Written on January 8th,
11th through 13th, and 17th and 18th, 2017
On the
evening of January 10th, 2017 - the same night that Obama gave his
farewell address from McCormick Place in Chicago - I attended a Steve Earle
concert elsewhere in the same city.
Guitarist and vocalist Earle told
the audience that he was sad to see Obama go. Earle dedicated a song to Obama,
said "I don't mind the drones", and added that he thinks Hillary
Clinton is smart.
I've never seen so many people pat
themselves on the back for helping to elect "the first black
president" as I did last night. Do they do that all the time? Have they
ever stopped to consider that to call a mixed-race person "black" -
when he does have white heritage - could be perceived as labeling Obama a
non-white "other"?
On the way
out of Earle's show, I heard someone who attended the concert tell his friend
that Obama dropped 26,000 bombs within some time frame or another. Remember,
Barack Obama renewed the same kind of steadily increasing Israeli aid package
that George W. Bush signed, expanded troop presence in 40 countries in Africa,
and failed to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As
confident as I am that Trump will destroy the lives of Palestinians (and
undocumented immigrants) more than President Obama has, I'm still not sad to
see Obama go. Obama's true legacy will be remembered as electing Trump, and
making him look good by comparison; just as Hillary Clinton's legacy is making
Nixon look good by comparison.
Obama was able to replace U.S.
soldiers in Iraq with mercenaries (also called private security contractors),
as well as with U.S. soldiers working for
private security contracting firms. This allowed liberal media to skew the
numbers about U.S. troop levels in Iraq, because the number of U.S. soldiers had technically
drastically declined, while the level of total Western security agents remained
more numerous than the public was aware several years into the Obama
Administration.
Additionally, failed to close
Guantanamo like he pledged, failed to reverse the growth of executive power and
reverse the damage done to due process in the wake of 9/11. Obama didn't
reverse the attack on civil liberties as he promised; he continued to detain
alleged enemy combatants who were found not guilty, and his orders resulted in
the deaths of American citizens abroad - adult and of minor age alike - without
charges and without due process.
Barack Obama's drone strike
orders have resulted in the deaths of children; in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and other countries. During the Obama Administration, military
experts complained about the high number of civilian casualties the military was
prepared to risk in order to take out medium-value targets.
Trump says he likes Obama,
although they have some disagreements. On the health policy front, Trump has
said that he wants universal health care. But he has also stated that he wants
to get rid of the lines around the states, that make it impossible for people
to purchase health insurance policies across state lines, even when those
policies comply with the regulations of the state of the policy buyer's
residence. Trump has also said that he wants to keep the provision of Obamacare
that prohibits insurance companies from denying people based on pre-existing
conditions.
To recap, Trump has stated a
desire for universal health care, said Big Pharma is "getting away with
murder", and wants to keep the Pre-Existing Conditions provision. This is
not a right-wing position on health insurance; it is a welfare-warfare-statist
one. So, people with pre-existing conditions, despite my objections to Trump's
and Obama's shared position on this, have no fear about being denied coverage.
But to those of you who support
Obama more than Trump on health: are you going to attribute every treatment you
receive over the next four years to Donald Trump, the same way you did with
Obama? You've heard that Trump might just keep most of Obamacare but change it
slightly and call it Trumpcare, right? Obama isn't Imhotep (the Egyptian god of
medicine), and Trump isn't either. Appreciate the doctors who help you; not the politicians who say they want to help
you but can do nothing but get in the way.
Obamacare did as much to hurt
health insurance companies and young insurance subscribers as it did to help
them. It bound all citizens together into territorially determined health
insurance pools, and makes a mockery of what the federal role ought to be in
ensuring that free enterprise in the medical industries survives.
I don't drink alcohol, and yet I
have to be in the same health insurance pool as people who drink alcohol. I
have to pay for retirees and seniors who drink, to stay alive on Medicare and
Social Security, while I probably won't get mine. I have to work to pay for
them to live forever, when I can't even manage to convince them that living
forever will soon be medically possible.
So as a result, they're demanding to live forever, while insisting on living as
if they're dying.
They consume diet sodas and
artificial sweeteners, and sulfites in cheap subsidized pork and in wines. They
drive drunk on the nice, smooth roads we have - that the alcohol sales taxes
probably pay for - putting myself, themselves, and their loved ones and
neighbors in danger in the process. They get to live irresponsibly, while my
generation gets stuck with the bill, deprived of our entitlements, payment
still forced on those who don't even want those benefits, while the Baby
Boomers deride Millennials as lazy and entitled.
I did not give Baby Boomers
heart disease and cancer; their ignorance and naïveté about F.D.A. standards is
their own fault. They ignore what our generation has to say about food safety,
they rub elbows with well-paid yes-men who tell managers who poison our foods,
and they have difficulty conceiving of the way future technologies will affect
the economy and regulations. I already have to listen to them give me
unsolicited advice that only made sense in 1979; I shouldn't have to help take
care of them.
But that's not to say I don't
want to be in the same insurance pool as people with pre-existing conditions; I
do, I just want to be in the same
pool as sick people whom I know and trust, not people who live thousands of
miles away from me, whom I will never meet.
I won't miss Obama, and you
shouldn't either. When politicians can sweep future expenses under the rug, and
delay payments to our creditors, the deficit will look smaller. All the
statistics about Obama improving the budget deficit and the employment rate are
deliberately distorted, and the importance of the strength of the Dow Jones to
the needs of average Americans is overblown. If you don't know what Major
Fiscal Exposure is – or don't know the difference between unemployment and
non-employment, and how they're measured - then you've been deceived.
Labor force participation and
home ownership are down since 2009, and although the deficit is the lowest it's
been under Obama, it's higher than it was under Bush in 2008, and the national
debt is higher than ever (having almost doubled since Obama entered office).
The dichotomy used to
characterize the Obama-Trump transition has been overblown. Trump is not
far-right; and Obama is not far-left. Neither of them offer a perfect world,
nor anything close to it; they each only offer trade-offs. The best that either
of them can do is move their food around their plate; shuffle our nation's
problems around, so that the set of problems becomes 50% different every four
years.
I gave Obama a chance, he failed
to live up to his promises, so I won't miss him. I'll give Trump a chance, most
of his promises are ridiculous so I don't care whether he lives up to his
promises, he'll solve a few problems but start a whole bunch of new ones, and I
won't miss him when he goes either.
So I say good riddance to Barack Obama, and "don't let Mrs. o'Leary's cow
set you on fire on your way out of the city".
It's the new year, and we have a
new president. That's not to say that we're obligated
to give Trump a chance, nor are we obligated to obey his orders; I will never
stop believing in the rights of non-violent resistance and conscientious objection.
What we do have an obligation to do, is to be intellectually honest and
responsible with the information we take in and put out. Regardless of our
political affiliation, each of us has a responsibility to one another to say
what we think, and to use science and research to back it up. We should also
make it clear when we're only speculating about something, versus whether our conclusions are based on said research. We must
also remember that we're not responsible for what other people do, based on
what we state might be true (unless we intend to incite a riot with our
speech).
It's time to stop mincing words.
It's time to stop blowing racist dog-whistles, and stop virtue-signaling. You
can't emote your way out of a rational political discussion; nor use fear about
racism and xenophobia to manipulate people, without offering substantial evidence
thereof.
Trump's interactions with the
media, and comments on political correctness - in addition to the rising tide
of throngs of students pulling fire alarms and blocking entrances to ensure that
other students can't attend conferences by persons criticizing immigration or
the transgender community - mean that we simply can't do that anymore. It's
dishonest, it only shows that you've stooped to the level of your political
rivals, and it only opens you up to criticism, which will enhance the feeling
of victimization which you would not have if you bothered to do some research.
It is no better to be ashamed of
your race (or ethnicity) for bad things that other people did, than it is to be
proud of your race for the good things that other people belonging
to your race did. To say otherwise is to hold millions (or billions) of people
collectively guilty, or collectively responsible.
We must remember that not every
action called "a terrorist attack" by media are terrorist attacks.
Nor is burning down a Holocaust museum "an act of free speech". We
should look at recent terror attacks, but also some historical atrocities, as crimes; committed by particular
individual persons, against
particular individual persons, sometimes with hatred or racism as a motivator,
sometimes not.
We must be intellectually honest
with one another. We must not shy away from using certain words that we feel are
appropriate, simply because some people out there would like to intimidate us
into not using them, or into using different words.
Being privileged is not bad; everybody should have privilege. It's
being spoiled - and having unequal privilege (especially when the
privilege is institutional, and not meritocratic) that's the problem. We must
stop calling for privileged white kids to be punished more, simply because non-white, non-privileged kids are punished so
harshly. Especially if it's a victimless crime, like non-violent possession and
trade of illicit drugs.
As a way to diminish the
disparity in sentencing across race, Barack Obama pledged to make powder
cocaine and crack cocaine offenses equally punishable. He did so, not by decreasing punishments for crack cocaine, but by increasing penalties for powder cocaine. This accomplishes
nothing, aside from teaching non-violent offenders how to become violent people
in order to survive in prison.
Additionally, please stop saying
"mansplaining" when you mean to say "condescension". There
is no need to bring someone's sex into it, when you intend to call them out for
being disrespectful, because they're explaining something as if the person
they're talking to is stupid. Men do that, women do that. Using the word
"mansplaining" is sexist. Sorry if I'm mansplaining.
Lastly, as I explained above,
don't let anyone tell you which words
to use, and which words not to use; including myself. Say
"mansplaining" and "privileged" all you want, just don't
expect me to take you as seriously as I would someone whose diction makes
sense.
I guess this has just been my
little way of saying "Happy New Year".
Lastly: please quit wearing shit on your lapels. I don't need to send a visible virtue-signal to prove that I'm easy to talk to. Every time I hear people bickering about whether Obama is wearing his American flag pin, or see people wearing safety pins, all I can think about is Nazi armbands and yellow stars of David. Remember, the Jews in Germany wore those stars willingly, because they chose to see being compelled to wear them as honorific. Check out a little movie from 1981 called The Wave.
I close with the immortal words of Huey Freeman (a character on Aaron McGruder's animated show The Boondocks), who said, "Act like you've got some goddamn sense, people!"
Lastly: please quit wearing shit on your lapels. I don't need to send a visible virtue-signal to prove that I'm easy to talk to. Every time I hear people bickering about whether Obama is wearing his American flag pin, or see people wearing safety pins, all I can think about is Nazi armbands and yellow stars of David. Remember, the Jews in Germany wore those stars willingly, because they chose to see being compelled to wear them as honorific. Check out a little movie from 1981 called The Wave.
I close with the immortal words of Huey Freeman (a character on Aaron McGruder's animated show The Boondocks), who said, "Act like you've got some goddamn sense, people!"
