I’m having trouble here. IF the Obamas do not travel the path you’ve laid out for them then they are being frivolous? Really? They have both been making speeches for candidates, weighing in with Eric Holder and other Dems and working on projects. But that’s not good enough? They gave their total time to this country for eight years only to be kicked in the teeth from the Republicans and to some extent from more sanctimonious Democrats. They don’t ‘owe’ us.
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Because informing a future generation to be politically aware and active isn’t enough? What about working to fix gerrymandering or the non-profit Obama Foundation which is building the Global Girls Alliance, Leaders: Africa, Community Leadership Corps, Community Leadership Training Day and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance to name a few and a host of other issues and causes the Obamas are involved in.
Take a moment and educate yourself next time before your lame attempt at trolling.
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You seriously have to kidding. Are you truly this clueless?
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Still bitter after all these years
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You clearly have not been paying attention to anything, but this article. You seem to have no knowledge of the Obama Foundation or the leadership initiatives the Obamas have started. Good grief I swear my fellow progressives can sometimes make Trump’s incessant whining seem benign.
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You seem to have overlooked my central point. The Obamas have massive latent power and influence in the 3 critical electorates. They could easily use that power to take down Trump. Instead they make movies. It’s basic ethics.
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And you seemed to have missed mine they are doing the things you seem to feel they are not. Some folks are smart enough to multi-task.
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Barack & Eric Holder are spearheading a huge anti-gerrymandering effort. That seems pretty important.
But we also have to recognize there’s a “hearts and minds” campaign that needs to be fought here at home. Lots of folks are being left behind by the modern economy: people in small, rural towns, people outside giant hubs, people whose heads are just filled with really damaging garbage that prevents them from functioning in society. The GOP depends on these people for support, because they’re the only folks that can always be tricked into tearing down stuff that doesn’t very obviously benefit them in an extremely direct and simple way, and the GOP exists solely to tear things down.
The truth is that these people are simply too broken to participate in government. But we can’t take away their rights, and our society won’t survive much longer if their waste product (ignorant autocracy) keeps building up. So, we’ve got to bring them around. Yes, there are big problems with the neoliberal policies that brought us here, but it’s also the case that liberal, data-driven, inclusive and cosmopolitan society has a lot going for it, and is in fact the best answer available so far. Right now, these people reject it outright because it includes some folks they’ve been taught to hate, and because they right perceive that we don’t think their lifestyle is fashionable.
We have to bring these folks around. That’s not going to happen with a well-articulated Medium post that exhaustively documents all the ways poor white racists are wrong about. It’s also not going to happen even if we magically eliminate gerrymandering overnight. The truth is, probably nothing will work until we shut down Fox News. In any case, the end is only going to come about through some kind of cultural outreach. We need to bring these people out of their tiny ignorance boxes. We should do that while simultaneously deposing and imprisoning the criminal they elected to punish us for supporting a black president, while un-rigging the political arena their oppressors consistently cheat in, and while solving the new economic, environmental, and social problems that liberal, data-driven, inclusive and cosmopolitan society still faces.
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It seems to me that there has long been an unspoken rule that once a President leaves office, they tend to remain in the background, particularly when their succesor is from a different party.
Shrub, to his credit, did just that.
Why shouldn’t Obama?
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Carter didn’t inherit that much from his father. He built the business up on smarts and hard work. He is the complete antithesis of Trump.
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Higher Ground is producing a feature film on Frederick Douglass…
I hope that it covers the amazing job that he’s doing. It’s worthy of more and more recognition.
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What this nation had done to them in 8 years is not enough? They need to be our scapegoats more?
The job of getting the powerful to relent is ours. Not the Obamas or Santa Claus.
They are right thou. Normal countries have much greater influence on their people thru media. That’s how they build their civil society. All we get thru tv and internet is puny entertainment. 90% so lousy that I never see an episode to the end. Good only for falling asleep to. We have no outlets to learn about ourselves unless we forge it ourselves and most people don’t bother.
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Right? It never ends. I do hope, though, that in the future they produce some kind of blockbuster movie about how a bill becomes a law. There are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who don’t have even the foggiest idea.
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I agree with the rest of your post, but I would modify the above to Right Wing AM radio. That’s probably far more influential to the people you are talking about than FOX News. FN hits affluent old people, but the “heartland” folks that don’t trust the cosmopolitan lifestyle probably get most of their info from radio rather than cable television.
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Still bitter after all these years
With good reason.
Agree about Fox. It’s the number one reason the country is imploding. But if we turn out Milwaukee in 2020 we win, irrespective of what Fox does.
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It’s because they secretly agree with a lot of what Trump says
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Sports talk radio is also very powerful, and more stealthy. People who aren’t “into politics” can tune in and get a full day’s supply of Trumpian talking points.
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This is an excellent point. I don’t know how many times I’ve been listening to some program on the radio with my dad and they wander off into politics. It’s always to sneak diss Democrats and/or complain about some culture war issue that offends their incredibly fragile masculinity. It goes something like that, “Folks, we’re gonna take a quick bathroom break…And guys, don’t use the ladies room (laugh track).”
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wow. Surprised to read the dumbass comments on this thread.
Trump & Co are going to make a series of softcore porn “documentaries” when they graduate from the WH. Hopefully that will be the only money they ever get.
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