Obama: Putting the "illusion" in "disillusionment"

Let me take you back to January 2008, to Obama's South Carolina Victory Speech.

And as we leave this state with a new wind at our backs, and take this journey across the country we love with the message we’ve carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire; from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words:

Yes. We. Can.

Remember how you felt. Remember how it was. Remember how you stayed awake until all hours of the night to hear the results of the primaries. Remember when you cared about the election, when you studied the most recent delegate counts, when you were actively concerned for Obama's candidacy, for the opportunity for him to enact his change, his hope, his promise. Remember when the phrase "Yes We Can" sent shivers up your back.

Remember how you trusted in, believed in, hoped for a better future, a promise of possibility and a yearning to redirect a failed history towards a brighter horizon. Remember when you felt in the depths of your soul that this man could actualize a novel, new, unprecedented path for our future, that we could walk forward with our heads held high, with our ideals untarnished and unmasked, striving together towards a common goal.

It's nice to know that was all fucking bullshit, isn't it?

Obama to Reopen Oil Drilling

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration, facing rising anger on the Gulf Coast over the loss of jobs and income from a drilling moratorium, said Monday that it would move quickly to release new safety requirements that would allow the reopening of offshore oil and gas exploration in shallow waters.

Change we can believe in, my ass.

We swallowed the rhetoric. We fell for the lies. We blindly stumbled after a false prophet. We let our hopes, our dreams, our ideals get the best of us. We imagined ourselves to be living in a world of possibility, a world of good, a world in which the best-intentioned could remain pure of heart and mind despite the soul-crushing malevolence of an indifferent, evil reality of effete tedium and dull mediocrity. We gathered together and convinced ourselves that we followed a king adorned in the purest robes of well-intentioned statesmanship.

But we were really just staring at a big black dick who was eventually going to fuck us.

I know the oil spill is not Obama's fault. I know the health care mess was not Obama's fault. I know that the tea party nonsense and Glenn Beck and all of that bullshit since the election is not Obama's fault. But he has sure as shit not fixed the fucking problem, and we never received our GOD DAMNED CHANGE!!!

I know that Obama went on the Today Show and said he was looking for "an ass to kick". And that's fantastic. I mean, personally, I kind of wish Obama would just drag BP CEO Tony Hayward into the middle of Times Square by the scrotum and put a bullet hole in his fucking forehead. But I guess I'll settle for Obama talking to fishermen and academic experts so that he can suss out whose ass he is supposed to kick...as if that were really a question the answer to which required any fucking research at all.

It would be one thing if we could pass this all off as the collective insanity of an over-zealous populous. It would be one thing if you, I, everyone who voted for Obama made it up ourselves, fabricated our own notions of Obama as a reformer, as an agent of change, as someone who would go to Washington and transform it into what we all want it to be. It would be one thing if you and I said "Obama will be different" and the candidate himself remained silent on the topic. But it was not us; we did not create this illusion; he did.

Our mistake was believing it.

I sat in front of a television on February 5th, 2008, and I watched Obama's Super Tuesday Speech. I heard Obama proclaim his eloquent tapestry of hopes, of dreams, of possibilities, of change. I heard Barack Obama tell me that he would be different, that we could be different. I heard Barack Obama say that you, that I, that we could go forth together into a new, better tomorrow wherein our ideals would be actualized and we could fulfill the promise of our deepest desires. We were going to bring change; he was going to lead us.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have little; who've been told that they cannot have what they dream; that they cannot be what they imagine.

Yes they can.

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubts that tell him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him.

Yes he can.

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt; that she cannot reclaim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm.

Yes she can.

We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided; that we cannot come together; that we cannot remake this world as it should be.

Because we know what we have seen and what we believe - that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored; that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest - Yes. We. Can.

No, we fucking can't.