One of the leitmotifs of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is Amor Fati - which he takes to mean the ability to love and learn from that which does us harm. That when we are done wrong or suffer hardship we should strive to glean from such suffering the opportunity to learn and to grow.
I don't really quite know where Obama completely lost me. It was probably the tar sands. While I have often been highly critical of the President, I have had trouble making up my mind about how much support, if any, to continue to provide. I think I stopped liking him a while ago... probably after a few months in office he became just another politician.
I have spent the interim vacillating between calls to outright anarchy to just sucking it up and digging in to a deep survival trip. However, regardless of my desperate attempts to find some firm ideological yet non-dogmatic ground on which to stand and defend some principles amid a sea of squishy thirdwayism, I have always carried in me the realization that Obama is also a teacher to those who have become - either gradually or all of a sudden - utterly disappointed in him...
Smee: I've just had an apostrophe.
Captain Hook: I think you mean an epiphany.
Smee: [gestures his fingers to his head] Lightning has just struck my brain.
Captain Hook: Well, that must hurt.
Obama has been a teacher to me because he has reminded me that politicians are simply not to be trusted. They do not work for you and me; they work for the people who really run this country, and by now I think all of us, regardless of any other beliefs we may have, can agree on who those people are.
I'm a politician, and that means when I'm not kissin' babies, I'm stealin' their lollipops.
When I stopped believing in this President, I stopped believing in all Presidents, past and future. Bush was a big awakening for me politically, and Obama even more so. (Actually, I must confess that it was language that really politically awakened me: I bought a book on linguistics by a certain Professor Chomsky... half of it turned out to be about politics; I was hooked). I stopped believing in Gore... I never really 'believed' in Hillary. Those might not come as a surprise to a lot of people. But I also stopped believing in Grayson, and Kucinich. And that only really leaves Sanders. And, at the end of the day, Sanders is still a politician.
I have lived in a 'socialist' country (with 'Socialized Medicine' that was instituted by a Fascist, as it just so happens). Most people in European countries with liberal governments don't put their politicians on pedestals: they excoriate them every chance they get, regarding the political class as just above petty thieves - this is their plebeian privilege. We Americans, however, with our democratic and egalitarian ways, seem to be obsessed with elevating our politicians to the level of royalty: ever seeking Camelot.
So please, the next time you consider holding up your favorite Democratic Politician up as the better alternative, learn this lesson from Obama: all politicians lie, cheat, betray, and steal, it is simply their nature, it is what they do.
Many of you who have been around since 1968 will understand what I am talking about. For the others, for those like me who have been looking around confusedly for the last few years, know that none of these bastards, no matter how charismatic, no matter how eloquent, no matter what paragons of virtue they appear to be in public, can be trusted one iota.