Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

Dear Mr. President, I would like to tell you how disappointed I am in your presidency so far. I would like to, but I don’t think I have the words to express it adequately.

You promised. You promised the beginning of a new era, a new way. And you told us not to expect you to do it alone, not to go home but to stay involved, to keep up the fight, in short, to help you.

And then you took office. What happened? When since have you inspired us and led us and asked us to help? You began by leaving many of the various and Constitutionally questionable policies of the previous administration untouched, and asked us to be patient. You said it wasn’t time yet to close Gitmo, and asked us to be patient. You have so far refused to pursue any significant prosecutions of the previous administration in spite of mounting evidence that such prosecutions are sorely needed, and asked us not to look back.

None of that has been very inspiring, Mr. President, but most of us have continued to give you the benefit of a doubt.

Yet now, most recently, on health care and climate change, you have refused to draw a line in the proverbial sand and state unequivocally what is and is not acceptable — and even while failing to fight for a public option in a health care “reform” legislative battle (that now appears to be the war-time equivalent of providing free armaments and ammunition to the enemy), you pronounced an abysmally inadequate agreement in Copenhagen a great success.

During all of this, when did you inspire us? When did you ask us for our help? When did you take a stand, a specific stand, a real and unequivocal stand, and say to us, I will not turn, but I cannot do this alone, I need your help, I need you to come forth with the passion you had during the campaign and make your will known in terms that our detractors cannot mistake, and cannot deny, and cannot overwhelm with mere propaganda?

The sad fact is that that moment never came.

Yes, you have had a very full plate. Your predecessor left you with a daunting job, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful or harsh. But I and my friends have put ourselves on the line, and some of us may have endangered the future of our own careers, our own health care options, and otherwise, by taking a stand, publicly and honestly and dangerously. Because we believed in the cause and because we believed in you. Should we have just stayed silent?

Maybe you remember, or maybe you don’t, but I told you one time, several months ago, that if you wanted things to be easy, especially now, at this extraordinary time in history, then you’d had no business running for president, even less persuading us to believe in you, and even less actually being president.

If these were ordinary times, and if you were an ordinary politician, I very likely would chalk up all that has transpired this year to “politics as usual.” But these are not ordinary times and you are not an ordinary president. You encouraged a whole new generation to be involved, and you inspired many more to believe in possibility one more time. You promised change we could believe in.

Yet having begun with the potential to be one of this country’s great leaders and one of the best things to ever happen to this country, you are now at risk of becoming one of the worst. Not just because you never drew a line and stood your ground, not just because your fine words and speeches seem so much more empty of substance today than they did a year ago, but because your apparent inability to draw that line and stand that ground risks poisoning a whole new generation with the cynicism and apathy that has plagued this nation, and this world, for far too long.

I am still hoping that you are smarter and more clever and more courageous and more committed than I am giving you credit for, that somehow, like a magician, you will pull rabbits out of a hat, or better, cause elephants to disappear before our eyes, and we will ooh and ahh and be amazed at your strategy and gape in wonder at the change that has finally come, the change we really can believe in.

But it is beginning to feel as if the hour already is getting very late, and any and all evidence of that hypothetical, brilliant strategy has yet to show itself.

Mr. President, you are clearly a very intelligent man, clearly a very thoughtful man; you are charming almost to a fault, you speak well and have your way with words, often deliver your oratory almost without flaw, and are understandably concerned about your legacy.

But Mr. President, throughout the various battles this year, we didn’t need just your intelligence, and your thoughtful consideration, and your charm, or just your beautiful words, and we are very selfishly more concerned about our own futures and the future of our country and the world than we are about your legacy. We didn’t need talk. We needed walk.

What we needed was for you to take a stand and fight and refuse to turn even in the face of defeat. That would’ve inspired us. We would’ve stood with you and together we probably would’ve won, but if necessary, gone down in defeat with you, and come back again to fight again, knowing that the battles were right.

What we needed was — what we still need is — your leadership.

Hello again. So… are you ready for me to post more about Buffy?

Yes, I’m a little bit disappointed in Obama, too, and not too keen about a lot of what’s going on these days, and yes, I’ve been sorely tempted to post and post and post — but I know I’ve promised a couple of times that the next post would be about Buffy, and I may’ve even implied it would be sooner rather than later (sorry about that)… but okay already.

So let’s talk about Buffy! Or more specifically, why we (or I) love Buffy (the show) and maybe even why and how Buffy loves.

Yes, I’m going to be talking about her love life.

First though, some of the why we love Buffy, or at least some of the why I do: the characters connect to me, and I think it is largely because they all seem so comfortable in their own skins, even when they are uncomfortable, and even in extraordinary circumstances. To a very large degree, in spite of superficial characterizations of a neurosis here and there, in no particular order, Xander, Willow, Buffy, Giles, Oz, Tara, and even Cordelia, all seem to accept themselves for who they are (though not always what they are), and they bring that to their relationships with each other and those around them.

And I guess this is largely true of the villains and demons in the show. Who would say any of the Big Bads were not comfortable with who and what they were? The Master, Angelus, Spike, Drusilla, Mayor Wilkins, Adam, Glory, the Trio, Bad Willow, the First? Okay, sure, Jonathan and Andrew had their little insecurities, and Bad Willow had all that Weltschmerz, and the First was only tangentially an actual character, but still … on some level, nearly all were not only okay with who and what they were, they pretty much delighted in it.

I pointedly did not mention Riley or Faith (Edit: or Angel and Dawn; jeez, I can’t believe I forgot Angel and Dawn!) because, although they did exhibit a share of this delight, their characters don’t strike me in quite the same way. More perhaps on that subject sometime.

No doubt I’m overstating the point anyway, but nevertheless it is part of Buffy’s appeal, I think, that the show is delightful, i.e., it is about characters who delight each other, delight in each other, often delight in the challenges they face (and when not, at least delight in overcoming them), delight in the wit of a well-turned phrase and delight in their own passions.

That’s right. Sounds like I’m back on the subject of love.

And what is love in Buffy’s world if not simultaneously delightful and dangerous? And isn’t it often that way everywhere for all of us?

Whatever love is, most of us would agree that love is a many splendored thing. And I think most of us could agree that love can also be hell. Certainly if you love someone who treats you consistently well and consistently loves you in return, love is great comfort against the often hard realities of life, and certainly if you love someone who treats you with an utter lack of regard, or if you love someone and lose them — to death or intractable illness or to another — that is emotional hell.

But Buffy takes it one step further, doesn’t it? Because in BtVS love isn’t just delightful, it is soaring, romantic passion, mythic in depth and scope — love affairs for the ages; and because in BtVS love isn’t just dangerous, it is deadly, demonic passion, and again sometimes quite mythic in its consequences for our heroes.

As a matter of fact (or at least my impression), BtVS was (or is, depending on how we think about it) bolder than any other prime-time television show I can think of about the relationship between love and violence and sex and death. Passion is passion, BtVS seems to say, and as surely as passion can raise you from the dead, it can kill you.

In some ways BtVS is a stand-in for what we all desire in life: to live life full throttle, with all the excitement, all the passion, to drink deep of all life has to offer; and it is likely most of us would live that way if we were absolutely certain that, like a good, satisfyingly upbeat story, all would end well for all concerned — or at least for ourselves and all those we care about the most.

But we know better. Life teaches us that, doesn’t it? — over and over again from the day we are born; don’t touch the hot stove, don’t fall off your tricycle, don’t run with scissors, look both ways before you cross the street… and be careful what sort of folk you hang with… and who you fall in love with — or you most definitely will get hurt, sooner or later. It’s inevitable.

Of course we get hurt anyway, no matter how cautious we become, but most of us — or at least the brighter among us — eventually learn not to jump blindly into this or that world of pain as if we haven’t a care. But all that caution’s just a little too grown-up sometimes, isn’t it? And it leaves us a little bit sad, too, doesn’t it? And maybe just a little bit bereft of… passion?

So we watch Buffy and vicariously experience the delight, the passion, the danger, the sometimes even disturbing twists and turns and implications of love, of sex, of violence, of death, of grief, of the depths and heights of the all-too-human passions as played out by our hot-blooded surrogates. But we don’t just watch, do we? We flirt with the very things we are afraid of, and long for: death and immortality, and love and lust; and a passion that transcends all, perhaps that transcends even our perceptions of wrong and right, or of good and evil, and certainly that transcends the world and death itself.

And isn’t that why we love it? Why we love these fascinating, passionate, emotive characters, their snappy, nuanced dialogue, and the sometimes great mythic story arcs they (and we) get all caught up in? Isn’t that why we love Buffy?

You bet. Or maybe it’s just me? Whatever. But why does Buffy love Angel? Or Riley? Or Spike? Is it because she is the Slayer? Is it because, on some profound level, our heroine doesn’t merely dance with death but actually makes love to it?

Perhaps. There is certainly that quality to her relationships. She is a killer after all, the Slayer, and yet young and full of life and passion. Drawn to sex and death, to light and darkness, to love and pain and hate and violence, and back to desire and life and love again.

Or maybe it’s just because they’re sexy good-looking hunks? (Hey, as I heard someone say once about interpreting scripture, you tend to take from it whatever attitude you bring to it, right?)

And no, this post hasn’t turned out the way I first envisioned it. I began with the expectation that it would be more about Buffy’s love life, but it has turned out not so much as I intended. Some odd combination of Clio, Polyhymnia, Erato, Calliope, Thalia and Melpomène, perhaps, have had their way with me. Still — now that I’ve broached the subjects of sex, death, light, darkness, love, pain, hate, violence and life itself (all in the same sentence!) — lest I wade in any deeper and find myself lost in the realms of ontology or (God forbid) theology, I will end this post (with a promise to write more about Buffy’s love life someday) right here and now!

After a little thought I realized my last post wrongly blamed just Republicans. I even lowered myself to using their tactics by calling them names, i.e. collectively 'Repugs,' and in the specific cases of Prejean and Palin, 'morons.'

I suppose my first instinct was correct, that you guys probably don't want to read all about my wonder and shock and disgust in the first place, but I can't say I'll never do it again because I care, and I do get disgusted sometimes and let things slip; but I should've been at least fair enough to acknowledge that conservative (faux) Democrats are much of the problem, too, when it comes to getting anything worthwhile out of this health care "reform" effort.

I guess I just don't believe in it. I want to, but I just don't. To me, after having voted for Obama, after having promoted health care reform in various ways, what has happened merely clarifies just how corrupted and corporatized our system has become. It looks to me like the will of the people is not even a contender in the contest to run this country anymore, and when so many seem incapable of separating fact from fiction, and allow so many of the decisions that affect all our lives to be made in the dark, or behind closed doors, and so rarely hold the liars and criminals and corrupted political leaders to account even when they are caught red handed, well, maybe the people's will shouldn't be influential.

I suppose we all can hope that we can somehow continue to escape into fantasy indefinitely… but in actuality, I think we all know we can't, and if this means we'll have the corporations in charge from now on… well, let's just say Anya's altered reality of Cordelia's world without Buffy may actually look attractive one day by comparison.

That's right. I'm saying, if this is how things are going to be from now on, sooner or later, it will end badly. Very. For all of us.

But hopefully I'm just being way too negative. If you haven't figured it out yet, let me clue you in: I'm kind of a moody guy.

Back to the original intent of this post — mea culpa folks. Next time out, I'll try to talk more about Buffy.

(Back to BtVS soon, but meanwhile –)

If I had infinite time and energy (and intellect), I would post and post and post on issue after issue about all the disappointment I’ve been feeling lately. What is Obama up to?

I know, I know, so glad to have him relative to what we had before, and I agree whole-heartedly with that. He inspired many of us — for the first time in a very long while — to begin to dream again, and maybe that’s why I’m so disappointed.

It seems as if he has backed off on many of the most significant promises he made in his campaign. What? He wanted everything to be easy? Convenient? Politically expedient?

I can think of no other time since I’ve been alive (and paying attention) when such a significant majority of the American people were more ready for change, real change, yet we hear, again and again, that this or that is "off the table" — or that we’re continuing this or that Bush policy without much, or any, explanation, even though it doesn’t jive with our campaign promises.

Often these proclamations are accompanied by some mumblings about bipartisanship or political feasibility.

But it seems to me politics is not just a difference of opinions, it is about policy, policy that often determines who lives and who dies, and who among those who live have any quality of life and any opportunity in life.

Respectfully, Mr. President, if bipartisanship is always going to be your most important consideration, then you really don’t believe in anything.

Obama has an extremely hard job. I know that, perhaps harder now than it has ever been, and in many respects, he is a breath of fresh air, but Obama is not proving to be the change I believed in. Not so far.