Daniel P recently said he found my political posts annoying. I was sorry to hear that, and it made me go back and look at some of my recent political posts. There really haven't been that many lately. Once upon a time there were a lot of them, maybe even too many, but what can I say? I was a political junkie for a long time.
Note the use of the word "was." I really haven't had much interest in politics lately. Partly I think it's just that I've gotten old enough (I'm 42) to recognize certain patterns. I see the theater for what it is, and I'm tired of it. On these forums I'm generally thought of as an Obama supporter, and it is true that I voted for the man twice. I did not vote for him in the 2008 Massachusetts primary, however. I honestly can't remember who I did vote for, but I know it was not for Obama. I recall that I liked John Edwards, and even saw him in person. How's that for character judgement? Heh. (In truth, John Edwards, while undoubtedly a douche, was sucked into a bad situation by a borderline, and his relationship with his wife was a lot more complicated than the official story would have you believe. Elizabeth Edwards was undoubtedly a smart, accomplished woman who fought a long and difficult battle with cancer, as the public well knows. What most people do not know is that she was also self-centered, condescending, and mean. In both his presidential campaigns and when he ran as Gore's VP Edwards' campaign often had to manage Elizabeth-related fires. She was kind of a jerk. But that's a story for another day.)
After Edwards was out I fell in for Hillary, so I probably voted for her in the primary. The point is that I wasn't particularly enamored of Obama, and I'm still not. Initially it was because I found him to be too touchy-feely, starry-eyed, and unrealistic. The Audacity of Hope? Give me a break. I thought he was too green, too inexperienced, and too detached from reality. But he was the Democrat, so I voted for him. I always vote for the Democrat in presidential elections. I vote for the Democrat in all two-way races. More on that later.
Obama did surprise me. Instead of being the starry-eyed dreamer I was afraid he'd be, he turned out to be just another politician. He is slightly to the left of center in terms of American politics, but he is no liberal. He is far too ingratiating with Wall Street and big corporations. He has done little to change the way the business of American politics is conducted. Like I said, he's slightly to the left of center, so he thinks the über-rich should pay a little more in order to make things marginally better for the people at the bottom. But he's still basically okay with the system as it is. He thinks he can fix it by frittering away at the margins.
It should come as no surprise that the first black president would be a supporter of the system, after all he was a product of it. But it's still disappointing after all the excitement of the 2008 election. Hell, even I thought there was a chance there might be something to the guy, cynic that I am. He let a lot of people down.
Now, to be fair, he did inherit the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, as the Democrats LOVE to remind us. I believe that without the intervention of the federal government, i.e. the so-called "bailout," the US economy would have slumped into full-blown depression and dragged the rest of the world down with it. If history teaches us nothing, it's that depressions are best avoided. Wars usually follow hot on the heels of depression.
But it was the wrong bailout, in my opinion. Instead of propping up the current inherently unfair system, Obama should have let it collapse, and spent the money to replace it with something new. But he lacked the courage, and probably the vision. Same with health care. A lot of us, me included, wanted straight-up single payer nationalized health care, à la Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and every other modern country on the face of the Earth. Instead we got a big payout to the big private insurance companies. Yes, it's great that more people are covered. But not this way. It's wrong to force people to buy a private, for-profit company's product. The pragmatic part of me appreciates that a great deal of progress was made in the face of strong opposition. But the part of me that was hoping Obama was the real deal wanted to see him just say "Fuck it. Everyone's on Medicare." Oh well.
Obama is slightly to the left. Slightly. But he's also launched more drone strikes than his rightly-maligned predecessor, and killed a lot more people in targeted assassinations masked in the legitimacy of military operations. He proved himself to be an enemy of legalized marijuana when he sent his Justice Department to crack down on the industry in California (a state where Obama is politically safe) but not in Colorado (where he is not). Instead of running the most transparent administration in history, as he promised, his presidency has proven to be one of the most secretive. On their watch the NSA was caught collecting data on, well, everyone. And he didn't even close Guantanamo Bay.
I differ from Obama on many issues, and I believe he has been a fair president at best. But I am no Obama booster. I voted for him in 2008 and 2012 because I believed he was the best alternative of the two candidates who stood an actual chance of becoming president. That's really the best I can say about him. He's better than grumpy sellout John McCain (as opposed to the loose-cannon, straight-talkin' maverick John McCain of '00) and Mitt Romney™. That ain't saying much.
So what are my politics?
I am a socialist. I believe that the citizens are the collective owners of the country, and that the state should be the instrument of the citizens' will. I believe that it is incumbent upon the state to provide, protect, and preserve certain rights inalienable to all citizens, and that among these is a minimum standard of living. We have it within our capability to end homelessness and poverty and provide every citizen the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness. Instead we perpetuate a society of greed, crass financialism, and class apartheid in which the rich, if they do not quite openly rule, at the very least wield a disproportionate amount of power. We have the trappings of democracy, but the real power lies with the money. It's time we got rid of it.
But I am also a realist. I know we're not going to just chuck capitalism and turn into a Roddenberry-esque paradise overnight. The power of money is too great and too entrenched. The theater of politics is all about raising huge sums of money. That's why, on a practical level, I am strongly in support of excluding private money from politics altogether. I think all elections should be 100% publicly funded. Without the need to fundraise the power of incumbency would be much reduced; only then can the hold of the two-party system be broken.
I am against organized religion in public life. I do not believe that what it says in the Bible, nor any other sacred text, should be relevant to public policy. I think that churches and temples should pay taxes just like everybody else. I believe in good science and hard data, and I would like to see a country run in a manner consistent with an evidence-based approach. I believe, for example, that the science on global temperature rise and concomitant climate change is clear and unambiguous, and that all reasonable measures should be taken to reduce our collective carbon footprint and pursue alternative forms of energy. Where are the vast solar farms in the desert?
I think that all "marriage" should technically be civil unions; "marriage" is a concept best left to religion. And I believe that any couple of legal age should be allowed to wed regardless of gender. In fact I'm not wedded (see what i did there?) to the idea of marriage/civil union being limited to just two people. Group marriages are fine by me as long as everyone in the group agrees. Who am I to tell them they can't do it?
I believe in progressive taxation, and that a significant burden should be borne by the rich, both corporations and people. Ideally I would eliminate money altogether, but that's the Star Trek geek in me again. Next best would be a system of progressive taxation that effectively placed a cap on the amount of personal wealth any one person could possess.
So those are my politics. Wildly out of step with a lot of Americans, and a lot of regulars here, as I am well aware. But like I said, I'm a realist. I recognize that none of the things I want are likely to happen in the United States any time soon. The best we are going to get is incremental change, and even that at a high price, until and unless some large-scale, probably catastrophic event changes the course of history. What that event will be I do not know. A world war? Perhaps. Global economic collapse? That doesn't seem farfetched given the events of the last few years. A plague? Maybe Ebola will wipe us all out, or at least enough of us so that the rest can rebuild in a world with more resources than people (like the Renaissance after the Black Death). Maybe the world will break down into a postapocalyptic nightmare like The Road. Or maybe we'll manage to hold the whole thing together, and just keep plugging along making incremental changes.
I don't know what the future holds, but I know there's nothing I can do to change it. Whatever will be, will be. I am confident that we are moving in the right direction as a species, even if we do so at a maddeningly slow pace. I think we'll get there.
As for me, I have found myself more and more detached lately. Sort of like the president himself. Every time I see Obama these days he looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. I sympathize with him. The over-the-top theater of politics, the constant barrage of the 24-hour news cycle, has gotten to be too much. It holds little interest for me. This will probably change as the presidential election draws near, as I do enjoy certain aspects of the game, especially at that level. But my interest is purely as a student of history and human drama. I am not enthusiastic about any candidate, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, and I recognize that the senator from Vermont has exactly zero chance of winning his party's nomination. Still his presence would keep things interesting. Otherwise I am resigned to voting for Hillary Clinton in November 2016. The GOP side will be more interesting and probably more fun to watch; a bunch of the most likely candidates are train wrecks waiting to happen. And who doesn't like a good train wreck?
And if that annoys you, tough shit. 