I'd been successfully "ignoring" Barack stuff "I don't agree with" this week. I'm the one always arguing with my "purity" friends NOT to vote for Nader or the Greens. I'm a pragmatist. One of the people who KNOWS it's a long march to real democracy.
In fact, I was about to post a diary warning people to prepare for Obama's obligatory "tack to the center," by symbolically pissing off "the base" (in the always dubious effort to attract racists and wingnuts to "go Democratic") and that people should try not to lose sight of the goal. Winning the Presidency.
But yesterday's decision by Barack to side with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, AND throw the GOOD group of Supreme Court Justices under the bus, by GRATUITOUSLY announcing support for "state's rights" to decide who they get to kill, went way beyond mere "triangulation." Scalia country is hardly "center." And if the Justices who decided this fundamental question of who we are as a civilized nation are "wrong," in Barack's view, maybe I need to re-think this Obama stuff. Ugh.
Obama could have just kept quiet yesterday when this Supreme Court decision came down. Even if he personally disagreed with it for some unfathomable reason. Few in Middle American would have noticed, while watching the numbers spin around on gas pumps as they filled up their SUVs. But, like the FISA abortion, it was a guaranteed blow to millions of his real supporters.
And yet there he was on FOX.
Even Barack Obama knows those activist Supreme Court judges are at it again!
Yup, that's what he did.
And he did it on purpose.
I won't belabor the whole concept of states getting to kill people they THINK have committed "heinous" crimes. If you look the word up in the dictionary, you'll find the meaning is a little "arbitrary."
But Obama purposely aligned himself with the Scalia scumbag portion of the Supreme Court for a "news cycle."
Under their reasoning, the majority of voters in Georgia, or Alabama, should be able to decide they want to execute doctors who perform abortions. Hey, it's "heinous" to them! Or perhaps pharmacists who give out birth control to teens. Or men who have sex with men. Or an 18 year old who has sex with a 14 year old. Heck, let's execute them all! (There's way too many people in this world anyway.)
Maybe it's a global warming strategy?
Ok, killing people for being "sexual deviants" isn't really that funny.
But that's exactly what this case is about.
The minority on the Court, and Barack Obama, believe sexual deviants should be executed if it "outrages their community." I fully expect that from Neanderthals like Scalia, and religious wingnuts like Roberts, but I never expected it from Barack Obama.
But there's more.
It's not just about our national obession with offing "sexual deviants," it's about the entire bogus concepts of the state killing people for "Punishment," and "Revenge."
I've often thought if we wanted to REALLY stop kids from tagging my neighborhood with those ugly fat magic markers, we should just string up a few of them in the park.
Ok, not really.
As anybody who with a background in human psychology, or special ed knows, aside from it's moral bankruptcy, Punishment is NOT the best motivation for changing "bad" behaviors. (Intermittant positive reinforcement is a much more powerful tool for motivating "good" behaviors.)
But for those who admit the science is on the wrong side of the executions as "Social Deterrence" concept, there's always Revenge.
It says it right there in the Bible! Revenge is good! (The whole New Testament Christian business of "turning the other cheek" is obviously a hard sell, and easy to ignore.)
So Barack comes down on the Revenge side. Revenge, apparently, is a legit interest of the state. We should kill people who "shock our conscience." Not because it will undo the crime, but because presumably it will make some of us feel better afterwards. (For those of us who don't get off on killing people, Barack seems to be saying, "you'll just have to accept you're a minority in your particular state. The rest of us want to kill people for Revenge.")
I'm sure Obama and his campaign braintrust came out yesterday in an effort to get "ahead" of this story. Just as he's been agressively trying to stay ahead of the spin on hot button issues like the FISA "compromise," which codifies the President being able to ignore the Fourth Amendment. He feared John McCain and his enablers would be out there pointing fingers at him chanting, "Terrorist and kiddie rapist lover!"
So in some sort of attempt to "innoculate" himself from that potential insanely bogus argument by raving wingnuts, he stepped up to the mics yesterday and announced his "long held belief" that the Good Guys on the Supreme Court were just "wrong" in their quaint notion of this nation being one that shares SOME values with the rest of the Western World. That even though we kill FAR more people than any other "democracy," we shouldn't draw a line at killing only those who kill others. We need to EXPAND the number of people we kill.
Those courageous and profoundly ethical Supreme Court Justices (including Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy) were all too liberal for Barack Obama yesterday. Because he wants to become the next President of the United States, and apparently thinks it will help that cause, he gave a big "fuck you" to the court. And a "fuck you" to all of us who have supported its Progressive decisions over the decades. And indeed to everyone else in the world who wishes America could become at least as civilized as old Europe in the way it treats it's citizens.
I'm suddenly feeling profoundly naive that I actually thought I might have a chance in my lifetime to have a President I thought of as a "hero."
Guess not.
I'm sure I'll be voting for the usual guys this November. But the "gusto" is suddenly gone.
And that can't really help Barack, or this country, can it?