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January 4, 2012
Y2012- The Year Of A Coward
By Mark Sashine
Obama is afraid of the people of the US. It is inconceivable that he was once a community organizer. He is so afraid of the people that this fear fills the void around him.
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Y2012 is the year of the Dragon. That's for the whole world except for the US. In the US it is the designated the Year of a Coward. President Obama signed the Defense Bill with " reservations' (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57350607/obama-signs-defense-bill-with-reservations/ ).This desperation is so obvious that even our TV- operators seem to feel it and show him in full swing very reluctantly, trying not to show his eyes. The more rancid, cowardly nonsense he delivers (obviously, following the instructions), the sadder his eyes become and even his natural cool demeanor is there no more. Nobody can deceive thyself and Obama knows what he had become. Now he learns to like his new transformed self.
Jean- Paul Sartre said, "A traitor betrays because he was a traitor all along." Same with cowardice. I am not saying that Obama was a born coward. But cowardice was offered to him as a path early in life and he took it most likely because he was inclined to do so.
If he was an ordinary citizen, that would be one of the most popular paths a person takes. On the way to success and prosperity, on our way to a decent life many of us, in fact an overwhelming majority, exercise cowardice all along through compromises, indifference and complacency. It is wrong to do so but if you know your balance you forgive thyself and try to compensate by courage whenever possible; you watch though that cowardice should not possess you fully, so that you do not wake up a spiritual eunuch once in the morning; you maintain an ability to do good and stand for the goodness whenever you have a chance. That's how you control it if you are just an ordinary person.
If you are in power though or on the way to achieve it, that balance is much tougher to maintain because the cowardice of an indecision is much easier to bear than the courage of a decision. Or even worse: when bad decisions are always at your service and there is a genuine support of those among the people around you while in the good decisions you face loneliness and hostility, your only support is in your heart and what if that's the heart of a coward? Then the cowardice prevails anytime. Bottom line- an ordinary citizen seldom tests his/her heart; a politician tests it first and foremost. I wonder how many of them are afraid of the mirror.
Obama had demonstrated the signs of the spiritual cowardice for some time. I am not deeply familiar with his political path before the Y2008 Presidential campaign but his book, The Audacity of Hope, is full of it. Unlike the books by Bush or Sarah Palin which are just garbage and reflect their true malicious and stupid personalities, the book by Obama (written by a ghost writer, no doubt) reveals a much more interesting phenomena- a smart and curious person desperately learning to become stupid and mean. It is truly a remarkable experience.
The old proverb says, "When a stupid pretends to look smart all people laugh but if a smart person pretends to look stupid- everybody becomes suspicious." The book is full of shallow clichés and broken threads of thought but even not a very intelligent reader would understand that it had been done deliberately. Say, Obama demonstrates a rather deep vision in his explanation of the issues in Indonesia ( not very deep and surely not compassionate, but at least reasonably truthful) but he stops short of demonstrating the same features when talking about Russia and Ukraine.
His biographical narrative is sketchy, to say the least. He never explains any motives and avoids interpretation like a plague. Let's take his formal Indonesian stepfather- figure (his mother apparently did not marry that man formally). Was he a kind man? Did young Barack love, respect and appreciate that man? How did the boy react when he was taken back to the US; did he miss the man he lost? It does not say if Barack ever visited or maintained any relationship with that man afterwards and if that man actually still existed? In fact, the book demonstrates a very strange and even enigmatic trend in Obama's life- people never stayed in his life for a long time- they somehow faded out of his existence. The perfect example is Jeremiah Wright- a person whom Obama credits for introducing him to Jesus Christ and whom Barack, the Candidate betrayed in a moment in the Y2008.
Mr. Wright was neither the first, nor the last "separated' from Obama; the President apparently has no close friends. Nor did any of those who were considered his friends share any details. He seems to be surrounded by an invisible but impenetrable cloud. It becomes even more vague when he talks strategy in his book. That's when the strategy transforms into a strategerie. A person aiming for a President never quotes any significant world philosophers, he is painstakingly unaware of Plato and Machiavelli; he deliberately avoids any experience of mankind and promotes total ignorance as a virtue. He ignores arts and literature- those ultimate teachers of people; he proclaims love for his country but his love is based on nothing- he cannot find any similar historical figures to compare himself with ( although there are thousands; Julius Ceasar comes to mind, for instance, even if Obama is far from him). The sense of emptiness prevails through the book; Obama tells the story which sounds more like a defined fantasy for children than a biography of an inspiring leader. The more attentively you read the story, the less you believe it because none of the events could be logically or psychologically explained: it lacks both coherence and cohesion. It breaks into a million little pieces as that mirror broken by an evil troll in the Snow Queen fairy-tale.
Obama betrayed not only Mr. Wright. As I said, he apparently had decided to become a politician and being one he interpreted as " learning the rules and playing by them.' Nothing can be further from the proper interpretation.
Politics is a profession and any profession requires two things: knowing your goal and being a dedicated person, sort of love the game. Obama demonstrated neither of those qualities. Up until now, after three years of his Presidency, nobody can explain what his line in politics is. He also had demonstrated a visible dislike and even disgust with the on-going political operation; he lost practically all the credibility as a leader, his foreign policy does not exist and he embarrassed himself many times by routinely betraying the very forces which supported him on his way to power. He antagonized his fans and licked the boots of his sworn enemies. He either pushed away or ignored the very people of progress in the world which had their hopes in him. He deliberately decided not to notice people of his own race. He not only nurtured the criminals of the previous administration but presented himself as a guarantor for them and people like them while expanding and promoting the very evil they unleashed. All of that culminated in signing the "Defense' Bill which has nothing to do with the defense of the country but has everything to do with the attack on the very fabric of our democracy.
All the betrayals of Obama bear a distinct brand of the "reluctant cowardice'. All of them are staged in such a way that he has minimum participation. It is as if it all happens beyond his control, like a force of nature. The disgusting comedy of "acclamation' at the Dem party Congress in the Y2008 (as if Obama was a Pope of Hope) was the betrayal of a principle; it created and maintained an atmosphere of a hysteria which contributed to the campaign but harmed the process irreparably. Obama should have avoided that farce as well as the simple fact of the visible deal with the GOP, so that the GOP literally stopped campaigning for Presidency since September 2008. In both cases he himself sort of not participated; everything happened apart of him, and he only nicely received the gifts. That ability of Obama to pretend that nothing had happened through him is one of his most unfortunate features of a character; he behaves like a character from the Simpsons.
His trail of betrayals really fired up when he won the Presidency. I have chosen the following cases just to demonstrate the pattern.
Operation Cast Lead in Gaza started exactly at the beginning of the Y2009 and lasted through the inauguration day with all its barbarism and phosphorus bombardments. Obama did not have to express a direct support of the Gaza citizens. The only thing he had to do was to react, to express compassion and the best way to do that was to curb the inauguration activities which were bizarre anyway ( that music playing in the bitter frost and all those pompous accessories were anything but reasonable). He "reluctantly proceeded' to do nothing. He just went through. Some people say he is indifferent to Israel. The Cast Lead inauguration clearly had shown that he was indifferent to all. He just didn't care.
Can anyone imagine a bizarre situation when a Nobel Laureate in Physics praises alchemy in his speech? Or a Laureate in Literature praises ignorance? Obama took the Nobel Peace Prize given to him in advance ( could not resist, like a baby with the candy) and praised war(!) in his speech. The guy pretended to be totally clueless which he, as we already had noticed, does exceptionally well.
That was a classic Obama. Acorn was a community- based organization which served poor and disenfranchised, especially blacks and Latinos. It helped Obama a lot on his path to Presidency by doing exactly the work of his- community organizing. For that they were pushed under the bus by their Dear Leader.
The dirty provocation of the right- wingers against Acorn, the setup so obvious that it was easily discovered and explained was nevertheless hysterically supported by Fox News and the idiots in Congress while Obama" just looked elsewhere. He obviously knew what was going on but had already developed a blind eye. The interesting thing here is that not only he himself spit on his own allies but he skillfully paralyzed any effort which could be exercised to their support by anyone else. This way to paralyze the efforts of others had been also the feature of Obama's character; he apparently not only hates any action of his own but also hates to be associated even indirectly with any action of others unless it is somehow sanctioned or benefits him directly.
You can call it a "reluctant opportunism' or "cowardly selfishness'. In the layman's terms Obama is a person who values his own immediate well- being most of all. The Acorn case demonstrated that perfectly; he just cringed from the perspective that someone on TV would put his face on the same screen with the face of some filthy-looking colored girl- an everyday Acorn material.
If someone would like to kill any effort to install the reasonable Healthcare system in this country, Obama would be his man to hire. The natural order of things dictates that in the country of nearly 310mln people a single-payer state healthcare is a necessity, a paramount societal feature. The single- payer system frees the people from the healthcare bondage- it decouples the citizen from the employer thus maintaining the power of the people. It is an absolute component of any democracy and must be established. If you do not want it though, if you do not want a democracy either you fight it by the only approach possible- take it and turn it into absurdity. Obama did not just betray the public option; his new system effectively treats the US citizens as a commodity for the corporations, as animals that must be maintained, nothing more.
The argument about the pre- existing condition is a sham: it could be easily solved through at least one case in court when the government would support a claim of a patient against an insurance company while performing its own investigation. The whole thing was so Obamite that you weep. Obama made some noises and then just disappeared until the others sort of traded several deals. Then he reappeared to sign the unfortunate Bill and justify it as a positive first step. Again, a smart person pretended to be totally dumb-- he did not even make a slight attempt to explain his actions or lack thereoff. He smiled and made noises and jumped around so that a nickname, An Incredible Jumping President, came to mind.
If the reader had reached this point he is up for a treat. Typical for him, Obama wants to fight wars without casualties, kill people without him knowing about it and torture people without hearing their screams. He is a a classic bureaucrat, a man, who does not care much for the result as soon as all the formalities are followed.
Obama loves drones, for instance. Drones kill people indiscriminately, they create a wave of hatred but they visibly develop no American casualties and also maintain an image of an overwhelming force. Obama cancelled all investigations into a torture issue sending a clear message that from that moment he did not want to hear or know anything about those things. He just wanted the people who torture to cover their trails better. Had anyone heard that funny story about him being told(!) that if he only starts digging into the torture pit there could be a coup? Just imagine that- you are a President and someone says to you that if you do this and that- there would be a coup. What would you do? Obviously, arrest that coup messenger on the spot and start the investigation right away. That was all nonsense, though. Obama most likely initialized the " hear nothing, know nothing' himself. All he wanted was somehow to avoid any possible moral decisions. Again, he demonstrated a remarkable disconnecting ability- I dare to say that Obama is the master of indifference- he had developed it into art. BTW, his paralyzing feature served him very well too--he effectively killed the antiwar movement and the Truthers movement. Cindy Sheehan had much less chances with Obama than with Bush; at least the latter cared for something.
Obama betrayed a lot of people on the way both individually and en masse. He betrayed African people when he did not attend the Durban Conference in Y2009. He betrayed the Arab people when he tore Libya apart. He betrayed Elizabeth Warren and many others of his original staff. But the most shameful betrayal was the one of OWS.
Obama "silenced down' the whole OWS movement- he calmly watched the abuse of the very people who were supposed to be his main supporters. He demonstrated such an unbelievable indifference that even the OWS people themselves were a little scared of that- they just never encountered such a person before. Obama clearly had shown his own face in the OWS period- that is that he does not have any face, that he changes faces like gloves. Instead of supporting and encouraging the new movement he signed the Defense Bill which maliciously and covertly stole the liberties of the US citizens. That was a double betrayal.
Conclusion. What is he afraid of?
The answer seems obvious: he is afraid of the very people he pledges his "love' to. Obama is afraid of the people of the US. It is inconceivable that he was once a community organizer. He is so afraid of the people that this fear fills the void around him. Fear is seen in his everyday behavior, his ups and downs, his lows and highs. Every time you see him it is as if he wants to run away. He seems to be extremely anxious and very much preoccupied with something. Cowardice is a full-time job and it does not pay. Come to think of it-fear has become an atmosphere and thus cowardice had become a feature paramount for a person who somehow wants to succeed in the current US politics. No matter who will be the President- elect in the Y2012, that person will have Cowardice as his/her middle name.
P.S. Obama As A Person
I voted for the President Obama because unlike all the previous Presidents starting with Reagan he was a real human being, not just a malicious zombie. I still like him as a character. He is certainly a smart, intelligent man and if he was just an ordinary citizen as most of us are, I would be delighted to befriend him. Cowardice is a rather universal quality; most of us struggle with it on an everyday basis. But he is not an ordinary man- he is in charge of life and death of millions of people and in this case, cowardice is not just some feature anymore- it is a major handicap. Even more dangerous is the situation when a person cultivates the moral cowardice as a necessity; such person becomes permanently damaged. I view Obama as a person who did harm to himself first and while doing that he also did harm to all of us. Ignorance is a demonic force and when combined with Cowardice it can really possess you if you let those into your heart. Obama did just that.
It is very sad to watch the transformation. I thus leave the field for doubts and interpretations: I certainly may be wrong in some aspects and I surely am far enough from the field of his to consider that my conclusions are absolute. I would be most happy to be proven wrong about him. But I had seen such people before and that's why I write this.
Sidebar: Why do I write all of this.
The people close to me are very much against me writing all these articles. They rightfully presume that in the best case scenario nobody will pay any attention to my writings and in the worst case scenario- the very people I criticize will notice me with the consequences appropriate. I think they have a valid point.
But I can't live that way. I consider that it is my duty to share the unique vision of mine due to my experience; I consider myself a sentinel. Sentinels fire the warning shots so that people do not kill each other en masse. I am firing a warning shot by writing about cowardice. We are facing a dire perspective of the Year of the Coward. Think about it. Read what dragons did to cowards. I wrote about that. I write ONLY about that all the time.
The writer is 67 years old, semi- retired engineer, PhD, PE. I write fiction on a regular basis and I am also 10 years on OEN.