Goodbye (and Good Riddance) to the Fantasy of Barack Obama

In January, 2017, America and the rest of the world will say goodbye to the dishonesty and hypocrisy of Barack Obama, as he takes leave of the White House to make way for Donald Trump (who will, of course, be bringing along plenty of his own dishonesty and hypocrisy.) It is probable that Mr. Obama, having served two terms as President of the United States, will gain swift entrance to the lucrative realm of corporate power, where he can receive huge amounts of money for giving windy speeches to happy audiences of fellow capitalists, thereby adding to his private fortune.

Right from the beginning it was extremely clear, at least to those of us who were willing to look hard at him, that Barack Obama was not a person to be trusted or esteemed. He was never anything more than a fantasy, a transparent figure of polished delusion. It is now undeniably evident that Mr. Obama was, by any sound reckoning, a poor excuse for a leader, having revealed himself to be thoroughly false and fundamentally shallow in both the content of his policies and the range of his actions, but he was, undoubtedly, useful to millions of American liberals, conveniently providing an appealing (although quite illusory) antidote to the foreboding truth that was mounting all around them.

The fantasy that Barack Obama embodied was not a harmless fantasy, of the sort that generally causes no lasting damage. It was, instead, an evil fantasy, a fantasy that was expressly designed for the ugly purpose of disguising a baleful welter of smooth lies and stealthy murders, particularly as regards Mr. Obama's immoral policy of using drones to strike down civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. It was not, however, a fantasy that had to be forced upon an unwilling citizenry, and its heinous vigor did not come from Mr. Obama alone. It  could not have endured for so long without the careless support of the true believers who excitedly accepted him as their messiah.

Barack Obama showed, over the course of his eight years as President, in one glaring instance after another, that he was no "better" than his hateful predecessor, George W. Bush, and certainly no "better," to any measurable degree, than any of the other wealthy crooks (lawyers, bankers, CEOs, etc.) who have brazenly taken it upon themselves to appropriate grasping control of America's fate (while keeping a close eye on their own self-interest). Nevertheless, it seemed that no matter what Mr. Obama did, or failed to do, most liberals remained adamantly unquestioning in their judgment of him.

The fantasy of Barack Obama will pass into history, and it will become Donald Trump's malign task to continue the monstrous tyranny that prevails in America. Those citizens who chose to vote for Barack Obama (especially those who were so witless as to vote for him a second time in 2012, after he had repeatedly displayed the vileness of his true character during his first term) allowed themselves to be easily deceived, and, in doing so, they also allowed their nation to be pushed even further into its already bleak state of overt inequity and boundless deception. As Mr. Obama withdraws from his duties in the Oval Office, it is, indeed, time to say goodbye (and good riddance).