What worries me about this moment is not whether Barack Obama will do good, progressive things. As I've said ad nauseum, I think he will. And what worries me is not debates on the merits of particular policy - let's have those on the merits, not on grounds that define "anything [insert beloved politician] does" right and true and pure and moral. What worries me is that the mass psychology of the country has changed - that our entire conception of what it means to live in a democracy has radically changed, and not for the better.
I encourage folks to go back through the posts on this site and others and look at the reaction to anyone who questions, points out, or raises a flag when our Dear Leader has backed off a campaign promise or made an appointment that seems at odds with policy pledges.* Obama has no anti-war voices in his cabinet? We shouldn't worry, and to even mention it is an act of treason. Obama put free-trading deregulators in his cabinet after campaigning against free trade and deregulation? STFU, you irrelevant jerk. Obama backed off major tax promises? No it's not true despite the facts, and who really cares - regulating the oil industry isn't important anymore.
In other words, whenever questions are raised - no matter how gently or how substantive - the person raising it is attacked as a "concern troll," a "whiner," a purist martyr on a crucifix, a self-important attention freak who thinks he/she is a hero, a horrifically disloyal traitor or a "liar" (the last of which is most appalling, since those making the accusations may disagree on opinion, but rarely actually offer up where the questioners are factually inaccurate).
This is the digital brownshirt-ism that Al Gore warned about - where merely questioning why a politician changed his position gets you slandered as disloyal, or worse, provokes absurd Orwellian denials that the policy has changed, when it inarguably has. The tenor of it suggests a crouched fear and paranoia - the kind displayed from the government in authoritarian countries whenever uncomfortable truths about the Dear Leader are raised.
And so to me, the worry is not really whether Barack Obama will pass good policy - I think on the whole he will. The longer-term worry is that the mass psychology of the country has become that of dittoheads; that the idea of "citizenship" now means never questioning the Dear Leader, berating those who do, and setting up the false "your with us or against us" frame - the one where you're 100% disloyal (or "angry" or "negative" or "vituperative" or "on the fringe") if you question him at all. The one where it's only black and white, loyal or disloyal, the Dear Leader or Apostasy - and it's somehow impossible to support the Dear Leader when he does the right thing, and pressure him when he backs off his own promises.
Just because a leader is powerful doesn't mean it is a democratic citizenry's duty to treat him/her as a Dear Leader and worship that power - it was our Founding Fathers who made that point over and over again. Just because a leader is wildly popular doesn't mean he/she should be viewed as a Dear Leader never to be questioned or pressured - the refusal to pressure George W. Bush when he was at 90% in the polls after 9/11 helped get us the Iraq War. Just because a leader seems progressive in their heart and voiced power-challenging themes on the campaign trail, doesn't mean that, without pressure, they are going to be progressive or challenge power - on issues like NAFTA, Bill Clinton reminded us that "power concedes nothing without demand." And just because a movement might get repeateadly steamrolled by the Establishment doesn't mean that movement is irrelevant or unworthy of participation or "on the fringe" - were labor leaders killed at mines or civil rights workers lynched in the Jim Crow south irrelevant, "on the fringe" and unworthy of support?
Indeed, imagine where our country would be if the Dear Leader psychology was the norm for, say, the last 50 years. Imagine a mass movement not supporting Martin Luther King, but berating him for putting oppositional pressure on Dear Leader Lyndon Johnson after Johnson's landslide 1964 victory. Imagine a mass movement not supporting the rights of workers, but berating labor leaders for politically threatening Dear Leader Franklin Roosevelt unless he passed labor laws. If that was the mass psychology in our history - if our history was one of organizing around and prioritizing support for individual Dear Leaders rather than a core set of issues and values - we'd still be living in a 19th century country.**
But I fear this may be becoming the mass psychology today. So sure, the current Dear Leader, Obama, may make some really progressive decisions and we may get out of this economic crisis. As I said, I think that's going to happen. However, if we have lost what it means to democratically engage in the act of governance, then we may have a much bigger and deeper crisis on our hands - one that undermines the self-determination, accountability and ownership of government that has positively differentiated America from a run-of-the-mill Third World autocracy and made our country that "shining city on a hill."
* Sure, website comments/discussion is not a scientific measure of American public opinion, but it is a decent snapshot of activist opinion and related - at least in some way - to the larger cultural psyche.
** As a sidenote, Obama himself seems to recognize these truths. In speeches during the campaign he noted that he would need an independent movement pressuring him. Additionally, his web team allowing an anti-FISA movement to grow on his website showed that the person being depicted as a Dear Leader does understand the danger of being seen as a Dear Leader. My guess is that's because he came out of community organizing - a discipline that is antithetical to Dear Leader-ism.
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