First there were Obamacans, Republicans who were so fed up with their party that they were willing to support Barack against McCain...
Then they called us Obamaniacs, people obsessed not necessarily with the politics, but the personality of Obama...
Now, we have Obamapologists...
...people that are willing to overlook, ignore, twist, and rationalize any statement or policy decision, no matter how much it runs against not only their own core beliefs, but against what Obama himself ran on in November.
The other night, there were, almost unbelievably, two competing rec'd diaries on Obama's decision to not release torture photos. That's right, hundreds of people fully supporting the ghastly decision to continue the evil secrecy that has choked our nation's democratic processes for nearly ten years now. The decision, based on the preposterous idea that releasing these photos would "endanger our troops" (boy does that sound familiar), had progressive writers of every stripe up in arms, meticulously laying out and decimating every possible reason for such a move (my favorite is Glen Greenwald)
But not here.
On the contrary, there were hundreds of people who were willing to say, astonishingly, that this was a good idea, parroting Obama's reasons verbatim.
Sound familiar?
When I went into the comments thread of the supporting diary, and explained that I thought this was preposterous, I was told, quite condescendingly, that I don't "understand politics."
No, I understand politics very well. I understand that Obama is making a very calculated political move to avoid the mess that following through with his job (for example, executing the laws) would entail. Hiding the graphic evidence of the historic criminality of the past administration will go a long way to help him avoid doing what the law, and what his conscience is probably telling him he should do.
Funny thing. Now it turns out that a bunch of that torturing was done in order to force people to make statements that supported an Iraq/Al Qaida link to justify going to Iraq in the first place.
Uh, oh.
So let me get this straight. Bush, Cheney, etc. gave orders to torture people to make them pretend that we had enough reasons to invade Iraq. This invasion has currently cost us approximately 4,300 American soldiers dead, ten times that wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens dead, Trillions of dollars in direct costs and down the road costs for us.
The invasion, by the way, has made hundreds of millions for defense and other contractors, some of whom have direct ties to Bush and Cheney.
After slavery, this is the greatest crime in American History.
If Obama can't stand up to that, then I've got some news to break...he ain't what we signed up for.
And if you can't recognize that, if you're willing to look the other way or worse, actively support him while Obama:
supports a pro testing, union-busting education policy
continues to delay and stall and obfuscate on his promise to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell
fights against releasing evidence of Bush crimes (which already came out through other sources, by the way)
revives military commissions
Then you, my friend are an Obamapologist.
Just don't tell me I don't "understand politics" when I refuse to be one. I didn't give up my beliefs or my brain when Obama got elected, and neither should you. It's what separates us from the animals. And the Republicans.