Obama tells the nation that he wants us to feel “comfortable” with the government spying on all of our electronic communications and activities. He doesn’t want to alter the warrantless spying on everyone. Perish the thought! He just wants us to feel more comfortable with it.
While he destroys the Fourth Amendment, he says in effect that he had to destroy it in order to save it.
As he blocks innocent people from being released from the gulag of Guantanamo and tortures them with force feedings, he makes soothing speeches to the nation and the world claiming that he really would like to close the prison, really, but he just can’t.
As he persecutes whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, he assures us that he is all for whistleblowing. He’s all for whistleblowers spending the rest of their lives in prison.
As he kills people, including hundreds of children, with drones, he says that he loses sleep at night over these really very difficult decisions. But he’s not going to stop using drones to kill people. No, perish the thought, because he’s really trying to defend American children from being killed … by killing foreign children.
And when George Zimmerman is found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, Obama tells us that it’s a terrible thing to be racially profiled, but the verdict must stand and he’s going to help young black men feel more comfortable … about being profiled.
Which is all really emblematic of what his presidency has been all about: to make more acceptable and get more people comfortable with the atrocious, illegal, murderous, torturous, and unjust policies of the government under Bush and now under Obama.
Are you comfortable yet?
Dennis Loo is a member of the steering committee of World Can’t Wait. His website is dennisloo.com.