The Frustration with Obama

The deflation of the hope that led millions of Americans to vote Barack Obama for President of the United States three years ago has been immense. The frustration is growing at such a rate that the pendulum now swings in favor of the ultra-conservative. The promises of that fresh Obama, who hypnotized the world with his sex appeal to such an extent he won the Nobel Peace Prize when peace was only just a possibility, seem to have remained buried in favor of a pragmatism that kills all illusion. Obama now has his sights set on a reelection he doesn’t deserve, and is, like every politician, willing to betray everything, driven by the impulse to win at any price.

Gone is that 5th of November, 2008, and the images and memories of the young people’s celebration, when hundreds of them melted into embraces and joy, making Barack Obama’s victory their own: the dawning of a new future. Hundreds of students from Georgetown University joined together in front of the White House with flags, banners and posters with others who had voted for change to celebrate the victory.

A new generation had spoken from the ballot box, a generation resolved to leave behind the era they had grown up in as children of Reagan’s call to revolution: the era of deregulation, the empire of free market, the accumulation of more wealth by those who were already rich, of indifference in the face of the less fortunate and the increase of precarious work among the middle class. The era of the enthronement of economic success, greed, and ambition as the new social idols. Millions of young people called for the unfulfilled promise to withdraw from the war, to bring home the thousands of soldiers who were fighting a war that wasn’t theirs.

They were resolved to remove the demons of fear from their minds, because they didn’t believe in war, but rather, in what was promised — and Obama began two new international conflicts.

It’s been three years since the young people born into democracy voted for hope — for the promise of a United States united in spite of race or partisan colors, one respectful of diversity, in which honest work would once again be the engine of individual and collective progress, without privileging the financial sectors, for the ethic of individualism. A nation ready to heal wounds, to bury cynicism as the usual method of conduct, where respect for other countries prevailed over the arrogance of force and confrontation. The hope of that new country connected Barack Obama to a country numbed.

This frustration doesn’t only affect Americans; it has spread over many of us and awakened our rage. It’s enraging to see him cut down, cowering before the power of Wall Street and the elite Israelis who continue setting the standard of relations in the Arab world, incapable of instituting a law that would bring justice to millions of immigrants, not just Latin American ones; weak before those Republicans and ultra-conservatives who betray the ideals of their own country for their own partisan struggles. It is infuriating, because at one point he showed a greatness that has now been blurred by human smallness.