The Cruellest Egotism

That's what Roberto Unger, who taught President Obama two courses at Harvard Law School, is indulging in here. I'm not going to try to embed the video. Frankly, his self-righteous manner makes me ill. But do click the link, because it is to an article by Garry Wills explaining why Dr. Unger is mistaken. Or check out what Richard Barry has to say at The Reaction.

We will have two choices in November, no more. There may be one or two cranky and obscure additions to some ballots in the Presidential slot, but there will be only two serious choices. One will be for more action towards a society that adds still more money to the 1%, still more risk for everyone else, subtracts teachers and other public servants (who needs libraries? Let's privatize the fire department!), multiplies wars and bad feeling toward the United States across the world, and divides the country in its drive to rule. That vote will also be for a country in which women, Hispanics and other minorities, gays, and anyone who isn't a wealthy white male will be harassed and and kept from the rights citizens might expect - decent health care, voting, protection from crime.

The other will be for trying to make government work despite violent opposition, the continuation of the gains that have been made since 2008 and perhaps their expansion (health care, Lily Ledbetter Act, ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, fairer rules on immigration, and more), movement away from the wars we've been fighting for too long, and a whole series of imperfect policies that can be pulled out, one by one, to illustrate the puller's virtue.

Enough! We've just started to pull out of the hole that thirty year's belief in rampant free-marketism and the hate politics that have taken over the Republican Party have dumped us into.

So take your choice in November. You want something else? I'd counsel you to take the choice that is closer to that direction. There will be no revolution if Mitt Romney is elected; the Republicans are doing everything they can to tilt the playing field - Citizens United and voter disqualifications - so it will be harder in 2016. It's not a matter of defeating Obama. It's a matter of electing either Obama and all that goes with him or Romney and all that goes with him.