The Obama Syndrome

There is no need today for an untainted small boy to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

For a majority of Americans, Donald Trump has strutted about bare-ass naked since before he was elected.  In fact, his irrational, crude, and narcissistic nakedness has become so pervasive that each additional time he flashes himself before important policies and people, foreign or domestic; there is no shock value left to be had.

We have become numb to this Administration’s deficiencies. Should Trump bungle us into a military conflict, apathy may very well be the first reaction…at least until body bags start being flown home or we see pictures of innocents stacked like cord wood.

Despite the Donald’s obvious display of exposed incompetence and degenerate behavior, the more perplexing question is not why his gross nudity doesn’t undermine his Presidency? Yes, the real conundrum is why so many people, the loyal 30 percent, still see him fully clothed, no matter how many small boys shout that he isn’t.

It has been a question I have been grappling with for two and a half years.

After a number of conversations with Trump supporters and Christian Conservative Republicans generally (albeit short conversations, as those individuals tend to abruptly turn and walk away), and after intensely pondering why they so adamantly support Trump in the face of his eviscerating truth (e.g. Jerry Falwell, Jr., who essentially lays prostate at Trump’s feet) I have finally arrived at a conclusion:

Other than the Jerry Falwells of the nation, most of these people in the famed “30% base” don’t like Trump…they just simply hate Obama. They suffer from a self-inflicted Obama Syndrome. The famed “lock her up” chant was always meant for Barack.

Trump knows this intuitively if not intellectually.  Never in my lifetime have I heard any US President before Trump (that would be 11) make anything other than rare and casual references to their predecessor. Trump evokes Obama’s name like it was a Buddhist mantra, blaming him for every screw up that Trump’s campaign and administration has initiated or overseen.  

Trump’s overwhelmingly transparent Presidential policy goal is to trash or dismantle anything that was accomplished during the Obama Administration.  He has no other coordinated agenda (c’mon folks, this is way too obvious).  It is why he can so easily hate and defame a deceased American champion, John McCain, who kept him from completely destroying “Obamacare” (the one law that colloquially bears Obama’s name).

Over that past 10 years I have heard on multiple occasions the same statement (more or less) from Conservative individuals who I believe to be generally very good people: “Obama is/was the worst President this Country has ever had.” The worst??  What do the not-so-good Conservatives think?

Obama took office with an Economy in crisis; the equity (stock) markets were in virtual free fall and massive unemployment prevailed. Under Obama the Economy stabilized, equity markets increased by about 260%, the unemployment rate dropped by nearly 7%. The worst President??

During Trump’s tenure the equity markets have increased by 35% (all of it in Trump’s first year before he enacted a single measure. Since his “panacea” tax cut took affect the equity markets have been volatile and flat – i.e. that 35% is more attributable to Obama than Trump).  Under Trump the unemployment rate has dropped a whopping 1% (which is about as far as it could drop, and would have no matter who was President).

I’m not going to go to efforts the Obama’s administration made to improve healthcare, eliminated Osama Bin Laden, reversed torture policy, saved the US auto industry, eliminate LGBT discrimination in the Military, advance foreign respect, and so many more.

I’m not even going into the fact of Obama’s intelligence, his family values, or his decency. He met individually with every parent who lost a child at Sandy Hook (20 sets of parents) without press. No one even knew it happened until much later.

The worst President? Martin Van Buren? Herbert Hoover? Warren Harding? Richard Nixon? George W. Bush? The worst President?? That is irrational.

Donald Trump’s beloved 30% see him fully clothed because they have been fed with fear and hatred of “liberals”, “socialists”, “welfare recipients”, “pacifists”,  “feminists”, and “sexual degenerates” (to name a few) since the second term of the Reagan Administration, with roots dating back 150 years.

They have been given this steady diet by Fox News, Talk Radio, their churches, and the Republican Party.  Obama, a black Liberal Democrat, represented everything wrong in their lives and everything they were told was wrong in their lives. To them Obama was the worst President ever the day he took office. Donald Trump and his hate of Obama was and is their drug of choice for that fear, even as they force themselves to ignore Trump's behavior.  

The Obama Syndrome was a critical component of why Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 election in a landslide.  However, The Obama Syndrome is all the reason why an ignorant, con man continues to stand stark naked before packed coliseums…wearing only a grin.

Marriage on Four Legs

One of my favorite movies is the film Spanglish. It has always befuddled me why it was received lukewarm by the critics and bombed at the box office. I have a sense that people just didn’t like the way it ended. Here Adam Sandler (in his best performance ever) essentially chooses his crazy wife (Tia Lioni) over the gorgeous and wholesomely exotic Latino governess (Paz Vega)…what?

There is such a tendency for art to accent either the miserable or the sublime. When it fails to do that we often walk away with our expectations unfulfilled. Yet that isn’t how real life works. When it comes to marriage the real life question isn’t what makes it wonderful or miserable, the real question is what makes it last?

The reality is that all marriages (with I’m sure rare exceptions) are fundamentally a mixed bag.  We are all individuals by definition and admittedly complex. We struggle just to understand ourselves. To join two such creatures together magnifies that complexity exponentially.  It is an honest observation to wonder how the legal and emotional bonding of a relationship lasts in the modern era, where marriage no longer equates with survival.

Over the last century or so continuing a marriage has evolved into a choice. Perhaps we shouldn’t be asking why there are so many divorces (currently 1 out of 2 in the US), rather we should ask why aren’t there more? I believe there are perfectly good reasons why so many marriages navigate the whitewater rapids they are continuously subjected to, and it has little to do with bliss.

I see the relationship of marriage as a stool with four sturdy legs. On top of that stool a married couple gently places warm, tender, and enriching experiences, and also dumps endless piles of garbage…such as poor communication, defensiveness, selfishness...and a whole lot of stupid. Needless to say, the pile gets taller and heavier with every year that passes, making it increasingly difficult to support let alone sort through the good stuff and the trash. Yet for half the couples it holds together, stays upright…doesn’t tip over. How so?

I think the four legs holding it stable are: 1) shared family, 2) shared history, 3) shared physical intimacy, and 4) shared future expectations.  Lose one leg and the stool dangerously teeters. Lose two and it’s Humpty Dumpty time.

Family comprises the relationships that surround each individual. Children and grandchildren are the most obvious, but it can include parents, siblings, or others in an extended family. It could also included adopted “family” like special friends. The key is that each individual shares the other individual’s family as their own. They don’t have to like them, just consider themselves as part of the entire tribe.

Shared history is the unique memories created together as a couple. It also includes those experiences in which our memories fail us but we still know exist. Building a family can be a big part of marriage history even if we struggle to remember the specifics. That leg can sometimes be the strongest early in a marriage, but it is also a continuous process. To the extent our life experiences stop being shared, running indefinitely parallel, it’s like introducing termites to gnaw until that leg fails.

It is reasonably arguable that human beings are not naturally monogamous. It is a choice we make that the need we all have for physical intimacy be inextricably linked with a single union. It is also often a choice not kept. Every ordinary person needs the physical contact of other human beings. To the extent it is missing their lives are challenged. Even if sex is no longer possible, shared physical contact is essential and restricting that within a marriage keeps that leg strong. It is the nucleus of love.

Shared future expectations are tricky. It is more than simply planning out the next cruise or beach vacation. It is more than going over budgets and job choices. It is sharing hope, personal philosophies, and aspirations. Try to imagine living with someone who knows nothing and wants to know nothing about how you see your life in the future. Maybe you don’t have to imagine.

These four legs hold up a marriage that at any given time doesn’t even have to be a happy marriage. In fact, there is no such thing as a happy marriage.  However, there is such a thing as a lasting marriage in which (to name a few) joy, pain, love, sorrow, passion, fear, and hope each take their turn on top of the pile, and almost magically none seem to be the last straw to overturn the stool.

Maybe Adam Sandler’s choice to stay with his neurotic wife, his loopy mother-in-law, and his often despondent daughter isn’t the one audiences wanted to see. However, perhaps it was the choice that better reflects the real world…a reality even better than the world presented on reality TV.

Pete Buttigieg, The Actual Front Runner

At the 2016 Democratic Convention, with Hillary Clinton’s introduction as the Party’s new nominee, there was a creative video production of historical time passing, culminating in the breaking of a glass ceiling. What happened over the following four months has been and will be a subject of controversy, university classes, and endless publications stretching past the lifetimes of all Clinton’s contemporaries.

There was another glass ceiling just above the one that broke. Donald Trump, a buffoon of historical proportions, should have lost in a landslide. Was it the wrong time for a woman to win the US Presidency or was she simply the wrong woman? In the vernacular of stable genius Donald Trump, maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t…who knows?

Even though this Country (and the World for that matter) is long overdue for a woman to lead the “Free World”, an early review of the six female candidates for the Democratic nomination can’t keep me from speculating that five of them have not risen to a level necessary for a woman to break that ceiling of National leadership.

The possible exception is Elizabeth Warren who has demonstrated decades of clarity regarding social issues. However, in her zeal to point out and counter the excesses of money based minority power structures she has allowed herself to be marginalized as an extreme left wing kook. Of the six women, Warren would make the best President, but even with a devoted following, her intellectual arguments would make her (after Kristen Gillibrand) the most likely to lose the election.

Many view Kamala Harris as the go-to female candidate. I’d like to, but I can’t. Her rising star has been the result of demonstrating her prosecutorial talents, which have been impressive. In that arena she demonstrates the necessary strength that Clinton lacked. Yet when it comes to policy she lacks the confidence and conviction that we see in Warren. Instead, she grabs a hold of various positions and sound bites taken by others, notably Bernie Sanders, like she’s forever reading a teleprompter with copy that someone else wrote.

So what are we left with…just another white dude? Joe Biden is just another white dude, the epitome of white dude. Worse than that, he’s an old white dude. The same could be assigned to Bernie. Both good and, I believe, honest men who carry plenty of baggage. The stampede of remaining white dudes, save one, will never make it to the corral.

Cory Booker isn’t white, but despite his polished delivery he is almost invisible beneath the shadow of Barack Obama. At this point there is only one Democratic candidate who can transcend the stereotype that is so repulsively represented by Trump and the bulk of the Republican Congressional caucus and help make the possibility of a female President in 2028 a reality.

At this point, when you strip away the negatives from all the candidates, the true front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination is Pete Buttigieg.  That accepts the reality that he has not been publically vetted, as have others, with disclosures from honest and dishonest sources in which he must weather.

Mayor Pete is virtually the antithesis of Donald Trump. That cannot be emphasized enough. I could run through the adjectives that describe his personal accomplishments, decency, and intelligence, but for brevity sake let me just say that he would be the ultimate antacid for the stomach churning policies, personality, and behavior of our President.

I had to grapple with the one factor that made me initially question his electability, his homosexuality.  The more I considered it, the more I began to view it not as a liability, but as an asset to his candidacy.

The fact that Buttigieg is gay allows him to bring to the office the same social issue that Obama did, and would be brought by a female President; that being the necessary evolution of anti-discrimination in America.

Prejudice is an entirely human aspect of social behavior. All of us gravitate toward those who are like ourselves, physically, mentally, or both. The true evil occurs when we apply that prejudice to discriminate against certain human beings and treat that discrimination as being ethically correct or acceptable. In the Black experience this existed from the origins of slavery, for women it began centuries earlier, and it is all the LBGT community has ever known.

We know that discrimination still extensively exists in America; the election of Donald Trump is in no small measure a testimony to that fact. There will still be plenty of good people who would vote against Buttigieg simply because he is gay. However, in the past 50 years we have turned a monumental corner. No longer can Americans exercise discrimination and not know it is wrong. That Rubicon has been crossed and we’re not going back. It is the reason why the rants of white supremacists ring so absurdly hollow, or why so many wince with bowed heads as they try to defend Trump’s Presidency.

Pete Buttigieg already leads this Democratic contest even if a majority of Americans don’t know him yet, let alone pronounce his name.  His potential to be not only an inclusive leader for the United States, but also to be the international leader the Free World is desperate for since Trump entered the stage. It is simply an added bonus that his sexuality will turn more people away from discrimination than the bigotry Donald Trump and Republicans could ever convince people to embrace.

Donald Trump not only needs to lose the 2020 Presidential election, he needs to lose in the landslide that never happened in 2016. This would be the healing the US and the World needs after Trump, and, at this point, I feel Pete Buttigieg is the only one who can make it happen.