Not A Good Thing

To be elected after very public promises of being a fierce advocate for gay rights as well as bringing accountability to war-torturers, it isn't exactly inspiring to see the Administration ferociously and unnecessarily applying and defending bigoted anti-gay laws of which they presumably disapprove while at once refusing to enforce laws on the books that would facilitate bringing war-criminals and torturers to justice as they would presumably surely approve. I am terribly aggravated about all this, although I expect this sort of thing from representative stakeholder politics as everyone should do. And I am very relieved to see intelligent, organized pushback from some quarters of the progressive Netroots that would pressure Congresscritters especially to move on both these fronts and thereby "make him do it" from the left. We'll see how it plays out.

I don't think Obama is homophobic in the least, nor do I think he is a torture-apologist, and those who want to bamboozle the well-meaning into various Third Party irrelevancies by saying so are being silly. And of course those who are taking up these disappointments as occasions to catapult nothing-really-matters blanket cynicism, Bush-Obama equivalency theses, Obama as stealth right-wing tool, and comparable purist narcissisms in a self-congratulatory masturbatory mode remain in my eyes exactly as useless as they have been from day one.

However angry and rebellious I am about the Administration's moves in these areas it remains perfectly true that Obama's election represented an unprecedented and indispensable turning of the political tide in America, that Obama remains the first President in my lifetime with whom I (a pinko-queer who abhors all war, let alone war-crimes) can personally and proudly identify, and that Obama's Presidency remains the best hope for actually-possible progressive change since the New Deal.