[Newspoetry] Health Care Reform and Obama

[DL Emerick]

Liberals and Progressives.

 

We hoped, by nominating and electing a most centrist rational man,

a most moderate conservative, like Barack Obama,

that he would govern to the left a little bit, in order to keep us aboard.

 

But, that has not happened.

 

Why?  Let analysts contend over causes.

 

I offer my own belief, as an opinion.

I think President Obama still believes in the inherent goodness of man, of
men.

Whereas I have long believed that men are far more opportunistic,

Rational in the crafty sense, of advancing first their images,

In the form of their ideas, the shadows of proclaimed ideals,

The substance of which are often vaporous and empty.

 

Obama's Nobel speech, last week,

And David Brook's OpEd today, report that Obama knows of evil,

That he knows that men may conspire together to do evil,

And that he knows that evil ought to be opposed.

 

Brooks even goes suggestively farther, almost Jewish,

Hinting that Obama may know that evil is resident in every man,

That evil comes, sometimes from too vigorous an opposition ---

But Brooks does not hint, of the other failure,

Of flaccid indecisiveness in the face of vigorous and unreasonable
opposition.

 

Obama made the case, and it was a poor one,

That America should stay in Afghanistan -

But, in truth, there is no reason for America to be there, anymore ---

Not even the possibility that Talibani might rule their own country,

And throw out the exceptionally corrupt puppet dictator, Karzai.

The reason we ought to leave Afghanistan, now is simply this:

Al Qaeda is no longer a presence there - they moved to Pakistan.

As for aiding Pakistan, there is no hope for American foreign policy there,
either.

Even today, in the NYT we read that one of the Al Qaeda gang lords is their
agent,

Because Pakistan has territorial ambitions with respect to Afghanistan.

 

(I have long held that America chose the wrong partner on the Indian
sub-continent -

That our truest natural ally was never Pakistan, but India, and Indian
democracy.)

 

Our present Mid East foreign policy perpetuates the grave mistakes of the
Bush years,

Excepting, perhaps, the very slight opposition that we are now giving to
Israel,

To her ultra-right wing government, attempting to pressure Israel toward
peace,

As we should have been doing during the Bush years,

Instead of increasing Israeli irrationality and irresponsibility.

 

There has been some good, In Obama foreign policy -

We are working to reverse and to end the war criminal practices of the Bush
gang.

We are working to end the highly aggressive "missile defense" programs,

Provocative of conflicts, the high-tech-subsidies of the MIC that Bush
sponsored,

Including the irrelevant, cost-ridden and overrun, new fighter bomber
programs.

 

We even have opened some widows to the left, in Latin American policies,

And inching (millimetering?) forward in good policies for sub-Saharan
Africa.

 

So, it has not been a great year, but still a better year than any of the
Bush years.

 

Problems remain.  I still think Hilary Clinton fail to represent the Obama
group -

And that his choice of her was too optimistic, as was his decision to retain
Gates -

And, his even worse choice to hire Geitner at Treasury, and to retain
Bernanke at the Fed.

 

All of that is Obama's choice, to lean to the right, looking for
bi-partisanship.

 

And, that is where Obama fails, in my opinion -

To understand that there is middle, there is a bimodal political world,

And that the middle ground has vanished.

 

Evil?  Yes, it's there and it's called "conservative", if you're a
progressive like me -

Why?  Because you can see how the GoP appeals to every base instinct,

And not at all to any universal ideal, except the greed principal,

Desiring the law of the jungle, of an all out competition,

Which the principle of civil society supposes men must abandon,

To live together in peaceful co-operative communities.

 

And, do not even get me started, on domestic law,

Of how Obama has ineptly led, in my estimation, the health care debate,

And allowed the conservatives to control the game -

And finally come down, today, to a regressive health care bill, in the name
of reform.

 

I'm nauseated and will not vote for regressive laws, nor the lawmakers who
make them.

 

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