After seeing minions try, and evidently fail, I've come to the point of: "That's all I can stands 'cause I can't stands any more". My two cents worth below.
I'm (back) on Easter Island in the Pacific for a few months, working on the text for a book of B&W images. One of the cultural "oddities" here is the response of Rapanui to a totally harmless, minute, very cute little salamander - the Moko. Even after almost 200 years of contact, intermarrying, etc. with westerners, full grown men literally run from these quick moving little things. They will make their women, as skittish as they are, kill them. The fear is totally unfounded, completely cultural. Children almost anywhere else would collect and play with them. Not here.
I have been around for quite a while. Counter to the trend in my fellow old white male sub-group, I have become gradually more liberal with age. Obviously I am fast running out of people my age to talk to. While I see the idiocy behind the insane right in our country, I also see where it came from, and why one has to always be careful not to encourage it to raise its ugly head any further. Progress of any kind, ANY progress does just that. One testament to how much progress Obama is actually making is the vehemence and venom with which the demons are stirring. All unavoidable.
This is why I am so discouraged and upset over the tone of much of Daily Kos recently. Obama is walking a tightrope. Slip one way and he ceases to make progress. Slip the other and he incites a cultural reaction, totally ignorant and insane as it might be, that will not only undo all the gains but risk taking us, in the name of freedom, into a worse state than we have ever seen, one where the marriage of fundamentalism and big money reign. The "American Taliban", cited elsewhere on this site, will reign supreme. This is not an empty fear.
So, why bash the man on the tightrope? He IS inching forward, to many threateningly so. If he loses both congressional houses this fall, he could even be credited with moving too far, too fast. I personally don't think that will happen. In fact, as broad as the defeat might be, I doubt if either will be lost. I see Obama keeping his balance. Damn I'm really beginning to like that man.
Arguing, even vehemently, the issues, disagreeing, etc. is always called for. Scream at the top of your lungs - the ISSUEs. But such counter productive, vehement, venomous (see the similarity to the right?) personal reaction to a very good man managing such a delicate balance is just plain nuts. It IS a cultural war, but one that must be fought in inches. Every gain, no matter how small, no matter how partial and incomplete needs to be CELEBRATED. Yes, I do mean we should give every support, even if it is sometimes difficult to understand why certain bits of progress aren't made. This is our "champion" and we must trust him to keep the necessary balance whilst we scream out in support of the true goals. He NEEDS our support, and the pressure we can supply on the issues. Meanwhile he must heed the danger of slipping off the left, empowering the always confused masses to vote in the idiots.
Sometimes it reminds me of an old chess adage: "One of the most difficult challenges in chess is winning a won game." When one is losing, he makes every "bad" move he can think of that his opponent might misinterpret and be tricked into over-responding to.
This is why I, in the face of extreme impatience and frustration, still give 100% enthusiastic, untempered support to this President. If we did this en masse, all the while blasting out our frustration over the issues, it would send a message to the confused, to those who look around to see what others think and believe, to the masses. It would lend comfort to many with doubts.
Like chess, it is a game, albeit a very serious one. I seriously do not believe Obama personally needs to be pressured from the left. More likely, in order to help him keep that balance, he needs that pressure applied to the issues, to the very culture it would change. Obama da man!