Obama the organizer spent most of his time teaching community members how to put pressure on the city government, or on various wealthy corporations, to give them money. Obama’s organizers could be confrontational, or they could be conciliatory — Obama favored the latter — but the whole idea was to make powerful people feel guilty, or embarrassed, or annoyed enough to give them things.
Obama, born in 1961, felt that he missed the great days of the civil rights movement. Becoming an organizer was the next-best thing he could find. But his successes were small; he wanted to redistribute wealth and resources on a large scale, and he could only accomplish so much by protesting outside the housing project management office. That was the reason he ultimately left organizing to go to law school and run for public office.
That’s not to say that Obama left no legacy as an organizer. The colleagues I talked with all remembered him fondly. Several said he inspired them to improve their lives. But these were all people who shared his goals. They wanted to believe in him and in their shared enterprise.
Does Mahmoud Ahmedinejad fit into that category? The Taliban? Kim Jong-il?
Now that Obama is the president of the United States, he is the power figure, not the supplicant or the protester. Certainly a president still needs to convince foreign leaders to give him what he wants, but when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world, Obama isn’t the underdog. His years on the South Side are little help.
The administration is making sure that Gitmo detainees get swine flu vaccine. And here I was worried that those heartless rat bastards in the White House would be too busy making excuses about why American families can’t get it (“It’s Bush’s fault!”) to make sure that the illegal combatants were protected.
Seriously, what is the probability that they’ll even be exposed?
The Obama team did an excellent job of undermining the Honduran economy by cutting off economic assistance, throttling tourism with travel warnings, yanking visas away from Hondurans, and creating a climate of massive uncertainty that spooked U.S. investors and businesses. The U.S. embassy in Honduras did yeomen’s work watching out for the interests of the Zelaya clan, leaving many to wonder which side it was pulling for. In short, against a small, friendly, anti-Chávez ally, the administration mustered the sort of muscle it would never dare use against Iran, Russia, or Venezuela.
Guess it’s just more of that bullying people that you vastly outweighspeaking truth to power, like they did with Fox News.
When Europeans talk about peace and human rights they mean it for themselves only, and not anyone else. As their history of imperialism has proven, they are the number one enablers and supporters of the oppressors and violators of human rights the world over.
It’s quite disgusting, really. We really should move the UN to Brussels. Or Oslo.
Thoughts on zombie preparedness. Actually, though the Great Lakes do freeze, it’s unusual for Lake Superior to do so thoroughly enough to allow zombie access to Isle Royale, so that might be a solution for a few years, until you get a really hard winter.
[Early evening updates]
More thoughts on zombies walking the ocean floor, and freezing.
Thoughts on Osama bin Laden’s extreme misogyny. Were female troops really the catalyst for 911? Those who have fought for coed armed services should ask themselves “Why do they hate us?”