The Mysterious Barack Obama

Insofar as it’s the birthday of U.S. President Barack Obama, I thought I’d write this short post, simply to state that the man remains an enigma to me.  What bemuses me about Obama is that an intelligent, sensitive, and extremely powerful person is carrying on an unprecedented attack on civil liberties: in particular, the failure to close Guantanamo Bay, the  support of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), and the  unprecedented robo-prosecution of whistleblowers.  (Some former Bush administration officials were quoted as saying, enviously, “We’d never be able to get away with what the Obama administration has done.”)  I begrudgingly excused this garbage in his  first term.  But now?  Sorry, I’m lost.  Can someone help me here, please?

Having said this, it’s hard to imagine what the U.S. position on energy and the environment would have been had any of his opponents (many of whom wanted to close the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy) had won.  As I told a friend last night,”Our major cities would look like Beijing; you wouldn’t be able to see across the street.”

Perhaps I should just shut up and count my blessings.