PK
I think you should direct your frustration towards the system, not Obama.
The backtracking and compromises on the part of Obama are as a result of the intransigence of the Republicans in the form of their petty contrarianism(of which both parties are guilty) and the media in the form of misinformation(primarily fox news).
Everything that Obama has tried to do in terms of policy, lawmaking, and restructuring has been in the effort of bringing an anachronistic U.S governmental and military structure into the twenty first century.
The United States before Obama, and due to his inability to perform in reform, during Obama is an entity still living in a state far too akin to that during cold war. This is evidenced in the attitudes of the media to China and to other nations that the U.S finds itself in opposition. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the U.S has been arrogant and a bully in international politics for far too long. 9/11 was the world telling the U.S that it can’t throw it’s weight around without consequences. Bush did not listen to that warning, but persipitated the situation with his ignorance and his arrogance, and by responding to a problem with the same actions that caused it in the first place. I quote Albert Einstein, ‘‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’’. The U.S government is indeed in this category, if not also amnesiac, and paranoid to the point of not seeing the real threats.
All systems are self preserving, but are at the whim of their environment for their survival. Obama(and those who support him) is trying to be an agent of evolution in the system in order to adapt to a new geopolitical environment. The difficulties facing the U.S has nothing to with the world being are harsher place, because your environment is only as harsh as your unsuitability to survive in it. The system is trying to preserve itself at the expense of the American people, and refuses to evolve.
I see people like Glenn Beck saying(aside from his megalomaniacal and psychotic, manipulative rantings) that the U.S needs to get back to the ideas of it’s ‘‘founding fathers’’, and of course he is wrong. He is so resistant to change that he is trying to promote regression!? He is missing the point (I am going to forgoe expressing my frustrations at the religious nature of the american political system at great effort). Looking back at the founding of the nation would not be a bad idea if you looked at the willingness of the founding people to be dynamic in their approach to forming a system and the fact that the founding of the United States was a casting off of an anachronistic system that was out of touch with reality. The British were running the place like a colony, when it had grown into a fully fledged and independant socio-economic entity. The current system is running the U.S like a Cold War super-power where it’s enemies could not strike at it directly, and only fought open pitched warfare. 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that to be folly, and the U.S is finding nigh on impossible to react to said change. The Cold War mentality was simple and that of the preceeding millenia…‘‘Them And Us’’. The government found it quite easy to manipulate the population through simplistic rhetoric that exploited a sometimes real, but always hyperbolised fear. Now we live in the age of information, and the age of ideas. The post cold war administrations (and it must be said, corporations) have not found it so easy to manipulate the populace… ‘‘That intangible, unrelatable, and unidentifiable Idea…and Us’’, is not so effective.
Sorry for digressing, but I feel it was justified and worthwhile in moving the discussion on.