By
Sean P. McKelvey
As
the celebration of our cold, calculated, violent, racist, sexist,
xenophobic, entitled, ethnocentric, arrogant, privileged, genocidal,
and disgustingly imperialistic leaders quickly approaches
(President’s Day, as it’s commonly referred to); I find it a
moral imperative and obligation to write this. There will be plenty
of celebration of our country’s accomplishments and a sickening
amount of gushing about our past presidents’ “greatness,”
honorable ideals and accomplishments in the next day or so. I
believe, however; in keeping with the American attitude and ideal
(that sets us apart and makes us, truly; something to aspire to,
given the nobility of our true purpose; which welcomed and
celebrated, dissenting opinion and viewpoints, and the free exercise,
thereof), the more dark and sad truths of our history, must also be
shared. Our society must never forget that although we have, very
much indeed, come an incredibly long and very honorable way; we
still, and will always have much room for improvement to realize, the
true promise of our great nation. That we all, regardless of our
individual circumstances, or literally, anything else, at all, are
equal, as Americans, and are all on an equal footing to start out.
That we, and only we create our own futures and destiny: not, our
class, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or any other factor
beyond our own control.
Since
that is simply not the reality, at all, in our country; I have
trouble blindly celebrating the absolutely broken promises that
President’s Day represents. I will always have a big fat bone to
pick with anything that feels like bullshit patriotic propaganda.
Indeed, we ALL should take issue with any narrative being spoon fed
to us, as if it’s the only way we are really allowed to view or
understand something, without being ostracized and told we're “splitting hairs,” and only looking for the negative. “This is
a day, time, month, week, hour; what the fuck ever, for us; as
Americans, to celebrate, the actual good, we, or our nation, has
done. To even point out anything that even remotely challenges, our
dominance or supposed “good doings”, is labeled as “Un-American.”
This attitude and lack of analyzing complex thought is precisely the
overall issue, the world at large, has with our country. And here we
are; proving we ain’t learned a damn thing and are still clinging
to incredibly antiquated ideals, that chain us to an unsavory and
honestly, awful past. That which we maniacally defend, for no real
reason and, even further; no quantifiably good reason, at all. Our
country has willfully and very purposefully left well over half of us
so far behind. It is tragically pathetic that we still hold onto the
delusion that we matter, at all, to the corporate juggernaut we call
America. Needless to say; in “honor of,” President’s Day, I
present you with just a very small taste of the really awful things,
our presidents have done, on our dime, and in our name, too…
We
all know that plenty of our past presidents were incredibly racist,
sexist, and so on. We know plenty of them owned slaves and fought to
keep slavery going. We know they carried out the genocide of the
Native Americans. Since, these are the well-known points in shameful
presidential history, I’d like to focus on a few examples of
shameful presidential policy from more modern presidents. We will
start with Ronald Reagan.
There
are many, many things I could use to illustrate a much darker picture
of Reagan, than the one we commonly think of, but, I’ve decided to
focus on one, truly abhorrent part of his presidential legacy. The
Iran Contra Affair, where Reagan gave the CIA the go ahead, to sell
cocaine to the ghettos of especially Los Angeles, and use the drug
money to buy weapons to exchange for hostages taken by Iran. It was
basically a right-wing social engineering, wet dream, come true. It
helped create one of the worst drug epidemics the inner city has ever
seen and helped arm and train the folks in Iran that would later
become members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The negative
effects of this horrible ordeal are still lasting today. They can be
seen in the despair and desperation of inner-city crack addicts, or
in the grief of those who lost someone on September 11. 2001. The
Iran Contra Affair, alone, is reason enough to at least think twice
before blindly celebrating this presidency.
Now
let’s focus on everyone’s favorite “liberal” president, Bill
Clinton. There are, as with all American presidents, many policies
and actions one could use to paint a very dark picture of his
presidency, so I’ve chosen to focus on a few points of policy that
were terribly ill advised and their negative effects still last, to
this day. The Three Strikes Law was one of the most racist pieces of
legislation in modern history and led to the creation of what can be
referred to as the “prison-industrial complex” that we have
today. The law has been found to unfairly incarcerate minorities and
has strengthened the shift to the privatization of our prison system.
People were getting 25 to life sentences for crimes as petty as
shoplifting small amounts of food, when this policy first passed.
This policy was bad enough; but apparently that wasn’t enough,
because Clinton also brought us Welfare Reform. His reform was cruel
and unfairly targeted especially single mothers. (Ironic for a man
raised by a single mother, himself, who was on welfare). Welfare
Reform kicked tons of people off welfare and forced many more into
below poverty level wage jobs, that were not full time, offered no
benefits and offered no upward mobility whatsoever. People were
forced to work these low level, crappy jobs, in order to collect
welfare; however, the minute these people made even one dollar above
the cutoff amount, they were ineligible to collect welfare, at all.
Basically, it forced them to work low level, crappy jobs to collect
welfare, but took it away as soon as they were working. That is just
plain cruel. There are many other examples from Clinton’s
presidency that show he was not this champion of the people he’s
regarded as. I simply don’t have the time or space to delve into
them, here.
Finally,
we get to Barrack Obama. I fear that, since our current president,
Donald Trump is so bad; so far beyond the pale, that Obama will
basically get a free pass from history on anything, not so great, is his presidency and that bothers me greatly. There are examples from
his presidency that show that he is just as much a part of our
political establishment as any other member of it. He promised to
shut down Guantanamo Bay; it is still open. He signed the
Whistleblower Act, then exiled Edward Snowden, arrested Julian
Assange and kept Chelsea Manning in Guantanamo Bay for years. Then
there were the drone strikes. He authorized and carried out countless
drone strikes over the course of his presidency, that killed
thousands of innocent people along with the one target they had. He
was very much a defender of the surveillance state, that is rapidly
eroding our reasonable expectation of and right to privacy. Finally,
he didn’t have the backbone to insist upon a public option in the
Affordable Care Act. Had he done so; it would have taken care of a
lot of the problems with healthcare.
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