One Year On, Obama's "Yes We Can" is Now "Incremental Change We Can Believe In"

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A week or two ago I began to think about the reality that it had been about a year since Obama won the election. And, about a week or two ago, I began to see and read the first conversations about how the 2012 Election is set to begin in the spring of 2010.

I do not know how many Americans can handle the beginning of another election right now. It's too early. We aren't done with the man who currently occupies the White House.

Too many of us have failed to make him create the change we need, too many of us are still willing to buy into this idea that he could go to the root of many of our problems and make things better for a broad swath of America.

At least half of the country still believes in the power of Barack Obama.

I do not know what they believe or have faith in as they cling to these beliefs but my guess is these beliefs in are compartmentalized---separated from the oncoming expansion and escalation of the Afghanistan War, separated from the permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq, separated from Obama's cozying up to Big Banks like Goldman Sachs which placed risky bets on the housing market that heavily contributed to the economic collapse in 2008, separated from the bailout to health insurance companies that will be cloaked in a so-called public option.

The separation of Obama from all the inequities and evils that continue in America's name (the torture, the erosion of American civil liberties, the persecution of the Other, the drone strikes in Pakistan, the bailouts for the richest 1%, the rising costs of living, etc) is the glue that holds this country together. It keeps the country from totally coming apart from the stress of illusions and disillusion that reinforce each other.

The perpetuation of thinking that what we got Election Day is fundamentally better than what John McCain would have been pacifies the masses, keeps the civil unrest significantly depressed, and quells the anger and frustration many are feeling.

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