While Global Warming is an interesting topic it was Naomi's aside at the end of an interview with Amy Goodman that explains why I and so many others are jaded with Obama, the new Big O -
To hear this part of the interview go to the 53 minute mark in the show and listen to the end.
Ultimately it comes down to this - Obama is a super brand and as Namoi says "We think we hear the message we want to hear, but if you really parse it, the promises aren’t there, it’s really" our "emotions" that we are listening to -
That's just the nature of a super brand - its amorphous, more apparent than real - something that we create in our own mind and project onto an entity.
She goes on to say "I think that that explains in some sense the paralysis in progressive movements in the United States where we think, Obama stands for something because we" allowed or made ourselves believe he cares for the same things we do. The nasty reality however is that he doesn't and that "we don’t really have much to hold him to because, in fact, if you look at what he said during the campaign, like any good super brand, like any good marketer, he made sure not to promise too much, so that he couldn’t be held to it."
So, the more we go back and examine what Obama has said and done the less good news there is for the progressives in the Democratic Party. What we are going through right now is simply a process of realizing that the Big O ain't who we think he is. Once we have gotten over that its time to focus on the real issues (the war, health care, banking/wall street reform, global warming & etc-) and realize that Obama ain't our friend - he's just another obstruction on the way to reaching our goals.
