The Obama Conundrum: Progress and Protest in the Face of Reality

[WhiskeyGirl]

Obama soon will take the bully pulpit while millions of frustrated people wait for “change”, ...This may have been a clever and concise mantra for the campaign process, speaking broadly and simply to a diverse population, but now a definition for this vague idea must be shaped within the context of reality, and herein lies the rub.

Whether in our hearts or in our minds, the vast majority of us know this to be true: Change isn’t coming because Barack Obama is going to be President. Barack Obama is going to be President because Change is coming. ...Obama was not a proactive choice—if we, the people, really were proactive, Bush and Cheney would be in jail, Iraq would be healing its wounds in peace, the Palestinians would be feeding instead of burying their children, and the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs and his cronies would not be bathing in a kiddy pool full of ill-gotten money.

That reality is that we are bankrupt—that is a euphemism in this instance—we are deeply in the red, so much so that the usual mechanisms for creating debt-facilitated growth have failed. We are facing a systemic collapse of our economy, not because a single crack in the dam compromised the entire edifice, but because of dozens of cracks that formed over the years, cracks that we merely patched lightly and painted over in lieu of repairing and ensuring the underlying soundness of the dam. Our national infrastructure is a disaster, our debt overwhelming, our currency questionable...our military has been relegated as a security apparatus for a handful of corporate interests.

The waters are now rising, the dam could collapse fully at any moment, the outgoing Administration is looting whatever it can, and Barack Obama is posed in front, a formidable and handsome figure casting a long shadow, no doubt, with a can of putty and a mop. It’s picturesque, without question, but it is not a picture of change in the making. It’s a picture of unstoppable change coming.

When tough times come upon a Nation, it becomes necessary for the people to discern clearly between those instances in life where they have been truly clever and those instances where they have been merely lucky.

I think we've run out of luck!   

...it will be in an altogether different place then where we have been before. Obama cannot change that, but he can lead the nation through change, by informing us, being candid about the problems, and empowering the people to stand as strong communities in times of crisis. No one can change this future—no one has ever seen it before, there is no precedent, there is no model, just a scattering of myths, prose and poetry that hint to disasters past.

We cannot “change back” to the comfortable levels of sustainable illusion provided during the Clinton administration...

Progressives and protestors have to hold firm to the obvious litmus of social integrity: stop the war, stop the blatant financial fraud in Congress, dissolve the unitary executive and reestablish the strength of our three-branch Republic.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Obama-Conundrum--Prog-by-John-Caelan-081115-887.html