Drew Magary’s epic rant: “Where the Hell Is Barack Obama?”

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The anger is justified, for a reason Magary cites yet does little to explore:

“In office, Obama did very little to significantly alter a status quo designed to protect itself.”

That’s it in a nutshell.

I was an Obama fan in the beginning, and continued to find it useful to invoke his name to dog-whistle the drooling fascists and slack-jawed racists, even after it started becoming clear that little would be accomplished during his eight years in office. It was hard for me to concede this truth.

Obama really did assemble a fan base, which remained largely unused, much as George McClellan built the Army of the Potomac into a powerful military machine that the general refused to take into battle.

Magary hits home:

“The influence that Obama has left on the table (during the pandemic) has been so staggering as to be obscene. What’s even worse is that his void has been filled by a bunch of his former operatives who have used the Obama brand name to burnish their own halos while they do and say patently awful shit.”

Just like Clueless Joe Biden. Thing is, all this was obvious while Obama still occupied the office.

Where the Hell Is Barack Obama?, by Drew Magary (Medium)

I’m sick of Obama staying above the fray while that fray is swallowing us whole

My patience with Barack Obama’s patience is at an end. Since leaving office at the beginning of 2017, the former president made it his priority to lay low. Under normal circumstances, no one could begrudge him that choice. He had just been president for eight years. He was tired. His family was tired. He had more than earned the right to fuck off and enjoy himself, especially given the endless stream of bullshit he had to endure as our first black president.

These are far beyond normal circumstances and he no longer has that right. Over 20,000 Americans are dead. In a blink, national unemployment levels are about to blow the Great Depression’s metrics out of the water. States that are on life support have been forced to compete for vital goods because the federal government has abandoned them. Congress is on fucking VACATION. We’re living through a national death spiral. Right now.

So where are you, Barack Obama? I’m not asking that wistfully. This is not a folk song. I wanna know: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? Oh, Obama is still tweeting good tweets. That’s very nice of him. Know who else is tweeting? All of us. Know what it’s gotten us? NOTHING …

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