This is a follow-up to my previous diary, where I said we progressives carry more of the blame than Obama for what's going on in this country.
This still applies:
I saw a bunch of fucking Twitter tweets... a round of Facebook likes... diaries and comments and spikes of delight on progressive Web sites... a farcical panoply of utter uselessness.
Where are the street protests, the mass rallies, the general strikes?
Where's the civil disobedience?
Why is it still business-as-usual on our streets?
Is our blood boiling as much as we claim? Or is it boiling only enough to transport our useless, hyper-digitalized American asses from computer to sofa, from “community” Web site to HBO?
There's a diary on the rec list at the moment, saying there's "misplaced outrage" over the DOJ's asking for Bush/Cheney war-crimes immunity.
I think "misplaced outrage" is too generous a phrase.
I question whether there's even outrage at all -- some mild agitation perhaps, but not outrage. I see outrage as an all-consuming emotion, one that in the political domain demands release in the form of massive uprisings of the kind seen in Brazil, Egypt, and Turkey. I don't expect anything of the sort to happen in America over Manning's sentence and/or over Bush/Cheney immunity.
(Nor do I expect anything of the sort to happen over the dangerous combination of unparalleled surveillance capability + secrecy + inadequate oversight + documented history of abuse. Speaking of which, we could probably end police corruption by adopting the stringent background checks and HR policies of the NSA, since apparently there aren't any bad apples at all in the NSA, in its contractors, in its subcontractors, and so on.)
As long as we don't want to inconvenience ourselves beyond casting a vote every 2-4 years, we shouldn't expect the president to inconvenience himself, especially not with such a useless and ineffective base behind him. He'll be "pragmatic" and follow the path of least resistance, which in America at the moment generally won't be the morally ideal path but will be an understandable path.
The simple fact is that everyday Americans have a much bigger bully pulpit than the president and Congress combined but can't be bothered using it. That makes us more morally culpable than the president.
It's time to face up to that instead of pointing fingers at Obama.