Let it happen...make it happen... wonder what happened ?

I often ponder on the way hopes have been dashed - political hopes for the USA, that is. The situation came into clear focus when I came across some words from a 2007 Guardian piece. Jan Morris, a remarkable woman (who was not always female), British, historian, novelist, traveller and author of some 40 books, wrote an affectionate piece about the USA in the UK's Guardian in February of 2007 which I stowed away for future reference. Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated. The American swagger has become bombast, the cocky GI a bully. But with luck the pendulum may be ready to swing back. For any passing reader interested in knowing more of Ms Morris's natal chart, see my post HERE.

Lines from her Guardian piece:

"..............Perhaps, with a future new president already champing at the bit, we are about to witness its rebirth. As a foreigner I am immune to the rivalries or seductions of American party politics, but I have loved the old place for 60 years, and I simply pray for an American leader to give us back its baraka, as the Arabs say - nothing to do with religion or economics or power or even ideology, but the gift of being at once blessed and blessing.................All it needs is someone with a key to unlock that Idea again, and I hope it will be that next president, whoever it is, even now gearing up for the election. Please God, may it be a poetic president. Inspiration has been the true engine of American success, and all its greatest presidents have been people with a divine spark. The dullards may have been efficient, respected or influential, but the Jeffersons and the Roosevelts, the Lincolns and the Kennedys have all been, in their different ways, artists.......
So may it be a president with the key of original inspiration who can release the Idea from its occlusion. "

Jan Morris's optimistic, perhaps naive, hopes haven't materialised. Here are the first paragraphs of a piece by Dave Lindorff published a few days ago at This Can't Be Happening blog: Playing to Lose? Obama’s Just Another Chicago Player Throwing the Game ~
(Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

If President Obama had been the commander of Allied forces during the invasion of Normandy 1944, he would have cut a deal with the Nazis when they launched the counter-offensive called the Battle of the Bulge, and WWII would have ended in Europe with a divided France and a still-extant Third Reich into the 1950s. If he had been president in 1965, we wouldn’t have Medicare today. If he had been Rosa Parks, black people might still be riding at the back of the bus.

The current president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, commander in chief of the most awesome military the world has ever known, is the most pathetic negotiator in the history of modern politics. Either that or he wants to lose.

During his first term, we watched him inexplicably water down his health reform program before it even got started, removing the option of a Canadian-style state-run insurance program known as “single-payer” from consideration, and then cutting deals with the insurance industry, the hospital industry and the pharmaceutical industry, before going to Congress with a plan that ended up being a gift to all three.

We watched him cave early on in negotiations over a crisis economic stimulus plan in 2009, giving Republicans a $425-billion tax cut that did nothing to boost jobs in return for getting a measly $425-billion in stimulus funding approved. He caved quickly too on the plan to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The list of Obama premature cave-ins is long and ugly.

Now, when he is almost by accident in an unassailable position to have the hugely unfair and damaging Bush tax cuts for the rich finally expire on December 31, leaving Republicans stuck in January with having to pass Democratic legislation restoring tax cuts for just the middle class, he is giving it away, offering gratis an undermining of Social Security benefits for all Americans by way of a subtle change in the way inflation adjustments are made in future benefits....... It seems like the only place where this president ever stands his ground is in his insistence on killing lots of innocent people with armed drones in countries around the world that the US is not at war with (Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc.), and on threatening Iran with attack over its nuclear power program.
Read the rest at the link above.

What happened? What really happened? I've wondered about this many times, and have come up with three possibilities (there may be others). I still can't decide which is most likely:

#1. Barack Obama actually believed his own 2008 campaign speeches, he truly was a "progressive", a charismatic strongly left-leaning liberal in his ideals, but once elected was made aware of what was expected - nay, demanded , of him by The Real Powers That Be. If their demands on his policy direction were to remain unmet....? Three letters answer that: JFK. And who could honestly blame him if he found himself forced to meet their demands?

#2. Barack Obama was "handpicked" by The Real Powers That Be very early on - even before his run for a Senate seat. His background, abilities and experience seemed tailor-made to be further groomed to manufacture a charismatic faux saviour of the masses, trodden down for 8 years by George W. Bush and his pals - said treading of the masses, of course, had been part of a plan too. Backing this manufactured but highly polished Barack Obama with all the weight of the mainstream media (also under the thumb of The Real Powers That Be) meant that even a strong run by Hillary Clinton, previously assumed to be heir apparent to the Democrat crown, was defeated in 2008. Once elected the faux saviour could begin to tread the path for which his manufacturers had groomed him.

#3. Barack Obama wasn't ever the least bit "liberal" at core, but in truth was a strongly right-leaning centrist, also clever and quite devious. He saw a chance of acquiring power via, at best the presidency, at worst a place in the Senate and went for it. His plan, devised by himself, aided by others, was to feign to espouse exactly what the people, fed up to the teeth after 8 years of Republican rule, were craving: a true populist liberal president. He played the part well. The play was received by the masses with much greater enthusiasm than he'd ever expected. Once elected he rapidly reverted to his natural right-leaning position. The people looked on, slack-jawed, unwilling to believe that they had been deceived. The people soon began making excuses.......and, even after another dose of exactly the same medicine, many of them still are still doing so.