Last night I saw President Obama. I was rushing south on Park Avenue to make a 10:05 train at Grand Central Terminal when I had to stop at barricades on 68th Street manned by police officers. Soon the president’s procession went by. A whole bunch of cop cars, followed by motorcycles, then a number of VIPs’ cars including a long black car with flags on the hood that I’m guessing the president was in, then more black cars for VIPS, then motorcycles and cop cars and a couple of ambulances. The motorcade lasted over a minute before the last of the centurions passed blipping their sirens. I asked an officer if I could now go through, I had to get a train. “You have to wait five minutes.” I remembered being stopped by officers at the side of the road in Thailand and Tonga as their respective kings’ processions went by and thought, this is much worse.
I missed my train and had to wait an hour and cursed the proceedings for having detained me.
But when I got home at 1 in the morning, my feelings turned. I had cut my hand breaking kindling the other night and then got blood on my shirt sleeve last night, and I put cold water on the shirt and hung it and thought, I bet Obama can’t do this. Someone is standing there to take his shirt, and attending his every scratch, and breaking his kindling. The man has no personal autonomy. He can’t rush down Park Avenue counting off the blocks and the time, he can’t take a ride in Manhattan without shutting everyone else down and being surrounded by officious police officers and god knows how many suckups. Whereas I can walk anywhere I please, mostly.
Waste empathy on someone who must have known that whatever anonymity he still had as a U.S. senator would vanish once he was elected president? Best save your humanitarian “instincts” for those who suffer as a consequence of his selling out to Wall Street, war-makers and Israel firsters.
New documentary out on Obama…”The Rage of Obama”
Saying his background formed his desire/plan to destroy “Colonial America” and it’s people.
Wonder who put this out.
News reports says it’s second largest selling documentary on him.
PHIL- You have opened my eyes, partner. Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Lloyd Blankfein, John Galt, what do they all have in common? Atlases, all of them. Sacrificial lambs who toil selflessly on our behalf, unappreciated by the vulgar masses who selfishly exploit these titans, yet show no gratitude. Like Ayn Rand, you see things clearly. Why must the 99% be such a burden on the 1%? Perhaps Obama will read your words and take some comfort as he goes over the kill list, or when he holds Bradley Manning and Julian Assange to account. What strange power do the 99% hold over the 1% to be able to force them to give up the simple pleasures for the cold comfort of limousines, yachts and mansions? Hard to figure out, but I’ll tell you this: without them where would we be? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I have to vomit.
Listen, as furious as I get with Obama I remember exactly how the ‘old boys’ tried to embarrass him time and again over any petty little faux pas and thing they could when he was new to all the protocols of the office.
And I think they did it because he was 1) black and 2) not a member of the club.
I really do think the wind was let out of his sails by his insecurity in how to behave in position of US President.
I don’t know if he is fact just another lying sham or lacking the balls to bust out or, if it’s that he has no faith in the US public supporting a ‘agressive’ black president who loses his temper and gives the zio or neo or whoever what for. We know damn well if acted like some past presidents and blew his cool ‘they’ would blame it on his being ‘Muslim or’ black or ‘African.
He should have his sea legs by now after 4 years and know what’s what, so if he is re elected maybe we will find out what makes him really tick.
I feel sorry for Obama in that his career is a failure. He’ll be remembered as the President who could have done things but didn’t. When climate change really gets going we’ll look back on his administration and wonder what someone like Carter would have done. Obama is all hat and no cowboy.