Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Obama didn't make history after all. He wasn't a teleprompter demi-god standing athwart of history. He was Carter and Ford. He was there to be forgotten. He didn't change the world. He wasn't the messiah. He was merely mortal. Just another politician who will sag and age. Who will, in the end, be photographed like Bill Clinton, lonely and lost in a world that has passed him by.
Obama and his supporters loved talking about history. His victory was historic. They were on the right side of history. History was an inevitable arc that bent their way.
The tidal force of demographics had made the old America irrelevant. Any progressive policy agenda was now possible because we were no longer America. We Were Obamerica. A hip, happening place full of smiling gay couples, Muslim women in hijabs and transgender actors. We were all going to live in a New York City coffee house and work at Green Jobs and live in the post-national future.
The past was gone. We were falling into the gorgeous wonderful future of dot com instant deliveries and outsourced everything. We would become more tolerant and guilty. The future was Amazon and Disney. It was hot and cold running social justice. The Bill of Rights was done. Ending the First and Second Amendments was just a clever campaign away. Narratives on news sites drove everything.
Presidents were elected by Saturday Night Live skits. John Oliver, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee were our journalists. Safe spaces were everywhere and you better watch your microaggressions, buddy. No more coal would be mined. No more anything would be made. The end of men was here. The end of the dead white men of the literary canon. The end of white people. The end of binary gender and marriage. The end of reason. The end of art. The end of 2 + 2 equaling 4. This was Common Core time. It was time to pardon an endless line of drug dealers. To kill cops and praise criminals. To be forced to buy worthless health insurance for wealth redistribution to those who voted their way to wealth.
This was Obama's America. And there was no going back. We were rushing through endless goal posts of social transformation. The military fell. Then the police. Now it looks as quaint as anything from the 50s, the 70s or the 80s. A brief moment of foolishness that already appears odd and awkward. And then one day nostalgic. It wasn't the future. It's already the past. It's history.
Scalia died. Hillary Clinton was bound to win. And she would define the Supreme Court. Downticket races would give her a friendly Senate. And then perhaps the House.
But there is no right side of history. There is only the side we choose.
The Obama era was permanent. It was history. Now it is history.
Its shocking ascendancy has been paired with an equally shocking descent. The Obama era is done. It's gone. It's over. It was wiped from the pages of history in one night that left Congress and the White House in Republican hands.
It would have been bad enough if Jeb Bush had succeeded Obama. That would have been inconvenient, but not a repudiation. Instead Obama's legacy was dashed to pieces. His frantic efforts to campaign for Hillary did no good. The public did not vocally reject him. What they did was in its own way even worse. They brushed past him. They sidelined him. They gave him passable approval ratings while dismissing his biggest accomplishments. They forgot him. They made it clear that he did not matter.
And that is in its own way far more brutal and wounding. They didn't just destroy the Obama era. Instead they dismissed it as if it never existed.
Obama didn't make history after all. He wasn't a teleprompter demi-god standing athwart of history. He was Carter and Ford. He was there to be forgotten. He didn't change the world. He wasn't the messiah. He was merely mortal. Just another politician who will sag and age. Who will, in the end, be photographed like Bill Clinton, lonely and lost in a world that has passed him by.
The Obama era ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. With a national consensus that maybe he didn't really matter so much after all. And those to whom he mattered the most were his enemies determined to undo everything he did.
Obama once thought that he belonged to the ages. Now he belongs in the rubbish bin.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
And so this is how the Obama era of Hope & Change really ends...America Rejected Obama & The Establishment!
Trump victory is a win for the little guy over the elite
And so this is how the Obama era of Hope & Change really
ends. With the world turned upside down, and with President Obama having
to pass the baton to Donald Trump.
That is going to be one helluva inauguration.
Trump stands today as the greatest disrupter in modern politics, the winner of the biggest upset imaginable, but for most of the campaign, he was not even the best argument for his own candidacy. That distinction belonged to the millions upon millions of everyday Americans who found in him the bare-knuckled brawler they were desperately seeking.
Their choice started as a surprise, as Republican primary voters turned their backs on a parade of supposedly better-qualified candidates to make the TV celebrity with the funny hair their battering ram against an arrogant establishment.
Their movement grew and spread until, early Wednesday, as the key states swung red one after another on TV maps, the last walls of resistance came tumbling down. It was a hallelujah moment, the ultimate underdog leading the forgotten masses to triumph. All the more so because Trump’s voters often took great risks and were routinely insulted and demeaned for their passion.
But they wore those insults as badges of honor, proudly calling themselves the “deplorables” and the “irredeemables.”
They would not be deterred, and today they have taken back their country.
Trump’s remarkable victory is their victory. It is a victory for democracy, for the common men and women of America.
The factory workers, the veterans, the cops, the kitchen help, people who plow the fields, make the trains run, pick up the trash and keep the country together and keep it moving — they are all now winners. As one, these cogs of our daily life rose up in a peaceful revolution, their only weapons the ballot box and their faith in the future.
This, the greatest nation ever conceived on Earth, proved once again that America is exceptional because Americans are exceptional.
Trump voters had the courage of their conviction to go against all their betters, all the poobahs and petty potentates of politics, industry and, above all, the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media.
And who, at this extraordinary juncture, dares say that Trump is not worthy of victory and of the salute of his countrymen? He has done what nobody thought he could, overcoming the doubts and scoffs every incredible step of the way.
No candidate in modern times and perhaps ever has suffered such abuse at the hands of the dominant culture. Virtually every day, nearly all the front pages and broadcasters in the entire country vilified him in an attempt to destroy him.
The late-night comics made fun of him like so much trailer trash, Wall Street saw him as a threat, Hollywood looked down on him and even the pope added his two cents of disdain.
It was dirty pool, against any standard of fairness and decency, but that was not the would-be assassins’ biggest mistake. It was that failing to destroy Trump, the elite smart set unleashed its contempt on his supporters.
The effect was the opposite of what was intended. Instead of demoralizing the Trumpsters, the nonstop attacks hardened them and made them more determined to finish what they had started.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/trump-victory-is-a-win-for-the-little-guy-over-the-elite/
That is going to be one helluva inauguration.
Trump stands today as the greatest disrupter in modern politics, the winner of the biggest upset imaginable, but for most of the campaign, he was not even the best argument for his own candidacy. That distinction belonged to the millions upon millions of everyday Americans who found in him the bare-knuckled brawler they were desperately seeking.
Their choice started as a surprise, as Republican primary voters turned their backs on a parade of supposedly better-qualified candidates to make the TV celebrity with the funny hair their battering ram against an arrogant establishment.
Their movement grew and spread until, early Wednesday, as the key states swung red one after another on TV maps, the last walls of resistance came tumbling down. It was a hallelujah moment, the ultimate underdog leading the forgotten masses to triumph. All the more so because Trump’s voters often took great risks and were routinely insulted and demeaned for their passion.
But they wore those insults as badges of honor, proudly calling themselves the “deplorables” and the “irredeemables.”
They would not be deterred, and today they have taken back their country.
Trump’s remarkable victory is their victory. It is a victory for democracy, for the common men and women of America.
The factory workers, the veterans, the cops, the kitchen help, people who plow the fields, make the trains run, pick up the trash and keep the country together and keep it moving — they are all now winners. As one, these cogs of our daily life rose up in a peaceful revolution, their only weapons the ballot box and their faith in the future.
This, the greatest nation ever conceived on Earth, proved once again that America is exceptional because Americans are exceptional.
Trump voters had the courage of their conviction to go against all their betters, all the poobahs and petty potentates of politics, industry and, above all, the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media.
And who, at this extraordinary juncture, dares say that Trump is not worthy of victory and of the salute of his countrymen? He has done what nobody thought he could, overcoming the doubts and scoffs every incredible step of the way.
No candidate in modern times and perhaps ever has suffered such abuse at the hands of the dominant culture. Virtually every day, nearly all the front pages and broadcasters in the entire country vilified him in an attempt to destroy him.
The late-night comics made fun of him like so much trailer trash, Wall Street saw him as a threat, Hollywood looked down on him and even the pope added his two cents of disdain.
It was dirty pool, against any standard of fairness and decency, but that was not the would-be assassins’ biggest mistake. It was that failing to destroy Trump, the elite smart set unleashed its contempt on his supporters.
The effect was the opposite of what was intended. Instead of demoralizing the Trumpsters, the nonstop attacks hardened them and made them more determined to finish what they had started.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/trump-victory-is-a-win-for-the-little-guy-over-the-elite/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)