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...his campaign promises made him seem like... The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situat

...his campaign promises made him seem like... The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more accurately be "we used to love him until we realized he lied to us." That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see this happen long into the future.

etherael 13y ago
I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises. You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.
- mcdougle 13y ago
  "absolute power corrupts absolutely." I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  I hope I'm not the first to break it to you... You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).
bradleyland 13y ago
When considering the motivations of another person, I always take a close look at the amount of cynicism I'm applying to that person, and then I ask myself whether there is another possibility. We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions. So we have two possibilities: 1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual 2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity I'm not sure which is more terrifying.

etherael 13y ago

I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises. You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.

mcdougle 13y ago
"absolute power corrupts absolutely." I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.
- phaemon 13y ago
  It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
obviouslygreen 13y ago
I hope I'm not the first to break it to you... You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).

bradleyland 13y ago

When considering the motivations of another person, I always take a close look at the amount of cynicism I'm applying to that person, and then I ask myself whether there is another possibility. We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions. So we have two possibilities: 1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual 2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity I'm not sure which is more terrifying.