A NOXious Protest
I did not attend Saturday’s protest in front of the White House for many reasons, including caring for an ailing parent. But there was something very bothersome about the event that was troubling from the beginning. Then it hit me. The NOXL sign repulsed me. Yes, no on XL. But with the Obama campaign logo as the ‘O’ it was an endorsement of him, nonetheless. It could have been a retake of a photo in Berlin with a swastika and the words, “Please be nice to the Jews”. It would still be an endorsement of Nazism, and thus, this is an overt endorsement of all things Obama. He’s still their guy and needs only to be redirected. (I’m making no connections between him and Hitler, but commenting on the effective use of symbolism.)
Damn fools every one of them who carried that sign!
It would be a waste of ink to go into the myriad of details as to how Obama has sold out the environmental community from Day One and has no intention of giving anything more than lip service to them in the next 3+ years. He’s punked them like he did to the entire anti-war movement, the civil liberties community, and the poor overall.
What is telling is the state of the left/liberal establishment that continually sees Obama as a cult-like hero. This kind of worship deadens any attempt to objectively ascertain who one’s defenders are or who one’s nemesis is. Ronald Reagan, apparently Obama’s own hero for obvious reasons both programmatically as well as personally, may not have been book smarter than Obama, but clearly understood how to fake it and make people enjoy being faked out. With Obama, it’s always waiting for him to do the right thing, but never delivering. Obama is a cult figure not yet at that demigod status, and likely not to reach it.
Is it depressing or laughable when liberals praise Obama for taking Bush’s fumbled football and making a touchdown towards their mutual goalpost? Is one only a war criminal if he has an “R” next to his or her name? One may never have read the Constitution while the other taught it but to both of them it was a great work of fiction. President Bush was certainly no friend of the poor but he did talk about them. “And, in the next bold step of welfare reform, we will support the heroic work of homeless shelters and hospices, food pantries and crisis pregnancy centers — people reclaiming their communities block-by-block and heart-by-heart. My administration will give taxpayers new incentives to donate to charity.” Speech to Republican National Convention , Aug 3, 2000
Coincidentally, in both Bush’s and Obama’s post re-election State of the Union Address, they both used the word ‘poor’ just once. Bush had a philosophy of ‘conservative compassion’. Sure it was a cheap way of removing all government support to help the poor but it was a cornerstone of his philosophy of how to bring them up to middle class status. What is Obama’s philosophy? He doesn’t have one and never campaigned on issues of poverty except with regard to education. His approach is to dismantle public education and the unions and provide them with untested (ironic, isn’t it) charter schools and private enterprises.
How many times have there been ‘that’ seminal moment in the Obama administration that his minions should have had that ‘aha’ moment, when they see he’s no different, and often far worse, than previous administrations? Maybe now when he approves the pipeline, as he is already showing strong support for fracking, that his League of Conservation Voters allies will finally wake up and see how duped they have been all along. It is funny that it’s the conservative Sierra Club that’s taking the initiative on civil disobedience, even while they and others wave the Obama logo around.
Myles B. Hoenig is a veteran ESOL teacher in Prince George’s County, MD.