Reply #12: Strawman for blanket dismissal of dissenters [View All]

[PurityOfEssence]

The insinuation here is that most or even many critics OBVIOUSLY fall into the category of people who believe "Obama should have fixed everything by now". This is more than just a sloppy attempt at marginalizing opponents, it's smug censorship and pusillanimous groupthink/group tyranny.

Much, however, is clear.

--He's NOT going to actively take on the entrenched medical-profit business; he's going to "do something" about our health care crisis, but only as long as it isn't too disruptive to the sickness profiteers.

--Gays will be cajoled with words of acceptance, but the unquestioned lords and masters of Religion, Incorporated must be obeyed.

--Attempts to help those disrupted by the economic crisis will be made, but only if the funds are funneled through private enterprise, so the slavish market worship is appeased.

--Banks will effectively do as they please, and the financial aristocracy will only have to suffer the re-regulation that it accepts.

--The environment will be helped only in ways acceptable to Big Coal and others.

--War will be continued in the pointless and un-winnable Afghanistan to somehow disprove liberal weakness and for a host of other silly reasons.

Sure, it's MUCH better than the bleak, atavistic economic monarchy of the past 28 years, but it's nauseatingly Clintonesque, and this is hard to swallow at a time when the reactionaries are in shell-shocked disarray.

Being constantly asked to "hope" and "have faith" are the dues we pay for being a part of this society, but we have a right to nudge and petition for more, as well as mouth off at polyannish commissars of truth who'd have us believe that this is the best we can do.

They've made their values clear, and regardless how many blinkered partisans demand that we accept their "ultra-centrist corporatism with progressive garnee" as some kind of bright and shining brave new world of bliss, some of us want more.