such a good, balanced diary, Helen, full of empathy for all concerned, and humble about being so right, so long ahead of the game.

i remember reading that, and thinking, it reads true, but i squished the feeling down, because i was high on hopium like so many, betrayed not by obama, but by our own need to project our desperation with politics-as-usual, and desire for change.

just staying sane under the load of unbelievably thorny awful bequeathed by Dim Sun would have broken many a man. obama is human, and a politician, too young and inexperienced to do more yet than sound like a statesman, and he saw the royal road to power would be to give progressives the carrot to get them activated and politicised, then when he had achieved the mountaintop, (thereby realising the symbolic virtual endpoint for the civil rights struggle MLK died for), maybe there'd be the right confluence of events for his dispassionate style of soft power to be respected and trusted. right now, thanks to the dumbed down media, america has sadly lost much of the discrimination to discern the difference between symbol and reality, having merged the two long ago by choice and conduction, and in an age which is asking for us all to mature rapidly and remove our pacifiers, this blurring of the two has pushed many through the glass into some kind of chronic mental imbalance, bolstered by others driven by similar-to-identical philosophies/worldviews, and buffeted by polar contradictory pov's, held equally passionately and devotedly. families avoid discussions to stay in harmony, the ability to bridge that widening cultural gap obama symbolises is beyond his capacity to bring into reality (yet?), given the crazed adherence to the destructive politics so many americans are going along with, or even cheering on.

i haven't given up hope on obama, he's chameleonic enough to surprise us all, and seems still relatively unruffled, even as the collective global handbasket approaches hades, that blithe, ridiculously personable demeanour encourages many to stare in wonder and wait to judge, even as the howls from the left escalate, sometimes into hysteria.

not helpful, as Izzy says...

but neither is painting over the reality of what we are facing, and giving him total carte blanche to act without conscious and constructive criticism will not further any progress either, nor will shhhh-ing critics because those big scary republicans might take strength from that and bring back the reign of error'n'terror, and blow us all into smithereens.

as for grooming anyone to take his place, it's a fine idea, but who has a hundreth of his charisma and social savvy?

he'd run rings around anyone remotely near the corridors of power, without breaking a sweat. and that's why it's so damn hard to let go of the projections, pols that bright come down the pike once in a lifetime if you're lucky.

there's a terrible level of poetic irony to all this.

thanks again for this nicely nuanced diary... good discussion too.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~