Not up to par

Like many other liberal people, I pinned a lot of hope on the dramatic change from a Bush administration to an Obama one as being the end of several policy directions that I saw as abhorrent.

Unlike many people on “the left”, I was consciously being rational about my expectations. I knew that Obama intended to govern as a “centrist”For American values of “centrist”, which of course looks pretty “right” from where I’m standing, of course. and that he wasn’t going to immediately undo everything of Bush’s that I disagreed with.

But… even discounting my expectations with a hard dose of rationalism, it’s really getting to the point where I’m disappointed not in a “huh, that’s more pragmatic than I would have liked” way, but rather in a “OK, seriously, HAVE A PRINCIPLE” way.

I think it started with the “covering up abuse photos” thing; there had been many things before that, but that was the first one that really made me wonder if there was too much pragmatism going on, and really not enough idealism.

Or maybe it was defending DOMA in court. That’s just bullshit.

There have been lots of other cases, but just lately it seems like the flood is unending.

He’s keeping the practice of rendition, but a nicer rendition with no torture (which does kind of beg the question of why prisoners need to be removed from US soil, if nothing illegal in the US would happen to them…)

He’s keeping, and possibly expanding, Bush’s crazy All You Data Is Belong To Me border strategy. (Truecrypt represent, yo.)

And now he’s explicitly extending several of the more disturbing components of the Patriot Act.

Again, those aren’t the only things, but the number of straws on the camel’s back at this point is frankly spine-threatening.

No, I don’t wish the election had gone the other way–if this is where we end up with the smart, sane, centrist President, I hesitate to imagine where we would have ended up with Old Angry Guy and Crazy Narcissist Incompetent–but damn, I am now officially disappointed in Obama.

Oh, and since I’m being all judging, the fact that none of these things generated the same level of national media attention as Obama calling Kanye a jackass–and why shouldn’t he? Dude is a jackass.–is an absolute indictment of American democracy.