me: >> or could it be that a whole bunch of people conned themselves into >> believing in Obama's promises of hope and change?
raghu: > You are being unfair. It is true that a lot of liberals and > progressives were fooled by Obama when they really should have known > better. I count myself in that group. what I was saying is that it takes two to tango: Obama wanted to fool us, while a lot of "liberals and progressives" wanted to be fooled. I think Nader was wrong to single out Obama as a "con man" because BHO's not that different from other politicians. Of course it does depend on definitions: either _all_ politicians are con men (and women) or a relatively few are. (Con artists usually have very involved schemes, which are more like the Nigerian scam.) > I should make one point though: I (and I think most other > progressives) was never under any illusion that Obama was going to > bring revolutionary change. I agree. I don't think _anyone_ thought of Obama as revolutionary in any sense of the word. Instead, they saw him as the "un-Bush," a significant move away from the irrationality of the Bush years, back in the direction of New Deal liberalism. Or they thought of him as a Jed Bartlet-type president (from the West Wing TV show). They didn't seem him as merely sanding off the rough edges of Bush's legacy, producing a more rationalized version of Bushism. > For e.g., I did not expect Obama to end > the war in Afghanistan. I did, however, expect him to be somewhat > better than Bush in meaningful ways and that and his race were reason > enough to support him. it was a step ahead to elect a Black president unless he turns out to be even more awful By the way, in 2008 I (flippantly) said that I preferred BHO to Hillary Clinton because she's more annoying on the radio and TV. I was wrong: how annoying a public figure is depends on the _content_ of what they say. BHO has become quite annoying, for example, pushing me to listen to music instead of his interview with NPR while I was driving to work. -- Jim Devine / "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." - John Kenneth Galbraith _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
