What went wrong

Yeah, no way in hell Obama was worse than Bush.

And Obama wasn't even worse than Bush on surveillance - the Patriot Act was Bush's thing. That was most of the work done already.

Obama's greatest fault is that he was a Bush-lite and basically continued many of the Bush-era policies but slightly toned down. We can throw in something about a false hope being worse than an oblique bastard, but I'm not really convinced of that.

They're both worse

He kinda ruined the dollar, created a health care system that can't survive without government bailouts every year, brought in lots of crime from Mexico, terrorists from the Middle East including the nyc terrorist, and left the country 20 trillion in debt.

To be fair, there can literally be no such thing as a good US President because the job at is enforcing the law (which has literally been by porky for porky) and using soft power at home to change the dials of legislation or whatever. The same reason their aren't comrade cops, there can be no comrade president.

I mean, if Google has your data (because collecting it is profitable) and the NSA wants your data (because collecting data can be difficult but we've all already given a fuckload of it to Google, who makes a killing by selling that very data) I'm more than willing to believe that there is a great amount of sharing of data between Google and the NSA/state. (There's been more information leaked about how close the two are but I can't retrieve it right now because I'm supposed to be working).

I only kind of agree that Obama was less hawkish than Bush. Bush probably should get the hawk points because he did invade those countries who obviously didn't attack us, but Obama should get more blame than he did for not only continuing the wars (and the torture) but also expanding those conflicts to Libya, Syria, Somalia, (a handful of places in Africa in limited sorties from what I'm aware of) and Yemen, to name some of the bigger ones.

It makes sense that the surveillance state would expand under Obama (because the tech to access the internet got ubiquitous for tens of millions of people/smart phones became a thing during Obama's terms) but that doesn't really excuse lying to the American people and attacking whistle-blowers to the extent that he did.

Not going to mention how he didn't even touch the issue of the drug war. That's simply state-sponsored terrorism against the people - anyone who stands for that should get the rope.

I know a few people who kind of expected Obama to be the next FDR - and he had really good rhetoric during his candidacy that even for someone who is quite a bit further left than the average Amerilard could rally behind, but in the end he was about as big of a conman as Trump in that regard. That should have been a lesson to liberals, demand actions and not pretty faces and nice words, but with how much they hate Trump and the republicans they'll be willing to justify any crime (and they are war crimes - in a just world Obama would be marched to Nuremberg along with the congress and the staff at the pentagon) but the liberal establishment will put Obama on a pedestal. The first half-white president. Wow. What a guy.

Nothing.
He did exactly what he was meant to do: Consolidate neoliberal policies both foreign and domestic to reduce tension. Notice how much of the complaining about guantanamo, the patriot act, surveillance, and foreign intervention wars vanished while he was in office?

Also this:

Letting loose all those drug dealers who destroyed countless lives was another example of the monkey business that this country didn't deserve.

This thread needs more Jimmy "Stalin Should Have Killed 60 million More" Dore:
youtube.com/watch?v=F5K7UmYkD1I

...

When Jimmy fully radicalizes what do you guys think he'll be? I wouldn't be surprised if he started advocating for a Deleon style industrial government.

Drones have made boots on the ground largely obsolete

Not true, all you can really do with aerial drones is bomb stuff, drones aren't good at actually occupying and holding down areas.

being black

If you follow Obama's history in offices, his actions as president shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise. What went wrong is that the kool-aide of identity politics and belief that nobody could pull another Hoover made people think that a new president during the greatest crisis outside the Great Depression would automatically be a friendly Keynesian.

Most of the most intrusive massive surveillance techniques used by the NSA and CIA happened under Obama's watch, Obama is the one that signed off on repealing habeas corpus, Obama is the one who started using the fucking Espionage Act again like crazy to intimidate whistleblowers.

No one in the American government is left and Obama was just as shitty as those that came before him.

Fuck American politics.

And
Capitalism and little bit of capitalism

Everything.

There was never anything right about Obama. Obama set the stage for today's identitarian hysteria by explicitly pushing the Democrats down their "coalition of color" path.

Prolly a neo-syndicalist

State Syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist? I'll be sad if Dore just becomes a clone of Noam Chomsky.

chomsky is only superficially the latter, but the former is obviously worse

capitalism

We don't live in a fantasy where one man can magically fix all our problems.

what could possibly go wrong?

Congress handles most of the shit that goes on inside the Government, not the President. If nukes ever come running, it's going to be aimed for the Upper House.

...

What if Obama had implemented Islamic Communism and rounded up all the whites that waved the confederate flags and small business owners in FEMA camps like the right wing media originallyvpredicted?

Obama did exactly what he was meant to do. Put a fresh kind face on America while ramping up imperialism abroad and domestic repression at home.

Bush was spying on Quakers as threats for protesting the Iraq War, and put all that spying power into law. "Most intrusive" seems almost moot, because the legalization and employment of unwarranted wiretapping and email collection and whathaveyou were Bush-era. There's still stuff made possible by the Patriot Act (that probably isn't limited to expired passages) and the "security" boom that came with it that we haven't properly gotten to yet - like installing cameras in restaurants with lenses that can make out your signature on a receipt from across the room. Of course, with the proliferation of smartphones that's almost silly, now.

Right about the espionage act, though.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA