"I get a sense among certain young people on social media that the way of making change is to be as judgemental as possible about other people. If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because 'Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out!'"
Obama was part of the transition from a Boomer/neoliberal America to a younger more progressive one. Transitions are hard and while he didn’t walk the tightrope perfectly he could have done a lot worse. His defensiveness is pretty justified IMO.
Considering that congress openly vowed to stop everything he attempted to do, and how the undercurrent of bigotry and racism tainted so much of his opposition, he did damned well, and I say that as someone who has serious issues with a number of his policies and decisions.
A decent if not great President. History will of course note him as the first black President but otherwise he'll be remembered as an "average" one.
Why? Has he become a good person, and good at his job yet? No? Then fuck him. And fuck you for your low standards. Partisan drone.
Kind of related, but Deadspin - a "sports" website full of "woke" millennial bloggers that all assumed their opinions were the correct ones when it came to everything and cast down judgement on everyone but themselves - is imploding today. Almost everyone has quit, mostly due to them being spoiled whiny woke bitches
More like, calling people out to make yourself feel morally superior isn't the way to achieve lasting change.
The character question is an interesting one. It was not unexpected that the pendulum would swing back the other way and we would see a Republican elected, but why this Republican? I would say it was because, not in spite of his extremely poor character. Too many voters were just feeling cynical and pissed off, and wanted to take a wrecking ball to the whole system.
This. There's a difference between engaging in activism in order to make the world better, and just pointing out everyone's faults without doing anything constructive. It actually speaks pretty strongly against Trump, in that you see a lot of people call him names, but what good is it if you don't get out and change people's minds? If you don't go and vote? Armchair activism is useless, and often does more harm than good.
There is no biologically defined line at which you are "black" or "white". Saying someone is black (or them referring to themselves in that way) builds on the historical attitude where whiteness was the pure default, and any "contamination" of that pushed you into being black. So by all the standards of the people who created those terms, to say someone was half black was a meaningless statement. You were either all white, or labelled by whatever else you had mixed in.
"People who do really good stuff have flaws." I think we forget that some times. It's okay to disagree. I don't like how both sides have become so polarized that they've both adopted the "you're either for us or against us" mentality. The system was never perfect because humans were involved. But, I think we've lost a certain level of political discourse. We no longer talk about things. We yell at each other in a soundbite fueled game of one-upmanship. I always felt like Former President Obama was a well-meaning, genuine man. I just disagreed with a lot of his policies. Isn't that okay?
He grew up a richie with a white mom. Hardly representative of the American Black Experience. Otherwise your point is spot on. OTOH I won't try to read Oldfella's mind to suggest that was his point, although it's inferable.
Dubyah Bush was a nice guy out of his depth who I disagreed with. I didn't hate him. I hated what he did to the country, yeah. Trump is malicious. He means harm. To people I care about. You're allowed to hate that.
I've had a weird run of Presidents in my life time. Excluding Trump, I've felt like all of them, at least nominally, cared more about the country than themselves. Some had better character than others. Some were more effective than others. But, for the most part, well-meaning. Except for Trump. Not only is he the first President where I don't feel obligated to use the President title before speaking their name, I don't for one microsecond think he's out for anyone but himself. I don't think he's well-meaning. I don't think he's genuine. He's a stereotypical resident of Galt's Gulch. I can find not one redeeming quality.
