Two Years Ago Today…

Two years ago today Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. So, now we are at the halfway point in his prseidential term and having always been a critic of the man, I am long past the point of “I told you so.” Looking back, Election ’08 was the first election where I had a real political consciousness and watching another tyrant slither his way into the White House was pure torment. Admittedly, the election and Obama got everyone energized (including me), but conversely I was not moved by the man’s ubiquitous, but meaningless mantras of “hope” and “change.” Instead I was motivated to combat ignorance, empire building, militarism, and corporate domination- all characteristics of Obama and every other president’s political career. It seems like a few years ago in the Bush era people were semi-united in their repudiation of Bush and everything his administration represented, the public was overwhelmingly against a war they previously had favored, and overall the anti-war movement was much stronger. Then along came Obama and he fucked everything up. People felt Obama was their man and they could relax because every little thing was going to be alright. But, they never stopped to observe his actual policies. During the whole campaign and afterwards I told people that Obama would not provide change unless he was pushed to from the people, but more often than not he would maintain existing conditions and work for the few. This was no secret and in a way you can’t blame him for following through with the polices he campaigned on. He campaigned on hawkish, pro War on Terror (Afghnistan) amongst other high military expenditures and vague time tables for Iraq. It’s weird how when Bush was in office people were far more against the war and then when Obama comes in this anger seems to have dissipated, at least to me. Anti-War activist Cindy Sheehan has noted this decrease as well. My only explanations are Obama’s reign and also the state of the economy. Everyone is focused on their wallets and understanably so. Now, we are halfway through an Obama term in office and the public’s excessive fandom has subsided; it will be interesting to see where the second half of his run will take us and what creatures they have in store for us for the next election- it’s not too far away.