- It has been not quite a year since we replaced a Presidential buffoon with an educated, articulate, multi-ethnic young man who spoke from his heart about "change." What has happened?
- At his confirmation hearing for Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta said that "extraordinary rendition," where we have sent prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured, was a tool he meant to retain.
- The President has announced that past crimes by Bush officials would not be investigated – not even by a "truth commission" just trying to establish a record.
- Gay military personnel continue to be dismissed at the same rate as before.
- Despite consternation when Dick Cheney refused to divulge the names of energy executives who had come to the White House in 2002, the Obama administration refused to release names of its visitors until forced to do so by a lawsuit.
- Ours is the most virulent society since Britannia ruled the waves. We maintain more than 1000 military bases in other countries, so many that President Kennedy did not know, until the Cuban missile crisis, that we had nuclear weapons in Turkey.
- We have become a national security state bent on imposing our will and our culture on the world. The Bush Administration called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" in a memo written by Alberto Gonzales. Maybe our leaders, the present ones included, think of the Constitution as "quaint," too.
- In the words of, sheesh, Nancy Reagan, maybe it is time to "Just say 'no.'"
Thursday, September 17, 2009
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
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Hope and change, on a wing and a prayer -- that's what we voted for.
ReplyDeleteThat hope was neither modest nor bashful, and the change we called for was anything but incremental...yet as you point out this is where we are now, just a few short months into the new administration.
The president has one shot at greatness, of making his accomplishments as monumental as his election was historic. If he wants a legacy to match, his only option is to swing big and hit big or lose big, to gird for battle and be victorious or go to Valhalla with honor.
Anything less will deep six any progress we might otherwise make for years to come, and the only refrain on change will remain ageless and cynical - "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!"