Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America

By Frank Schaeffer

Before he could served even one year, President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds - including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter… are sticking with our President. Why… because he is succeeding?

We, the faithful Obama supporters, still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good, and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama’s steady supporters will be proven right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War, and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left.

As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.

The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy” - snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:

1. An ideologically divided country to the point that America is really two countries.

2. We are in two wars, one that was mishandled from the start, and the other that was unnecessary and immoral.

3. We are in the worst economic crisis since the depression.

4. America’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history.

5. A country has been was misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war, we have a health care system in free fall, an educational system in free fall, a global environmental crisis of history - altering proportions – about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing.

6. We have an impasse between culture warriors from the right and left, huge financial deficit inherited from a terminally irresponsible Bush administration…and those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk!

“Help” from the Right?

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists - that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office - do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating a "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) ‘commentators’ akin to the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic Bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited Evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!”

In other words, the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neo-conservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Federal Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them - their desire to stop an uppity Black man from succeeding at all costs!

“Help” from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they’d been ‘betrayed’! Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!

The legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… “Governing”?! What the hell does that word, uh, like mean?”

The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them,
had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama (sic) ideological ideas critics' defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office… twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months… President Obama:

1. Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

2. Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

3. He gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

4. Restored America’s image around the globe (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

5. Banned torture of American prisoners (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

6. Stopped the free fall of the American economy (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

7. Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

8. Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

9. Stood up for educational reform (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

10. Won a Nobel peace prize (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

11. Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

12. Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that seven Presidents had failed to even begin (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

13. Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

14. Stopped the free fall of job losses (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

15. Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”… (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

16. Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!

Who actually has failed... are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who is failing… the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proven right in their dire and morbid predictions? Who is failing… the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country?

Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors! The Future Looks Good…

Ron


In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

The 44th President of the United States of America

January 20th, 2009, a day that I shall remember… In this month, two goals that I have had my doubts about ever reaching have come to pass. On January tenth, I turned six-five years old. Having survived twenty years in the Navy with depth charge and torpedo attacks, near misses on airplanes, Viet Nam, and driving on the highways of the United States – I am here to witness the election and inauguration of a man of color to the Presidency of the United States.

I was born in New Orleans at Charity hospital to a Mother and Father that were trying to survive in the midst of World War II. My Father was stationed in the Aleutian Islands where his unit repelled an attack by the Japanese. My Mother was working at one of the factories that supported the war effort; I spent most of every day in the care of my maternal grandmother. My parents wanted the best for me from the day I was born… as soon as I was able to do so, my Mother enrolled my in school – I was four years old.

My parents bought a house by the time that I was six years old. We lived in a neighborhood that was surrounded by whites on two sides. I grew up with neighbors that were exceedingly warm and receptive to our having built a house just across the street from them. I never heard the word ‘n.…r’ in addressing me until I was twenty years old and far from home. I also learned just how much I hate that word and how easy it was for me to demonstrate my anger upon hearing it.

Growing up in New Orleans was easy as long as Negros didn’t test the envelope. You couldn’t drink from the white fountain, swim in the city pool, nor could you sit any where you wanted to on the bus. This was an accepted thing and no one questioned it. Many restrictions have been placed on American Blacks in my lifetime. I once had an African man tell me that I had no country and after a moment of thought, I realized that he was telling the truth – it hurt me more than the ‘n’ word could ever have hurt. Anger never rose in my chest at what he had said – I was deflated, defeated, and demoralized without him even having spit on me. I didn’t have a home, a country, a place to call mine. I was in the United States Navy on my first tour of duty.

I renewed my efforts to be the best that I could be. I sought and received promotion after promotion, reaching First Class in less than five years in service. Along the way I convinced a few people that using the ‘n’ word to describe me, defame me, or anything close to that was grounds for getting your butt beat unmercifully. I was on a mission to prove to America, and anyone else that had less than admirable thoughts about Blacks that I was more than just a Negro man – I was a Black man with the ability to contribute, and yet few know about the contributions of Blacks, nor the significance of those contributions.

I began to see changes in the way Blacks were treated in service. I noticed the changes in how the people of America were thinking when the Governor-elect of Virginia, Douglas Wilder, a Black man, took office in a Southern State, when Stokes became Mayor of a large metropolitan city. Soon, New York was doing the same thing, and then it became a common thing for Blacks to achieve elective office. Life in these United States was changing, but I never thought that a Black man, a true African-American would ever attain the office of President of these United States of America.

Today, the country that I proudly swore I would give my life for as a member of the United States Navy, the country that put a man on the Moon, the country that sixty years ago treated Negroes as sub-humans, the most powerful nation in the world has elected a Black man to its highest office. The most powerful man in the world is Black! I am overwhelmed. I am beside myself with joy! I am grateful for a progressive America! I am more than proud that I am a Black man, born in the USA!

President Obama takes the oath of office…