I Mostly Avoid Politics, but...

I'd take it as axiomatic -- and if it weren't, the tsunami of empirical evidence would demolish all possible doubt -- that any position taken by "the previous administration" was not just evil, but so profoundly and Satanically evil as to beggar both the imaginations and the souls of most humans on the face of the Earth. And I'm not even sure that this captures the systematicity of the malignancy, or that it's expressible in human language, but it is the best I can do for the moment, and so I'll leave it at that... except to say that if anyone wanted to create Heaven on Earth, the very best approach I can imagine would be energetically to advance the diametrical antithesis of every single policy advocated and practiced by the demons who possessed us from 2001-2008.

It is in that context, even giving due deference to the hoary dictum that "politics is the art of the possible," and due acknowledgment to the virtual certainty that Obama would not now be our president had he not always profoundly understood that dictum, and even allowing for the ineluctable exigencies of some measure of pragmatism, I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed by Obama's ostensibly pragmatism- and bipartisanship-motivated execution of what looks like Voldebush redux in any number of domains. Most particularly, though, in his positions on Iraq and on the DOMA.

As for B&C's Excellent Adventure in insanely misdirected war-mongering, there is no excuse for one more American to die in that hideous debacle (nor, I readily concede, for one more Iraqi to die, but the latter is probably entirely beyond our control, even in principle, and the former is not). And as for DOMA, it's an act that is sick, hateful and exists for no other purpose than to make millions of Americans suffer, so that others can indulge their Schadenfreude. The first responsibility of an American president is to preserve and protect (and improve) American lives, liberty and happiness. Both of the aforementioned policy positions, looking almost indistinguishable (even if perhaps not in motivation) from those of the Voldebushies, flagrantly violate this fundamental geas.

And then there's the little matter of healthcare. Well, Obama's concern that some should actually exist is an immeasurable improvement over the "die and decrease the surplus population" ukase directed at all non-plutocrats by the preceding administration, but other than that, the best that can be said is that it's woefully insufficient. There is no moral excuse, no humane excuse, no constitutional excuse -- and since this blog has a theological bent, no Christian excuse -- for us not to have a single payer system as of yesterday. People are dying because we don't. That doesn't sound to me much like a "right to life" in the legitimate and original meaning of those words as enunciated by Jefferson, let alone "liberty" (to choose under which bridge to die?), or the "pursuit of happiness."

Don't get me wrong. I admire Obama almost beyond expression, and I think we are blessed by God to have such a person as a replacement for Voldebush. And he's caught in a web of cataclysms not of his own making. But, for the taste of this one Christian, at least, thinking of the Sermon on the Mount, he is simply not doing enough, and not doing enough of the right things, and none of it fast enough. Now, I well know that, in the cosmic scheme of things, the President of the United States is probably about the 5,000th most powerful person in the country, if even that, but he does have the nominal office, and he does have the bully pulpit, and he does have the obligation to make good on his promises. Now.