Barack Obama changed my life

[Antonio the Sixth]

Warning: This OP features high quantities of self-indulgent sentimentalism and mawkishness that might hurt the sensibilities of those inclined toward cynicism. Reader discretion is highly recommended.


So yeah, I guess this is the last chance I have to get it off my chest.

This thread's title isn't clickbait: I have good reasons to believe that my life today would be completely different if Barack Obama had not run for President and won in 2008.

In January 2008, I was a still extremely shy and almost-friendless (though things were getting better) High Schooler in the Paris suburbs. I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with my life - I knew that I liked politics, and that it would be nice to study it at university, and that's it. I knew next to nothing about American politics. The US to me was just this quasi-barbaric country that bullied others with its military and economic power while executing its own people people. My English level was average by French standards, which is to say godawful. France and Italy were the extent of my horizon in the world.

Then I started hearing about the primaries in what at the time I knew as the slightly-less-awful party. I learned that there was this young Black guy with a decidedly foreign name who was running against Bill Clinton's wife and all the establishment that backed her. I started hearing bits of his speeches, always so full of passion and meaning. It wasn't a very good time for me in politics: Sarkozy had just been elected and started normalizing racism in French political discourse, and Berlusconi was about to make his triumphant comeback in Italy. In these hopeless times, someone was saying "yes, we can".

I chose to believe him. So I started acquainting myself with all the intricacies of the primary system, with its caucuses, its superdelegates and its convention (it sounded silly at the time, but well, that's because it is silly). And somehow, he did it. The idealistic Black guy in this supposedly racist, backwards country had taken on the full might of the Clinton machine and defeated it with skill. And then, he won the general election in a landslide, carrying States that hadn't been Democratic in 40 years! By the time he did, I had developed a passion for America: not only for its politics (which I now knew a lot about), but for its history, its culture, and yes, even its values. I suddenly understood what it was that appealed so much in "the American dream".

Then, shortly after, I found the forum. As soon as I started browsing it, I realized that, if I joined, it was going to take up a good chunk of my time. There was so much to discuss, so much to discover. I was reluctant at first, wondering if that was really worth it. But eventually, while on vacation from school, I decided it was worth it. I joined the forum, started posting, started to see all those colorful maps, all those intriguing timelines, all these people who had (more or less interesting) things to say. A couple months later, I joined Atlasia. And all through, I learned even more about the inner workings of US politics. I became a nerd. My English also improved dramatically, faster than I ever thought was possible.

Meanwhile, I graduated from High School and ended up at Sciences Po. My social life improved a little bit there, but I remained shy and awkward. While I always dreaded the third year - where students are forced to attend a university abroad - I also saw it as an opportunity. I had learned so much about America from a distance: this was the occasion to finally see it with my own eyes. A few years ago, the idea of living alone on another continent would have sounded crazy to me. Now, I was willing to take the risk and go on an adventure. So I went to San Francisco, and fell in love (with the city itself and with a person within it).

When I left, I was a different person: my social skills had improved considerably (seriously, those of you who have talked to me face-to-face would have no idea how I was before), and my whole attitude to life had changed. I had experienced extreme joy and extreme suffering there, an emotional intensity that my life in France had never provided. And what seemed like a crazy idea had become a long-term project: I wanted to go back to America as soon as I could. As you know, I succeeded - and now here I am, a PhD student in Los Angeles.

You get the idea. All of this, every bit of it, would never have happened without Obama. If the primary had been a walk in the park of Hillary (or even a Hillary-Edwards race), I probably would still have kept up with the campaign a bit, but I wouldn't have become so passionate about it. Not passionate enough to join a political forum (especially as I'd had a pretty bad experience with online forums before), and certainly not passionate enough to think of spending a year there. I would almost certainly have found a comfy place in Italy with relatives not so far away. These experiences have changed the way I see the world. And, more importantly than anything else, almost all my close friends, who have added so much to my life, are people I met either in SF, in LA, or on this very forum.

So I hope you can see why, whatever his failings were, Obama still means so much to me. I try to separate the personal gratitude from judgment of his political record, but I'm not sure I can ever fully disentangle the two. To all those who have been touched by "yes, we can", please cling to that feeling. Don't let it fade away. Don't let reality convince you that it's just naive bullsh*t. You know what? It is naive bullsh*t, but perhaps naive bullsh*t is what we all need to keep going.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Thanks for sharing, Xingkerui. I'm glad others can realte.

And yes, this is exactly what offends me so much about T***p.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Cry more.

I'm not crying, you fascistic troglodytes, I'm celebrating. People may come and go, but righteous causes and ideals live on.

Also, I just can't feel personal attachment to a politician, beside very few cases.

Neither do I. This is one of those few cases.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If only your idol had been a steel worker or a programmer instead...

Those are two odd occupations to list together.

(Also besides the point, since it's not Obama who got me interested in politics per se.)

[Antonio the Sixth]

If only your idol had been a steel worker or a programmer instead...

Those are two odd occupations to list together.

Both imply membership in a workforce of some sort (though both sadly also imply an industrial/postindustrial society and all the associated vice and atomization; we can't all be feudal serfs or lumberjacks, sadly).

Oh, I see. So it's just an anti-academia thing. Fair enough.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If only your idol had been a steel worker or a programmer instead...

Those are two odd occupations to list together.

Both imply membership in a workforce of some sort (though both sadly also imply an industrial/postindustrial society and all the associated vice and atomization; we can't all be feudal serfs or lumberjacks, sadly).

Oh, I see. So it's just an anti-academia thing. Fair enough.

More of an anti-politics thing. I have a great relationship with the academics. Political hero worship (and the associated belief in the earthly Salvation of Man) is triggering.

But, as you can see, sometimes political hero worship can have an influence on people's life choices for the better (at least it was for the better for me - though you might argue that the forum and the State of California suffered from it ).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, BRTD, that's how f**king disappointed I am. And I'm not going to take any lesson on what is worth caring about from a shallow, pretentious hipster for whom politics is just a matter of hanging out with the kool kidz.

[Antonio the Sixth]

OK, this is the last post I'm going to make about this masquerade because I need to stop procrastinating and actually start focusing on homework I have to do.

First off, no, I don't hate Perez and he's obviously a big improvement over DWS (something that's ridiculous to celebrate because being not as awful as DWS should be a basic job requirement, not a great victory) and I want to hope he's not completely deluded about continuing this bottom-up organization where consultants with intricate data models make all the decisions and pay no attention to the demands of State parties. God I want to hope they learned the lesson on this at least. I've also never been particularly fond of Ellison and I wasn't expecting he'd bring about a revolution or whatever.

This election matters not because of Perez or Ellison, but because it demonstrates that DNC leaders are paying absolutely zero attention to anything happening outside of Washington. Not even just outside of the Democratic party, or even outside the Democratic elite (friggin Schumer had endorsed Ellison, ffs!) but outside the narrow clique of power brokers that currently controls it, this unholy alliance of Obama and Hillary operatives who ran the 2016 campaign and lost above and beyond our worst fears. The entire party was behind Ellison, including, again, many establishment figures (and those who weren't for him were for Buttigieg). The only ones for Perez were in the aforementioned clique, which represents nothing and no one beyond itself. Now, in any decent party, after running it completely into the ground, such a clique would have had the decency, maybe not to surrender, but to at least leave some room for alternative figures. Ellison wasn't some raging populist outsider, he just represented a wing of the establishment that wanted to reach out to those left out. But apparently even that was too much for the Clinton-Obama hacks.

And yes, it matters, because it means that these people have learned absolutely nothing from 2016, that they think they can keep everything exactly as it was, continue with the same strategy that lost Democrats 1000 State legislature seats and allowed an lying, authoritarian, White-supremacist pandering billionaire to win the White House carrying f**king Michigan and Pennsylvania. They are not interested in changing anything of the strategy, attitudes, culture, and messaging that led to this outcome. America is already great! The Democratic party is already great! Everything is fine! Let's do the same things we did before and you'll see in 2018 the American people will come back to us begging! I'm f**king outraged because they are going to hand this country to the most vile and reactionary right-wing force in the Western world on the strength of the working-class, while fruitlessly courting wealthy White suburbanites. They'll destroy the American left and thus indirectly contribute to the destruction of America.

And yes, I care because this is the country I've chosen to live in - not just for my PhD but, I've always hoped, for my future professional life. It's pretty f**king rich for you, BRTD, you who keep making thread after thread about how great it is to reject the culture you are born into and embrace a new one that fits you better, are now telling me to shut up because I'm "not American". Guess what? This is the culture I've chosen for myself (without renouncing to my roots because, contrary to you, I don't see a contradiction between keeping up traditions and experimenting new things). I might not have a passport or even a Green Card, but I am a person who lives in America, studies in America, talks with Americans, reads American newspapers, eats American food, and is affected by American public policy. Unless you've suddenly become a nativist asshole, you have no business telling me I shouldn't care about US politics.

Well, that's it. Have a nice day.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Aww, you got offended? Poor little thing. Maybe you should have thought about it before going after me in five different threads simultaneously. Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.