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I feel like we are a living example of history repeating itself. 9/11 -> hysteria -> implement fear-driven tactics -> suppress rights -> profit. I believe Obam

I feel like we are a living example of history repeating itself. 9/11 -> hysteria -> implement fear-driven tactics -> suppress rights -> profit. I believe Obama has a created a fantastic movement based on his image and figure - classic American self-superation story. But when you dig into the details of the Obama years you can quickly see that he has been a gigantic letdown in a lot of basic things that I feel are important to the long-term well-being of the country (e.g. privacy rights, drone foreign policy etc.). In the end, I think Obama didn't end up being too different from any other politician.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
That was, to be honest, the biggest issue I had with Hillary Clinton and why I couldn't vote for her. (FWIW, my vote for neither major party affected nobody, my state's electoral votes are locked.) She basically stated she wanted to continue Obama's legacy and... in retrospect, Obama's legacy sucks. I voted for him twice, and I almost wish I hadn't. Countries we weren't ever even at war with have children who have now grown up to fear the sound of an American drone. (As a note, I have no issue with use of drones themselves, I have issue with how we use them. Like assassinations without due process.)
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > Obama's legacy sucks. I voted for him twice, and I almost wish I hadn't. I did too, and I also almost wish I hadn't, but, TBF, it's not like the other choices were that great.
  - cma 10y ago
    Kucinich, Mike Gravel
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    The more I think about it. It's really like we don't actually have a choice at all. We just get to influence the letter next to the name when that official shows up on CSPAN. Policy never moves.
- GVIrish 10y ago
  Obama's legacy has good spots and bad spots. In the future, his drone policy is something that may be viewed as a stain on America much like America's cold war meddling in South America that caused misery and bloodshed for millions of Latin Americas. On the other hand, Bin Laden is dead, we didn't start any new wars, the US left Iraq, and several regimes changed to democracy in the Middle East without the US military getting heavily involved. Obama's Justice Department has successfully shed light on patterns of police misconduct in several major cities and has mandated reforms. Yet, Obama and the DoJ ignored a landmark report on forensic science that could've exonerated thousands of wrongfully convicted and prevented wrongful convictions in the first place. Net Neutrality won the day under Obama, yet he has done precious little to roll back pervasive surveillance and indeed has strengthened it. In the fullness of time we'll see if Obama's legacy is ultimately viewed as negative or positive. And a lot of that depends on individual perceptions and what issues are important to you. Not to mention that feelings about his legacy will depend a lot on the quality of presidents succeeding.
  - gspetr 10y ago
    > Bin Laden is dead A kindergartener, compared to who runs the show in Middle East now. > we didn't start any new wars Only to see the age old religious ones reignite - Sunni IS, supported by disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis vs Shia Iraqi government. That is effectively not only a religious war but also a civil one - Top IS brass is ex-Saddam's military. > the US left Iraq Should have finished the phrase: "The US left Iraq in a much, much worse state than when it first came."
    - 3131s 10y ago
      Left Iraq in a much, much worse state and still have 5000 soldiers there, so we never really left.
  - purephase 10y ago
    An important one to highlight is his administrations' advocacy for LGBT rights both domestically and abroad. It's maddening to see the dichotomy between his privacy legislation and how he's advanced the civil rights of so many at the same time. The two facets, on the surface, appear to be at such odds...
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  Did you think he sucked across the board, or just on foreign policy and domestic surveillance? It's a huge job.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Space policy wavered again under Obama as well, the repetitive change in goals our executive branch has tasked NASA with has held back our ability to progress with manned space exploration. Designing for Mars and designing for the Moon each present different problems. The F-35 project has somehow survived as long as it has, despite being a massive cash sink into a project that is going to produce a bad plane that doesn't win fights. And if we rely on it for our next generation air superiority, we're going to be at a disadvantage until the next generation comes around. I don't feel like we've really had a good last eight years. It's a good thing gay marriage is now a right, but that was decided by a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court anyways... not exactly something Obama can take credit for.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
braveo 10y ago
I've felt like that for a long time, and I think Obama is partially to blame for Trump getting elected. When he made the compromise he did with Hilary during his first election I knew then he was going to be a political creature (and I was behind him). I don't think Obama will be noteworthy in history outside of being the first black president. Obamacare will not be noteworthy either unless it transforms into something more meaningful. If you think about it, the praise he gets so often is that he's a "classy guy", that should say something. 8 years in office and him being classy is the thing people think of most when considering him?
- webXL 10y ago
  Classy guy? Anyone is compared to the pres-elect. In his personal life perhaps. Every time he weighed in during an isolated racial incident before the public had all the information really did a disservice to the office. So much so that the current guy thinks it's fine to tweet about every little political gripe. Both have no problem being arrogant and divisive, so long as the base is happy. There's absolutely nothing classy about this cult of personality we're witnessing.
  - GVIrish 10y ago
    You honestly think that Obama's presidency is what made Trump think it's okay to tweet outrageous stuff and overreact to every perceived slight?
    - webXL 10y ago
      To some extent, yes. The base thinks it's fine, and the GP thinks Trump's win was a reaction to Obama. The media loves the tweeting, just like any time they could get Obama to weigh in on the latest racial controversy. So I guess to be fair, the reduction in presidential class is a real team effort!
      - csallen 10y ago
        Trump's tweets/statements are an order of magnitude more extreme and more frequent than anything we've ever seen. He's also a grown man who's responsible for his own actions, so blaming the media and blaming Obama seems quite partisan. Nobody is making him do anything.
stcredzero 10y ago
In the end, I think [put president name here] didn't end up being too different from any other politician. The next one might be one to break the above pattern, by being so much worse!
Theodores 10y ago
Let's take a railway analogy. Obama was elected to drive the train for four years a couple of times over, during his tenure things would be better on the train. However, the points, signals and power to the track was not something that was ever to be in his control, the train journey would be pretty much whatever the 'deep state' of intelligence agencies and their cronies wanted. Like all previous train drivers Obama did not jump any signals or stop the train to hop out the cab and manually shift the points to get the train on the other track. He did a professional job of steering the train along without running too many people over or derailing the show. His predecessors were generally not as good at these finer details. Perhaps what Obama was best at was doing the announcements over the intercom, the passengers found him to be very funny and charming and all those good things. Although we are all experts on trains - where they go, what the schedule is and what the seats are like, the reality of the coffee and so on, most of us are utterly clueless about what is in any of those boxes at the side of the track or how it all works. If I was one of those people that always wanted to be train driver, and, if I had to put together a popular platform to be elected, I could make all kinds of promises, e.g. to floor it at 125 mph and put on some non-stop direct services with some buyable-in-able idea that it would all work out wonderfully. If I knew about the railway and the state of the track, or anything about those grey boxes, then I would not be issuing these cheques that cannot be cashed. Being a 'nice person' would not be enough, clueless me would not be able to take on the constraints of the infrastructure to deliver those 125mph direct trains. It is easy to be matter of fact in a railway analogy when it comes to the problems of the system, with politics the 'deep state' is the 'problems of the system' and this is best discussed 'matter of fact' rather than as some mumbled conspiracy story. You are not going to revolutionise transport by being a train driver even if you are the best guy for driving the train. Obama was the best guy for driving the train down the 'deep state' tracks.
- Jordrok 10y ago
  This has got to be one of the best analogies I've seen in a while. Thank you for that!
rocho 10y ago
In many respects Obama did great. Consider that a president in office has to put up with a lot of pressure from many different sources. There's the party, the opposition, the lobbyists, etc. Even if you make promises (in good faith) before the election, it's very difficult to honor them. And this applies to all politicians in office.
nsaslideface 10y ago
It's disturbing that Glenn Greenwald is kept far enough away from mainstream recognition by liberal gatekeepers that people still have to come to this conclusion independently instead of just reading any one thing he's written for the past decade or more. These cautious modifiers -- "I feel", "when you dig into the details" -- wouldn't be necessary if Greenwald's work was ever taken seriously by those in the media who could boost it, but it seems they are too cowardly.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

That was, to be honest, the biggest issue I had with Hillary Clinton and why I couldn't vote for her. (FWIW, my vote for neither major party affected nobody, my state's electoral votes are locked.) She basically stated she wanted to continue Obama's legacy and... in retrospect, Obama's legacy sucks. I voted for him twice, and I almost wish I hadn't. Countries we weren't ever even at war with have children who have now grown up to fear the sound of an American drone. (As a note, I have no issue with use of drones themselves, I have issue with how we use them. Like assassinations without due process.)

CaptSpify 10y ago
> Obama's legacy sucks. I voted for him twice, and I almost wish I hadn't. I did too, and I also almost wish I hadn't, but, TBF, it's not like the other choices were that great.
- cma 10y ago
  Kucinich, Mike Gravel
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  The more I think about it. It's really like we don't actually have a choice at all. We just get to influence the letter next to the name when that official shows up on CSPAN. Policy never moves.
GVIrish 10y ago
Obama's legacy has good spots and bad spots. In the future, his drone policy is something that may be viewed as a stain on America much like America's cold war meddling in South America that caused misery and bloodshed for millions of Latin Americas. On the other hand, Bin Laden is dead, we didn't start any new wars, the US left Iraq, and several regimes changed to democracy in the Middle East without the US military getting heavily involved. Obama's Justice Department has successfully shed light on patterns of police misconduct in several major cities and has mandated reforms. Yet, Obama and the DoJ ignored a landmark report on forensic science that could've exonerated thousands of wrongfully convicted and prevented wrongful convictions in the first place. Net Neutrality won the day under Obama, yet he has done precious little to roll back pervasive surveillance and indeed has strengthened it. In the fullness of time we'll see if Obama's legacy is ultimately viewed as negative or positive. And a lot of that depends on individual perceptions and what issues are important to you. Not to mention that feelings about his legacy will depend a lot on the quality of presidents succeeding.
- gspetr 10y ago
  > Bin Laden is dead A kindergartener, compared to who runs the show in Middle East now. > we didn't start any new wars Only to see the age old religious ones reignite - Sunni IS, supported by disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis vs Shia Iraqi government. That is effectively not only a religious war but also a civil one - Top IS brass is ex-Saddam's military. > the US left Iraq Should have finished the phrase: "The US left Iraq in a much, much worse state than when it first came."
  - 3131s 10y ago
    Left Iraq in a much, much worse state and still have 5000 soldiers there, so we never really left.
- purephase 10y ago
  An important one to highlight is his administrations' advocacy for LGBT rights both domestically and abroad. It's maddening to see the dichotomy between his privacy legislation and how he's advanced the civil rights of so many at the same time. The two facets, on the surface, appear to be at such odds...
throwaway91111 10y ago
Did you think he sucked across the board, or just on foreign policy and domestic surveillance? It's a huge job.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Space policy wavered again under Obama as well, the repetitive change in goals our executive branch has tasked NASA with has held back our ability to progress with manned space exploration. Designing for Mars and designing for the Moon each present different problems. The F-35 project has somehow survived as long as it has, despite being a massive cash sink into a project that is going to produce a bad plane that doesn't win fights. And if we rely on it for our next generation air superiority, we're going to be at a disadvantage until the next generation comes around. I don't feel like we've really had a good last eight years. It's a good thing gay marriage is now a right, but that was decided by a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court anyways... not exactly something Obama can take credit for.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

braveo 10y ago

I've felt like that for a long time, and I think Obama is partially to blame for Trump getting elected. When he made the compromise he did with Hilary during his first election I knew then he was going to be a political creature (and I was behind him). I don't think Obama will be noteworthy in history outside of being the first black president. Obamacare will not be noteworthy either unless it transforms into something more meaningful. If you think about it, the praise he gets so often is that he's a "classy guy", that should say something. 8 years in office and him being classy is the thing people think of most when considering him?

webXL 10y ago
Classy guy? Anyone is compared to the pres-elect. In his personal life perhaps. Every time he weighed in during an isolated racial incident before the public had all the information really did a disservice to the office. So much so that the current guy thinks it's fine to tweet about every little political gripe. Both have no problem being arrogant and divisive, so long as the base is happy. There's absolutely nothing classy about this cult of personality we're witnessing.
- GVIrish 10y ago
  You honestly think that Obama's presidency is what made Trump think it's okay to tweet outrageous stuff and overreact to every perceived slight?
  - webXL 10y ago
    To some extent, yes. The base thinks it's fine, and the GP thinks Trump's win was a reaction to Obama. The media loves the tweeting, just like any time they could get Obama to weigh in on the latest racial controversy. So I guess to be fair, the reduction in presidential class is a real team effort!
    - csallen 10y ago
      Trump's tweets/statements are an order of magnitude more extreme and more frequent than anything we've ever seen. He's also a grown man who's responsible for his own actions, so blaming the media and blaming Obama seems quite partisan. Nobody is making him do anything.

stcredzero 10y ago

In the end, I think [put president name here] didn't end up being too different from any other politician. The next one might be one to break the above pattern, by being so much worse!

Theodores 10y ago

Let's take a railway analogy. Obama was elected to drive the train for four years a couple of times over, during his tenure things would be better on the train. However, the points, signals and power to the track was not something that was ever to be in his control, the train journey would be pretty much whatever the 'deep state' of intelligence agencies and their cronies wanted. Like all previous train drivers Obama did not jump any signals or stop the train to hop out the cab and manually shift the points to get the train on the other track. He did a professional job of steering the train along without running too many people over or derailing the show. His predecessors were generally not as good at these finer details. Perhaps what Obama was best at was doing the announcements over the intercom, the passengers found him to be very funny and charming and all those good things. Although we are all experts on trains - where they go, what the schedule is and what the seats are like, the reality of the coffee and so on, most of us are utterly clueless about what is in any of those boxes at the side of the track or how it all works. If I was one of those people that always wanted to be train driver, and, if I had to put together a popular platform to be elected, I could make all kinds of promises, e.g. to floor it at 125 mph and put on some non-stop direct services with some buyable-in-able idea that it would all work out wonderfully. If I knew about the railway and the state of the track, or anything about those grey boxes, then I would not be issuing these cheques that cannot be cashed. Being a 'nice person' would not be enough, clueless me would not be able to take on the constraints of the infrastructure to deliver those 125mph direct trains. It is easy to be matter of fact in a railway analogy when it comes to the problems of the system, with politics the 'deep state' is the 'problems of the system' and this is best discussed 'matter of fact' rather than as some mumbled conspiracy story. You are not going to revolutionise transport by being a train driver even if you are the best guy for driving the train. Obama was the best guy for driving the train down the 'deep state' tracks.

Jordrok 10y ago
This has got to be one of the best analogies I've seen in a while. Thank you for that!

rocho 10y ago

In many respects Obama did great. Consider that a president in office has to put up with a lot of pressure from many different sources. There's the party, the opposition, the lobbyists, etc. Even if you make promises (in good faith) before the election, it's very difficult to honor them. And this applies to all politicians in office.

nsaslideface 10y ago

It's disturbing that Glenn Greenwald is kept far enough away from mainstream recognition by liberal gatekeepers that people still have to come to this conclusion independently instead of just reading any one thing he's written for the past decade or more. These cautious modifiers -- "I feel", "when you dig into the details" -- wouldn't be necessary if Greenwald's work was ever taken seriously by those in the media who could boost it, but it seems they are too cowardly.