SOTU Commentary #3

January 24, 2012

In all seriousness: one of the things that frustrates me so much about Barack Obama is how eloquent and sincere he sounds when he’s talking about progressive ideas that I believe in.

When he quotes Abraham Lincoln on the proper role of government (“the government should only do for people what they can’t do better for themselves, and no more”), he’s essentially talking about my brand of economic Liberalism.

When he talks a tough game on progressive tax reform, I find myself agreeing with everything he is saying.

When he talks about using the money we no longer spend on defense, and using half of it to pay down our debt, and the other to “do nation-building here at home,” he’s making the very same foreign policy arguments that Dwight D. Eisenhower made, and to which I hold firm.

When he talks about smart regulations making the free market function better, he’s quietly recognizing that the relationship between the private and public sector can in fact be symbiotic rather than antagonistic, particularly in the economic sphere, where fraud and bounded rationality can literally bring an entire economy to its knees.

In short, Barack Obama is, for me, like an old, fiery & passionate lover who I got burned by; and now it’s 3 years later, and he’s found me at the bar, acting surprised to see me, sounding just as charismatic and compelling as ever. I still can’t forgive him for the horrible thing’s he’s done, but I’d be lying if I said there’s not still a small part of me that wants to believe what he’s saying, even though I know he’s probably going to hurt me again if I let him into my life.

In the end, I see and hear in this SOTU many of the same jingoistic platitudes that I can no longer suffer from my elected leaders. Interspliced with the inspiring calls to action, and the seemingly courageous policy suggestions, are carefully selected and curated phrases that are intentionally ambiguous, euphemistic, or lacking in concrete definition; but which nonetheless create vague positive mental images and emotional thrusts that carry little impetus and are hard to disagree with.

And as I end this, Barack Obama has mentioned how he killed Bin Laden again, just to get those few extra votes. He is currently milking the story for everything it’s worth. I really don’t see anything different about this from Rudy Guliani using 9/11 as a patriotic crutch to prop up his political prospects. This is not the Hope and Change I voted for in 2008. It’s unrepentant political Jingoism at its worst.

10:17pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxFKFfLJ

(Notes: 98)