You Put Your Left Foot In, You Put Your Right Foot Out...

“President Obama has moved alarmingly Right of Center, making decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan that render him little more than Bush Lite.” –The Disappointed Left

Or…

“President Obama has moved alarmingly Left of Center with his Economic Stimulus Plan, revealing himself as a Trojan Horse Socialist.” – The Hysterical Right

As Obama’s new administration moves forward, there is so much shouting about the Right, the Left, the In and the Out that one might think Washington politicos were doing that silly, 1940s dance, The Hokey Pokey.

It’s understandable when ultra-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-head minions kick and scream over every move Obama makes. He is the charismatic man of color who outmaneuvered their WASP candidate, persuading Americans to vote for a bold new direction that Rush can’t find with the help of Mapquest, much less understand or engage.

Neither is it surprising, albeit sad, that Republican denial over the extent of their defeat in the last two elections further alienates the electorate that rejected them.

Most of all, though, it is thrilling how much creative debate is generated when a President operates out in the open instead of behind locked doors marked, “Keep Out.” Putting our Left foot in and our Right foot out as we dance the political Hokey-Pokey is exactly what we should be doing… legitimate dissent, debate and compromise are pillars of our Democracy, on par with the Pursuit of Happiness, All Men are Created Equal, and Every Vote Counts.

What, then, is the Left’s objection to Obama?

We should not ignore the sincere anguish of anti-war antagonists who cannot abide one more wartime loss of life, nor accept silence from the White House in response to the absurd Pentagon claim that Guantánamo Bay meets humanitarian standards laid out in the Geneva Conventions. Neither should we deny permission to human rights groups such as the ACLU to independently review conditions at Guantánamo Bay. These and similar issues are valid, and should be heard and addressed.

But there are some members of the Left whose sense of unease over Obama’s Presidency borders on mysticism. A case in point is the blogosphere claim by Doug Page at Dissident Voice that “Obamamania,” or unexamined enthusiasm for and support of the President, is the result of “the false myth of redemptive violence.” Page goes on to explain that…

“Our childhood TV shows, our comic books, many of our movies and our foreign policy are all founded on the false myth of redemptive violence. It promises to redeem, to restore order, law, peace and democracy, but it never does. This myth appears in The Lone Ranger, Batman, Superman, Cowboy Westerns, James Bond movies, TV games, modern adult movies and popular TV shows, and in our foreign policy and CIA. (How Doug makes the leap from Batman to the CIA is unclear, at least to this reader.) He continues… “No cooperation, community effort on our part or democracy is required… The good guys always win.”

In other words, Doug doesn’t like it that we suspend criticism of Presidents we like, or who we think support our views, because it “doesn’t seem necessary” to hold good guys accountable.

OK, then, Doug. Articulate what you don’t like about Good-Guy Obama’s views and we will listen, evaluate, and decide if we agree or disagree with you. By the way, we don’t need complex theories to persuade us that this is a good thing to do.

Another disturbing aspect of dissent from the Left is the odd assertion that we are making too much of racism, that it no longer suppresses the upward mobility of blacks. On a recent broadcast of the Bill Moyers Journal, black political commentator and linguistics scholar John McWhorter said, “…the fact of the matter is that when you look at the problems that the black community has, tracing them to racism has gotten so abstract that really I don't see and maybe I'm missing something. But I don't see how we could convince a significant proportion of the American population that racism was the main issue anymore.”

Really? What neighborhood does John McWhorter live in? It certainly isn’t in Prospect, Kentucky or Pacoima, California, where racist views from both sides are as heavy a burden on progress and mobility as a “Colored Only” sign.

I wonder if Mr. McWhorter has heard of the false myth of redemptive violence. It sounds like he just doesn’t want to believe that bigotry still exists in good-guy America.

Or is it that, below the surface of squeaky-clean Liberalism there is a current of unacknowledged racial mistrust? Because, with no disrespect to Bill Moyers, I find it less interesting that a black social commentator dismisses the notion that racism remains an issue than that a white program host considers it "thought provoking" to feature his views.

Meanwhile, as feet and hands and hips and elbows are put in and taken out in that dance of the Right and Left known as the Hokey-Pokey, there is one thing about Obama on which we can agree: he does, indeed, do it with “style and grace.”