Obama, Clooney, Disillusionment

“I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am,” says George Clooney on TV, but perhaps more importantly on one of those viral Facebook postcards, ”Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.’ I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for the people whom you’ve elected.”

You know, I get this, to a point. I understand that, as it exists today, politics is all about compromise. I understand that Obama has accomplished a great deal, and that much of it is hidden under the piles of issues that are close to all of our hearts that he had to surrender to accomplish as much as he has.

And on the face of it, Clooney is at least partially correct: giving up on Obama just because we didn’t get everything we wanted is silly. That’s not how politics works. Not even Dumbledore could walk in and wave his wand and fix everything right away. True change takes time, and presidents don’t actually have time. Considering the political dealmaking process, and all that it entails, four years is virtually nothing, and eight not much more. But liberals are a very impatient group of people. We want change, and we want it now, and if we don’t get it now, then it’s another failure. Liberals do not believe in baby steps, but politics is baby steps. Regardless of what we want, and regardless of what this world needs (and believe me, I know that there are plenty of issues, some of which directly affect me, that are so urgent that we can’t actually afford to take baby steps), that’s just how this works. At least for now. Nobody seems to want to admit that.

On the other hand, supporting our politicians when they make truly awful decisions is ridiculous, and just because we voted Obama in doesn’t mean that we should just be satisfied with what he does. Politicians still need to be held to a standard.

Well, here’s my standard, fundamentally: the Constitution. I really prefer the POTUS not to trample all over the Bill of Rights with muddy shoes and sticky fingers. With the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, any disillusionment I may have felt about Obama prior to this pales in comparison to how I feel about the fact that he plans to sign it into law.

Perhaps disillusionment has become a two-edged sword. Regardless of whether we have given up on Obama, one thing is clear to me: when he signs the NDAA into law, Obama has officially given up on us.

We liberals and Democrats might be a bunch of nitpicky little bitches, but the NDAA isn’t just a tiny compromise. In many ways it compromises everything. And people can “share” that Clooney card all over Facebook if they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that Obama plans to sign awayhas signed away our civil rights. Why we should just accept that because we voted the guy in is beyond me.

December 18, 2011 | Categories: Legal, Observations, Politics | Tags: barack obama, bill of rights, civil rights, clooney, constitution, george clooney, national defense authorization act, ndaa, obama, potus, president | 13 Comments »