obamathoughts

The president-elect is not our lover. He is not a potential messiah. He's not going to save us.
And in my opinion, that's okay.

I know, I know, this might be considered blasphemy by Obama extremists on both sides of the spectrum. But why?

When Obama put the words "hope" and "change" under his picture on a poster did that really convince so many people that he represents all possibility of hope + change? Did we forget how to hope for change outside of electoral politics? In grassroots social movements and activism? In real community organizing?

I know I already blogged about "cautious optimism," and that's still how I feel about Obama...although I admit I'm getting increasingly cautious by the day. Yes, he appointed Rahm Emmanuel, whose father was a member of the Irgun (a Zionist terrorist group) and now he has this anti-gay, anti-choice pastor delivering the invocation at his inauguration. Of course I'm disappointed. But my hope doesn't lie in Obama so I'm not crushed, betrayed, devasted. These were bad decisions. He's the president of the United States. The president of the United States makes bad decisions, it's probably somewhere in the job description. But he might not declare war on hella countries like McCain probably would have. So I'm still glad about that. He's not Bush. Glad about that. He's got a new dialogue going about race by the mere fact that he's a Black president. I'm pretty happy about that dialogue too - it's great to see more (white) people acknowledge that race exists and, for a minute, forget to pretend that they're "colorblind." He made politics a lot more "hip" and I'm glad about that too- - it gets a lot more people aware and involved.

To some who identify as "more radical" this probably makes me a sellout, but I disagree. I'm not selling out and I'm not in love with the guy. But now he's in office and, unless your daddy owns an oil company and your brother is the governor of Florida, you can't change that. I just feel like hating Bush took a lot of energy from the progressive movement, and I don't want us to re-focus on tearing apart Obama...there are so many more productive things for us to focus on. And I know there were a lot of organizations dedicated specifically to hating (or impeaching or criticizing or whatever) Bush...what are they doing now? How can we re-allocate their resources and memberships? What happens next?

I'm never going to be a flag-waving patriot. Even if Obama were perfect, he's not powerful enough to reverse this nation's history of colonization, genocide, militarism, and capitalist greed. I'm not gonna say that that's okay, but it's true. I support hope but let's be reasonable, people. Let's hope for the future, let's hope for specific victories, and let's never let hope be represented by the flag of an imperialist nation.

So, those are my most recent obamathoughts. What are yours?

...Who would have thought? Me, the practical one? It feels weird.