Reply #14: Which leads to the same conclusion...

[PurityOfEssence]

Yes, your point is well taken: those who believe in something rather than believe in someone or some organization are going to be actuality-oriented and disgusted by the shilly-shallying favor-currying of ultramoderates who really only seek the continuation of control. Even though life exists in the middle, we ARE defined by our extremists, and much as ideologues are tiresome and often counterproductive, they DO actually stand for something, unlike the Clintonian-Obamian molly-coddlers and glad-handers.

There has been a dangerous miscalculation by Obama and this Administration: they were swept into power by a tide of frustration, and the expectation at hand was that they were going to be different. On far too many counts, they simply aren't. It's one thing to be disillusioned at mealy-mouthed appeasers, but it rankles much more when these politicians made a grandstanding ballyhoo about being "new" and "different". Somehow the same-old same-old doesn't sting as much when it comes from some party hack who never really promised that much, but the danger of Obama is that he reveled in being the blank slate onto whom everyone could write his/her dearest hopes and dreams. That's a simple recipe for broad-spectrum disappointment.

Irony awaits us as Obama gets blamed for the unemployment that was caused by the reactionaries who've run this country for the past almost thirty years. He could have done more to contain the problem, but it would have meant a WPA-like set of policies that directly hired people, and he simply can't bring himself to do this out of fear of the private enterprise ideologues and possibly more inherent corporatism than people would like to believe. Leading is much different from campaigning; it's a lesson he may never learn.