Here’s a puzzler. On one side: The Tea Party, Republicans, and what David Frum cleverly labeled the conservative entertainment industry. On the other: A nation experiencing systemic shock from the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What happens when the two meet? Enough cognitive dissonance to keep a convention full of psychiatrists chirping away like birds in a grain silo.
Since Obama was elected President, two major moods have come to dominate the body politic: disappointment and a potent mix of anger, fear and revolution. The disappointment, mostly from Obama supporters who had him confused with a Green party candidate, is more insidious than insubordinate. The anger, however, sprouted from the whole birther issue (which itself deserves a new word, conspiracidiocy, to describe it) and has gone beyond claims of an illegitimate President to fear of a radical agenda to socialize the country, send kids to re-education camps (thank you, Michele Bachmann), set up death panels, and so on. We’ve heard just about every name and accusation hurled at President Obama: incompetent, tyrannical, socialist, racist, Muslim Manchurian Candidate, and so on. Judging by the rhetoric of the right wing, especially at tea party rallies, Obama is poised to take our freedom away, only without a weird little mustache on his upper lip. Goodbye, good ol’ American Apple Pie and Rosy-Cheeked Hard Workers. Hello, Goosestep: The Nazi Musical.
Yet here comes British Petroleum, and political heads are leaking brains just as fast as the wellhead is leaking oil. You have Joe Barton, Republican from Texas, expressing his outrage at the $20 billion victims fund negotiated by the White House and BP, even going so far as to apologize to BP. “I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again in my words, amounts to a shakedown,” he said. And suddenly an attempt to lower a containment dome on top of the right-wing brain hemorrhage fails yet again. Because, good gravy, we wouldn’t want to put political pressure on a corporation that does something everyone knows is wrong. On an unrelated note, we’ll be releasing all the murderers and rapists because, good gravy, we wouldn’t want to subject a citizen who does something wrong to any sort of shakedown.
Here is the kicker. While Obama is getting BP to apologize and pony up $20 billion for the benefit of all the human and environmental victims of BP’s screw-up, some right-wing voices are demanding he show some leadership. Cue Eric Cantor, the Republican House Minority Whip, who said “I don't want to pile on the President, but people need leadership right now, and the President has not offered any plan to help the people right now who need it most. We're facing a real environmental catastrophe right now, and the President has taken no demonstrative action to show that he has a plan and is going to get it done. I do commend the President working with BP to establish the fund, and clearly BP has to pay. For their part, they've stepped up and taken responsibility. But the President still has not offered a fix to the problem at hand, which is plugging the leak and cleaning the mess.”
So which is it, folks? Barack Obama, the tyrant who can’t be trusted with healthcare? Or Barack (Where’s the Leadership) Obama? Whatever the failures of governmental oversight, the blame – and the buck – stop at British Petroleum. They made the mess; they should clean it up even if it bankrupts them. After all, we don’t quite appreciate the government bailing out those big banks, right? So the real question, then, is this: Aren’t we expecting too much from the President when what we really want is for the people who made the mistake to own up and atone? What “leadership” can we reasonably expect to get without our words sounding suspiciously like bleating? I’m no fan of Obama and his administration’s milquetoast policies. But let’s be honest: The President is just a cog in the vast machine that really depends on the legislature to get things done. And when it comes to the legislature, what was that crack about leaking brains?
Meanwhile, real wannabe tyrants like Senate fluffer Joe Lieberman propose expanding executive authority in the name of national security with an “internet kill switch,” that is, the authority to “seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.” The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed by the Dept. of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.” (http://news.cnet.com/)
Will anybody call out Lieberman? Will anybody say, hey, I can take some risk if it means being truly free? Of course not. Because it’s lot easier to damn Obama no matter what he does than worry about the petit Napoleons in the legislature and opportunists in the conservative entertainment industry who support them by spouting contradictory nonsense.
Mr. Sisa is Assistant Editor of thefrontpageonline.com
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