I’m sick of Obama staying above the fray while that fray is swallowing us whole. My patience with Barack Obama’s patience is at an end. Since leaving office at the beginning of 2017, the former president made it his priority to lay low.
Under normal circumstances, no one could begrudge him that choice. He had just been president for eight years. He was tired. His family was tired. He had more than earned the right to fuck off and enjoy himself, especially given the endless stream of bullshit he had to endure as our first black president.
These are far beyond normal circumstances and he no longer has that right. Over 20,000 Americans are dead. In a blink, national unemployment levels are about to blow the Great Depression’s metrics out of the water. States that are on life support have been forced to compete for vital goods because the federal government has abandoned them. Congress is on fucking VACATION. We’re living through a national death spiral. Right now.
So where are you, Barack Obama? I’m not asking that wistfully. This is not a folk song. I wanna know: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? Oh, Obama is still tweeting good tweets. That’s very nice of him. Know who else is tweeting? All of us. Know what it’s gotten us? NOTHING.
Obama can do far more than tweet, and he hasn’t. This is by design. While our collective house burns to the ground, Obama has chosen to pull a Phil Jackson: eschewing a timeout and remaining firmly on the bench, trusting us to figure it all out for ourselves. Up until his imminent endorsement of Joe Biden, which itself is not a terribly productive action, he deliberately made a point of not getting in the way, which is delightful because Democrats still working in government have taken his lead and ALSO decided to not get in the way of Republicans, nor of our impending doom. The influence that Obama has left on the table has been so staggering as to be obscene. What’s even worse is that his void has been filled by a bunch of his former operatives who have used the Obama brand name to burnish their own halos while they do and say patently awful shit.
These are cynical, fake liberals who have learned to thrive in Donald Trump’s America, and Barack Obama has done nothing to curtail their worst instincts. Even worse, Obama has indirectly inspired a gaggle of Mayor Petes spouting a vacuous “unity” message that has abetted our demise. All of that empty rhetoric is poised to overtake all of the tangible shit Obama did while in office, if it hasn’t happened already. Because Obama hasn’t so much as lifted a fucking finger to stop President Trump from gleefully dismantling his works, which just so happens to have included a functional national pandemic response infrastructure.
If you still get stars in your eyes at the mention of Obama’s name, you can talk yourself into going along with this neglect. You can remind yourself that Obama is famous for playing the long game. After Trump won, he soothed his traumatized staff by reminding them that:
“This is not the apocalypse,” Obama said. History does not move in straight lines; sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes it goes backward. A couple of days later, when I asked the president about that consolation, he offered this: “I don’t believe in apocalyptic — until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.”
If Obama had any real plan to use his lingering popularity constructively, he would have used it by now.
Well guess what, sleepyhead? THE APOCALYPSE CAME. And where are you? Writing a fucking book? Storyboarding your Netflix show? If you’re content to Trust The Process™, perhaps you could clue us the fuck in as to what that process is, or if there even IS one. Your process means NOTHING in a country that is this insanely fucked right now. You have taken great pains to both inspire and groom a next generation of American leaders. Now tell me: how is that generation supposed to do ANYTHING in a country made of rubble? You endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then left her and other progressive lawmakers out on a fucking island, and then smooth-talked Bernie Sanders into endorsing Biden so that the progressive left doesn’t cause too much of a fuss come convention time. You’re hoping your legacy does all the legwork for you. What if there IS no longer an America soon? What purpose will that legacy have served?
I’m sick of Barack Obama staying above the fray while that fray is swallowing us whole. It’s infuriating. My anger at Trump is a given, but I hold a special anger in my heart for Democrats who were meant to supply vehement opposition but have instead given us nothing but a handful of wet shit. If Obama had any real plan to use his lingering popularity constructively, he would have used it by now. Instead, he insists he cannot be a white knight, and we have to sort this all out on our own. I’m sure every Republican he ever caved to is nodding in vigorous approval at the notion.
This is Obama frittering away the good will he generated to no discernible good end. Democratic voters turned out by the millions to vote for Joe Biden not because they love Joe Biden (no one does), but because they love OBAMA. Perhaps they’re hoping that, once Biden is in office, Obama will act as shadow president. Given Biden’s policy platforms (or appalling lack thereof), I see no evidence of that ever happening. I see Obama helping Biden win. But like Biden, he seems to have little interest in what happens after the winning part. And has Obama said fuck all about Biden’s sexual misconduct? Nope. Not a goddamn word. No, instead he’s gonna endorse the fucker wholeheartedly.
I’d vote for anybody over Trump, but did it have to be THIS anybody? Thanks to Obama, I guess it does. Biden is gonna spend the rest of this campaign season being like, “It’s time we stopped saying MY BAD and said MY GOOD instead!” Maybe he’ll stumble bass ackwards into beating Trump with this kind of lazy sloganeering, but I don’t even know if I care anymore.
Because I have much bigger problems to deal with at the moment. I don’t know if I’ll get to see my parents again. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get off COBRA, or how much longer I can afford to pay it. I don’t know if my kids will ever get out of this house again. Will they be able to go back to school? Will they get to fall in love? Will they have jobs one day? What the fuck is waiting for them? For me? For ANYONE?
It would be nice, for a change, if Barack Obama could emerge from his cave and offer — no wait, DEMAND — a way forward. It would be nice if he went Full Chicago and fucking fought for answers. But he hasn’t, and he won’t. THIS is what his legacy should be now. In office, Obama did very little to significantly alter a status quo designed to protect itself. Now, out of power but certainly not out of political capital, our brightest star remains in the shadows. Meanwhile, the current president would like virus death to become an accepted and perpetual fact of life here so that his favorite teevee show — “AMERICA: IT’S GREAT!” — can return from hiatus.
I’m sorry if I find no solace in any of this. I’m sorry if I don’t look at what’s going on, with nurses forced to wear fucking trash bags to keep from getting infected, and seeing it as some grand testament to the American spirit. When you’re as well off as Obama, you can afford to have faith in America. Meanwhile, this is the country that elected Donald Trump president. What kind of asshole country does that? Why would ANY sane person have faith in it? If you have faith in America right now, not only is it tone deaf, it’s also a luxury no one else can afford. There is no unity. There never was, and there never will be. Take it from AOC:
The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved — that’s how you know it’s working. And if (Joe) Biden is only doing things he’s comfortable with, then it’s not enough.
Know who else is comfortable right now? Barack Obama. The man is all hope and no change. And the longer he refuses to take any public action, the more I’ll remember him as a man who said all the right things while, in his cherished long run, not having much to show for it. Wake the fuck up, Mr. President. The arc of the moral universe is no longer long. It is terrifyingly short, and guess which way it’s bending?