Oh, shut up, Barack!
In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.
Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”
Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?
To some extent, the party that loses Congress and the Presidency always starts expressing support for bi-partisanship, but Democrats are particularly estopped from using this insincere ploy after their hyper-partisanship during both Trump’s administration and Joe Biden’s. But for Obama to start yearning for an end to the nation’s divisions when he has deliberately courted them is disgusting. It was Obama who allowed his supporters to use the accusation of racism as the default defense of his feckless, bungled Presidency. It was Obama who super-fueled the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck, saying the Martin could have been his son and framing the murder as white on black racial violence before the facts had been decided. Race relations were worse after Obama’s eight years in office than they were before, and they have only become worse.
Obama also joined his party’s desperate and destructive strategy of claiming that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy and a virtual American Hitler while styling his supporters as a malign force, saying ominously of Trump’s supporters in his prime time at the Democratic National Convention, “Do not let them take away your power! Don’t let them take away your democracy!”
Divisiveness? What divisiveness?
The criticism of “divisiveness” was not the most head-exploding hypocrisy issued by Obama yesterday, however. This was: He actually had the chutzpah to say that there are “still lines that can’t be crossed” such as when “the other side” uses “the judiciary or criminal justice system to go after opponents.” “In those circumstances, a line has been crossed,and we have to stand firm and speak out and organize and mobilize as forcefully as we can.” KABOOM!
Who not only crossed those lines but charged across them? Which party? What was the letter next to the President’s name whose Justice Department and partisan prosecutors allied with him did exactly what Obama now says is unconscionable, as Barack remained silent?
Obama looks relatively good in comparison to his two successors in that he played the symbolic “king” part of the Presidency far more deftly than Trump, and was more effective in the “prime minister” segment of the job than Biden, admittedly a low bar to clear, since it is lying on the floor. Nonetheless, he has been a destructive presence in the nation’s culture and politics since his election in 2008 and remains so.
Ethics Alarms 
Deflection and projection are still classical ego deffense mechanisma, are they not. These are covered in any psychology 101 text.
Has Obama been the noisiest former president in our history?
Teddy Roosevelt was worse. Trump has obviously been worse, but it’s tit-for-tat in his case. Carter was pretty bad.
Carter was a good prototype for Obama. Feckless but morally superior. But Obama took the Carter pose to a much higher level. He accomplished absolutely nothing but continues to preen all the damned time.
In retrospect, I’ve concluded all the now Trump Deranged really thought Obama’s ascension to the presidency was the long-awaited end of history. Hillary Clinton, and every Democratic presidential nominee for the rest of time were to be anointed every four years for the rest of time. Then Trump defeated Hillary. This was literally unforgiveable. I don’t think they’re ever going to get over it. TDS appears to be terminal.
This is as close as I can get to an answer to, “What’s wrong with these people?” TM
Obama also inserted himself into the Henry Louis Gates Jr. incident, where his friend was arrested during a reported suspected burglary. Without knowing the particulars, he claimed the police and (white) arresting officer “acted stupidly”.
At the time, congressman Steve King noted that “The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race that favors the black person, in the case of Professor Gates and Officer (James) Crowley.”
I wrote about the Gates fiasco…here.
I just checked out Obama’s speech at a friend’s recommendation. He’s calling for his audience to practice pluralism, not asking Republicans to do them any favors. Regardless of whether his past actions match up to his present words, regardless of him pandering to his audience’s paranoia of Republicans, and regardless of whether he even now believes in pluralism, those words about how pluralism works needed to be said, and by someone Democrats will listen to. Whatever he’s done in the past can’t make it unethical to say what people need to hear inthey’re willing to hear it from. For the second time, I will say in all sincerity, “Thanks, Obama.”
IF he had acknowledged his gigantic contribution to national divisions and his exploitation of it for partisan gain, then his words could be taken as a sincere change of heart. But he didn’t, so they weren’t. Fool us once, shame on him, fool us 7,5312 times, we’re morons.
To be sure, a sincere change of heart would have been better. Even so, insincere statements can still be helpful things to say that people can learn from. Don’t shoot the message.
Aren’t you bothered by transparently manipulative insincerity?
What do you think he’s trying to manipulate people into doing?
I KNOW what he’s trying to manipulate people into doing: continuing to think that he can be believed and trusted, that eh isn’t a hyper-partisan, extreme left power-broker, and that everything he says or does is to advance his own fortunes and influence. Obana puts his wet finger into the air, always: the election told him that his “Trump is a danger to democracy” and “If you don’t vote for Harris , you’re a bigot” messages weren’t flying, so he’s retrenching and putting on a new mask.
So what I’m hearing is that the political zeitgeist is becoming sane, and in order to stay influential Obama is amplifying the message of sanity. Ideally, politicians would be thought leaders instead of bellwethers, but at least the thing he’s doing for the wrong reasons is the right thing. If people don’t encourage constructive choices regardless of the reason, other people won’t realize that constructive choices make it easier to coexist with the other side instead of antagonizing them.
He’s lying. That can’t be the right thing when the idea is to con people.
If a thief tells people it’s wrong to steal, is it a lie? Is it harmful? If a thief tries to pass themselves off as a role model, that’s a lie (or at least deceptive) and could be harmful, if it distorts people’s idea of what ethical behavior looks like. Is that the problem you see with Obama’s speech? I’d like to think that Obama’s description of pluralism was clear enough that people could just use that instead of trying to imitate his earlier standards of behavior, but I know that some humans will be misled. Genuine role models would definitely help.
Sure it’s harmful and a lie if he is only saying it to get his next victims to let their guard down. Obama has used division as a strategy his entire political career, then always insisting that he deplores it when he is close to being exposed. The man was a community organizer, and “it’s them against us” was his milieu. That tactic got him all the way to the White House: he’s not suddenly changing his methodology now. Remember Rev. Wright? Obama was shocked—shocked! that Wright was preaching anti-white paranoia even though Obama had been listening to his sermons for years and years. So he denounced his friend and spiritual advisor because Wright was “divisive” only when he knew the association would lose him votes.
I find it suspect that Obama has an epiphany, after his candidate is crushed by Trump. Obama is a manipulative SOB. His pronouncements are preemptive efforts to derail any efforts by Trump to seek retribution for the lies and hell the Democrats have put him and his supporters through.