Obama stands up

MIAMI – They hated him, always. They hated him when he acted as a shadow of his former self, (the Senator from Illinois, and the United States, who had opposed the Cuba embargo and the Iraq war and stood for progressive causes virtually across the board.) They despised them and vowed to make him a one-term president practically before he had assumed office. They derided even as he bent over backwards to meet them much more than half way on economic stimulus, health care, everything. They denounced him as weak on foreign and military policy despite doing what Bush was never able to do – bring Bin Laden to justice. They found his use of force insufficient, never mind the hundreds of air and drone strikes he authorized. They demonized and obstructed Obamacare although he diluted the program to assuage their distaste of anything that could be misconstrued as “socialist.”

They hated him for any reason and no reason. But boy, are they are going to hate him now. Obama has finally stood up, taken off the kid gloves, and begun to fight for the things that we elected him to do. Republicans, reactionaries of all stripes, beware. Meet the real Barack Obama.

The change that has gotten the most attention is how Obama has shed his inhibitions about speaking out about racial injustice in America. Police killings of unarmed black men, of course. But also the mass incarceration of blacks and other minorities for non-violent crimes. Until now, you could accuse Obama of trying to pass for a paler shade of black. Many African have reasonably felt that he had neglected his community. Now they are saying he has really become the first black president.

In Obama’s defense, as the first black president in a nation still afflicted by brazen racism and more importantly, by a much more widespread, subtle and deniable racism, a racism that doesn’t dare speak its name, he must have felt that he had to act in a way that made it possible for all Americans to feel he was the leader of all and to embrace him as such. He also wanted to deny the right-wing demagogues ammunition to enable them to use the race card as a ploy to derail his larger agenda.

Unfortunately for Obama and the country, none of it worked. A minority of haters, backed by zillions of dollars provided by a miniscule clique of very rich and very right-wing people, tried to make life hell for Obama, to torpedo each of his initiatives, to deride every one of his proposals.

But If I remember my physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Politics is not physics, but it isn’t irrelevant to it either. The right’s persistent and sometimes vile bashing of the president was bound to provoke some reaction, even from this cool and collected commander-in chief. You were begging for it. Now you got it. How do you like it?

Race is hardly the only issue on which Obama has challenged the right, and probably not the most important one either. The Iranian deal sticks in the craw of every Republican in Congress and quite a few Democrats of the Israel right or wrong variety, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Since I mentioned Schumer by name, I feel I should say that none of this involves a shadowy and mythical Jewish cabal. That should go without saying, for there are precious few Jews among Republicans in Congress, and the GOP as a block is dead set against the Iran deal.

But the Iran agreement is not an isolated event. The columnists whose work appears in the Wall Street Journal, and who are ever vigilant against any deviation from the norm of U.S. supremacy in the world, have noticed. Although these pundits are almost always right ideologically sometimes they are also right analytically. One such bright light in the toxic fog that pervades the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages recently opined that the Iran deal was not just a change in policy. It represents, in contrast, a different mindset regarding the use of force by the United States. It’s a sane recognition by Obama that not all problems, even in the Middle East, can be solved by military might.

Obama’s unexpected opening to Cuba seems to support the thesis. Secretary of State’s John Kerry’s speech in Havana was almost more significant in what was absent than what was included. Missing were the bellicose words and the arrogant tone. This is a big part of what drove hardliners in this country crazy. How can the United States speak to the Cuban government as a sovereign equal instead of hectoring it and lecturing it?

But the thing that really drove the historical/hysterical Cuban Americans in and out of Congress to the boiling point was that the dissidents were not invited. One can reasonably question this decision. But let’s be serious. You don’t go into somebody’s home and invite along guests hostile to your hosts. That’s especially true when those hostile guests have benefitted, wittingly or unwittingly, from your support–moral, material, or both–as part of a strategy to undermine the very people with whom you are just starting to mend fences.

That would have been the kind of -in-your-face action that would have signaled to everyone, especially wary Cuban officials, that there was no new policy, only a different gloss on the old one.

In saying this, I want to make clear that I cast no aspersions on either the sincerity or the courage of dissidents in Cuba. I am sure most of them do not see themselves or wish to play the role of tools of U.S. designs. But then neither did the 1961 Bay of Pigs invaders, but since then history has taught them that, through U.S. eyes, that’s just what they were. To this day, many of the surviving 2506 veterans are bitter about this realization.

On the domestic front, Obama has gotten serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, especially those from coal-fired electrical plants. His EPA is also working to reduce methane emissions, another major contributor to climate change. And he is also speaking out often against economic inequality.

The question now is not about Obama’s intentions or resolve. The question is whether a Congress dominated by the most right-wing bunch of Republicans in recent memory will let him move another step forward.

What the GOP wants is capitulation, from Obama and from everybody. This Congress seems likely to override Obama’s veto and thereby scuttle the Iran deal unless Iran gets on its knees. The same goes for ending the embargo. And coal-rich states governed by Republicans are getting ready to do battle with the administration by all means necessary.

The fact that in the end Obama chose to do the right thing and wage the good fight is enormously gratifying. But how much can one man do, even a president, in a country each day more dominated by plutocrats and narrow, powerful interests with zero interest in the future of the Earth or the people which it sustains?