My Trepidation

I have been experiencing some flare-ups of my old political leanings recently. I am finding it more and more difficult to justify a vote for Obama this November. Not that I am leaning to the right or anything. I haven't fallen off the wagon that hard. What I have experienced is profound disillusionment with the broken promises of this administration. I know that every president lies, but that doesn't justify the outcomes of the deliberate deceptions of this administration. I mean, let's be honest and just admit none of us really thought Obama would close Guantanamo. He signed an executive order saying he wanted it to happen, but left the order so full of loop holes it still hasn't been completed, more than three years later. That's disappointing, but at least it was expected. What I didn't expect, and what has nearly destroyed the little shred of hope I had left for the executive branch, are the following two things:

No one has been held responsible for the financial crisis.


I understand this is a big, ugly, monstrously complicated issue. That cannot stop justice from being sought, though. Revelations of misbehavior on the part of mega-banks, which have only gotten bigger, should have led to some sincere investigations by our government. Our representatives aren't elected to serve the banks, they're elected to fucking PROTECT US FROM THEM when they, our market institutions, cross the line. Why haven't any executives been charged in the robo-signing scandal? If a corrupt, greedy government bureaucrat broke the law, lied to investigators, forced a small army of his underlings to sign forged documents, and did this with the full knowledge that tens if not hundreds of thousands of families were being wrongly evicted from their own homes as a result, that motherfucker's head would be on a spike on the capital steps. Why do bankers get a pass because they're millionaires? This is exactly what they did, but somehow we haven't yet painted our homes with their blood. The unfortunate fact is that they have sold a Randian narrative to a majority of US citizens which dictates that they are more important than us and less deserving of punishment because they are successful, which is simply horseshit, and our president fully supports this Wall Street agenda. He wouldn't have hired former Goldman executive Henry Paulson's Sycophant if he didn't.

The brutal security apparatus we despised under Bush has only gotten stronger under Obama.


Not only has it gotten stronger, but it has done so under the guise of progressive restraint, which also makes it insidious. As this great NYT article points out, the president has signed off on the CIA's official method of tabulating the civilian casualties from drone strikes, which assumes that every adolescent and adult male within the target area they hit is an enemy combatant, unless proven otherwise. Please just stop reading now and don't talk to me again if that doesn't strike you as utterly preposterous and completely antithetical to our national moral compass. I realize the fact that we're talking about dirt-poor brown people who pray to a different god might make this excusable to some, but not to me, and it shouldn't to you. For instance, the CIA has said that none of its recent drone attacks have killed any civilians, but this fact is loudly disputed by almost every major news source outside the US. Why aren't we being given the same information? I firmly believe this is because our fourth estate has become so tightly profit driven that they are complicit in the misdirection, lest they lose a lead on some artificial, establishment-created "story". It works like this: If puny Washington beat reporter X wants to get a byline then he has to cultivate a resource within the Intelligence Community (tm), and that resource will demand that puny Washington beat reporter X follow the official line on certain statistics, such as using CIA figures when discussing drone strike casualties. This means no more Woodward and Bernstein. It means that if puny X doesn't do as he's told, he loses his resource, then his byline, and then his job, with no skin off the administration's back. At least with Bush in the White House, the more loudly liberal elements of the MSM would dig a little deeper than just reposting the official press release. The ironic thing is now that a Dem is in the House, the conservative elements of the MSM are not returning the favor because they support the fucking program, so it only gets deeper, and quieter, and even more entrenched.

I believe my vote should still mean something. I used to believe that a vote I didn't fully support was justified by voting for the lesser of two evils, but I am tired of voting for someone I still consider evil in the grand scheme of things. I'm sick of being led to believe that expecting more of our elected leaders is naive. I refuse to stop seeing the world as a place full of potential for improvement, as a place capable of being everything for everyone. In the words of Muhammad Yunus, "Prosperity is not a zero-sum game." And don't think I've gone all hippy on you here, either. I know full well that the world is still a dirty, dangerous, unpleasant place. I just think it can get better. If we expect ourselves to live up to higher standards, why don't we constantly expect that of our leaders as well? Why in the hell should I vote to support a man whose economic policies I distrust as much as Bush's (because they're not really much different)? Why should I vote to support an administration that is sacrificing our best convictions to the specter of national security? Why should I give my vote someone who didn't even earn the last one?

And fuck Romney too. Just fuck 'em all.