Remembering Howard Zinn on Obama: "...a mediocre president, which means...a dangerous president"

[amborin]

Obama at One

snip

.....On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now.


I thought that in the area of constitutional rights he would be better than he has been. That's the greatest disappointment, because Obama went to Harvard Law School and is presumably dedicated to constitutional rights. But he becomes president, and he's not making any significant step away from Bush policies. Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo, but he still treats the prisoners there as "suspected terrorists." They have not been tried and have not been found guilty. So when Obama proposes taking people out of Guantánamo and putting them into other prisons, he's not advancing the cause of constitutional rights very far. And then he's gone into court arguing for preventive detention, and he's continued the policy of sending suspects to countries where they very well may be tortured.


I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

http://www.thenation.com/article/obama-one?page=0,5

[jefferson_dem]

1. Zinn was consistent, if nothing else.

From his historical polemics to his nostalgia for socialist utopia to his modern-day political critiques. His perspective is missed.

That being said, Zinn was destined to be disappointed in Obama...who doesn't seek to govern through a lens clouded by dogmatism and ideology.

[amborin]

2. "Obama. .doesn't...govern.. clouded by dogmatism & ideology" you forgot to add, except for pro-war

pro-big corporations, pro-Wall Street, etc ideology

how explain all these, and so many more:

"§ Guantánamo, a universal disgrace


§ Afghanistan, a poisoned chalice, accepted and celebrated


§ His raising of the war budget, still called, who knows why, the defense budget


§ His nonanswer to the climate and yes-man answer to Wall Street, a contradiction captured perfectly on a poster outside the Copenhagen conference: "If the climate were a bank, it would be saved"


§ His green light to the authors of the military coup
in Honduras, betraying Latin hopes for change after
a century and a half of US-fabricated coups against democracy in the name of democracy


§ His recent speeches praising war, hymns to the ongoing butcheries for oil or the sacred cause of racketeer governments, so utterly divorced from the lively words that put him where he now sits"


etc.......

http://www.thenation.com/article/obama-one?page=0,4

[StarsInHerHair]

3. is he dead then?

[jefferson_dem]

4. Yes, he passed last year.

[StarsInHerHair]

6. oh

[Palmer Eldritch]

5. How do you feel about Obama?