Crossposted at the PeoplesView
Writes Deepak Chopra:
One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required. There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason. In a political climate where it feels as if the inmates are running the asylum -- as in the current Republican threat to default on America's debt -- the prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted.
We cannot afford that luxury any more, I'm afraid.
For many reasons, this is the moment when loyalty is going to count the most. That's a hard sentence to write. Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount. But certain harsh realities must be faced. For thirty years and more, the progressive tradition has been severely undermined, dating back to Nixon's "Southern strategy" (coddle the racists) and Ronald Reagan's smiling reactionary agenda (AIDS victims deserve what they get), through the first President Bush's Willie Horton strategy (another boost for racism) and the second President Bush's deceptive "compassionate conservatism."
Deepak's piece points out the partisan nature of past politics from the bully puppet and how President Obama has changed politics into a "humane" and a "non-ideological governance" while trying to reverse what had taken decades of Republican indoctrination to build the right-wing frenzy making taxes cut on the rich a sin, "blatant favoritism toward Christian groups" a fad, packing the DOJ office with Jerry Falwell's law school graduates a prerequisite, and more rubbish ideological partisanship that has damaged the way our country is governed.
President Obama in the last two and half years has faced the most fierce opposition than any past president has faced. Being a Black man sure has not helped advance our big tent agenda. However, with all the racist vile and a non stop condescending attitude he has been dealt with (case in point, the debt ceiling posturing), he has tried on many occasions to reach out consistently without showing despair while he has gotten fierce push backs that would make any leader lose it and punch back hard. However, President Obama is not just any leader. He is an exceptional leader who is not hot headed, reactionary or emotionally driven who understands politics requires talking to people who not only he agrees with but also those that he disagrees with because our system requires it to get anything done. In fact, at times playing wimpy to pull many last minute hair raiser victories is also astute political maneuvers our President has played to get things through against the fierce opposition of the right and the easily destructed and impatient left who nonetheless would say his victories are defeat.
Deepak continues from his article about what this President is facing and why it is imperative to stand behind the captain:
When Lincoln was assassinated, an anguished Walt Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" whose theme was that the ship of state had reached a great victory -- the end of the Civil War -- just as the captain lay dead on the deck. We all know that this victory was unfulfilled, followed by a reactionary period that destined America to a hundred more years of virulent racism. Without being melodramatic, I think the work of undoing decades of reactionary policies has barely begun.
Which is to say that all of us who have taken advantage of our liberal heritage to question and criticize President Obama need to step back and consider the radical nature of the opposition, from the Supreme Court down to the local precinct. The current debt ceiling crisis is proof that sensible, sane responses are not going to be automatic anymore.
Sometimes or shall I say most often now a days, the disgruntled Left seems to forget the kinds of opposition the President faces top to bottom and has become just "a mirror image of the loony embittered far right" with the likes of Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald leading the pack, not to help with shaping the future but furthering their personal crusade for self promotion, being a professional Obama hating clan who will never agree with anything President Obama does. I sometime feel like some good folks in the Professional Left are being duped by some nasty libertarian, condescending, bigoted, ex-Nader voting and disloyal Professional Left who are interested in seeing the defeatism of President Obama by promoting the "Obama has lost my vote in 2012" meme within progressive circles.
However, Deepak's article yet again reminds us of who our real enemies are. It is indeed the Right wing nuts. Those "who got us into this forlorn tangle of wars abroad, financial collapse, out-of-control spending, and massive bonuses for the rich, you have not felt the power that fear exerts." Moreover, I would add the Obama hating wing of the Professional Left contribute in a major way to dragging us toward self destruction and defeatism thought a self denial nature of their superior intellect to understand the reality our President must function in.
Deepak concludes his piece with this:
If ever there was a time to stand behind the captain, this is it. Not because pluralism and free expression are wrong. They aren't and never will be. But like Churchill calling upon a coalition cabinet in the depth of the war years, it's paramount that we see the greater danger for what it is. Attention was drawn to the cover of a recent issue of the Economist, which showed a tall President Obama towering over a squabbling handful of pygmy Republican rivals for the presidency. The headline read, "He Could Still Lose." We need to remember that if that were to happen, it wouldn't be because President Obama made too many mistakes or failed to pass a sufficiently liberal agenda. The reason would be that all of us forgot the 30-year reign of reactionary administrations (minus the Clinton years) and the power of debased politics to keep coming back, again and again.
It is our choice to stop the "30-year reign of reactionary administrations and the power of debased politics to keep coming back, again and again" and it is the responsibility of any progressive community to defeat the powers that are trying to drag us right down into the same ole tired ass union busting, war mongering, anti-immigration, anti-women's right, anti-equal right, anti-working class and religious right controlled America. We can only do that as this stage of the game with only one leader and that is with President Obama. We must get back to work reaching out to people to register to vote for anyone with a "D" next to their name because anything less is as good as giving that same ole 30-year of Republicans inhumane and ideological governance another chance.
We Americans are very lucky people. A sane and compassionate president is in charge. Over an 8 year period he will change American history for the better. Only president Obama's dimwitted and/or hate-filled opponents are unlucky: they are betting against a political genius who also happens to be a very good human being.
~Frank Schaeffer
Let's go to work folks.