Over a year ago, we elected a man to be president and we were euphoric with hope and happiness.
That’s why I posted this list of predictions on the morning after. I wanted to make everybody miserable and cynical like me.
The post drew a lot of interesting commentary, and I hope that revisiting it will do the same.
Here are my 22 predictions, followed by analysis of how they’ve been coming along.
1.) The president will successfully tax the rich. That would just about balance the budget deficit, except-
*( Yeah, this would happen if Obama could get so much as a resolution condemning midget wrestling through congress.)
2.) -we will never really get out of Iraq. Expect major reductions of troops in Iraq, but they will stay on at some level, probably as a "stability force" or somesuch euphemism for occupiers. The troops that do leave will just trounce over to Afghanistan.
* (True, except for the "major reductions" part. Is anybody really surprised?)
3.) Prediction 1 leads to the conservatives hating Obama like nobody’s business. The invective increases steadily in hatred, until the language from the ministers of conservative churches borders on the treasonous. Bolstered by the hate speech, the extreme right wing mounts-
* (Conservatives don’t need an excuse to hate and say stupid things any more than midget wrestlers need an excuse to pile-drive little people.)
4.) -several serious assassination attempts. But luckily the right wingers with the guns are every bit the screwups as the ones in the Whitehouse these last eight years. Feeling increasingly disempowered, the conservatives turn to-
* (This hasn’t happened. Yet. That we know of.)
5.) – Sarah Palin as a role model and ideological figurehead. Becoming as divisive and polarizing as Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney before her (but without the common sense to shut up and stay out of sight after the country gets sick of her), Palin skirts the accusation that she caused the downfall of the McCain campaign (see my previous post about the trap of identity politics for the right), and instead becomes a righteous martyr. Offensive comments from Palin will make the news every six months. At least once she will be caught saying something truly racist, but America won’t really notice because-
* (I’m giving myself nine points out of ten for this one, but with Palin regularly doing live TV on FOX, we can expect the shockingly racist comment within the next year.)
6.) -investment in the tech sector will skyrocket. Even though investors are politically conservative, they only feel comfortable putting their money in the future when there’s a forward-thinking Democrat in power. Because of Obama, the most stodgy moneybags will think that we can remake the shape of industry, and that people will buy books online if given the chance. With the previous administration, all the investors could think about was oil. Now’s the time to invest in the most goof-ball technologies you can find, but be sure to sell before the conservative backlash government.
* (I have no idea how this is coming along. I’m thinking that the economy is still too sucky for a lot of investment.)
7.) America will completely fail to get over its race problem. The cops in Austin will still use force on black people at a rate seven times that of whites. School funding will still be tied to the property values of the community, giving poor communities the shaft. The president will just be another celebrity, no more tied to the liberation of black people than the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, except that now when the middle class sees someone from the working class, they won’t think, "Let’s fix the disparity in the access to education," they’ll think, "That loser could have been president." And it won’t help that Obama thinks those Mexicans need to learn English (luckily, he will find a way to phrase that so it sounds perfectly reasonable).
* (This is just another way of saying that nothing has changed from last year.)
8.) The energy crisis will continue to be a crisis and too little will be done too late. Luckily the economy won’t hit the post-petroleum brick wall until the first term of the conservative backlash president of 2016, so no one will think to blame Obama.
* (The stagnant economy has given us a temporary reprieve from the energy crisis. Yay!)
9.) There will be no significant health care reform. Nobody in power wants that to happen. There’s too much money in the health racket. All that time that Obama and Hillary spent debating nuanced differences in their health-care packages? Total waste of freaking time.
* (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!! Ten out of ten! Too bad my personal victory means that America is getting the shaft like a midget in a wrestling ring.)
10.) At some point I will find myself protesting a "limited bombing campaign" against a nation’s sovereign territory. There will be five other people there. They will all be incredibly ugly. At least one of the signs will be misspelled and that will be the only thing to make it to the nightly news.
* (Luckily we’re still entangled with limited bombing of the same two nations (or three, depending on who you ask) so I don’t need to make any new protest signs.)
11.) There will be no Great Society-style initiative. Do you remember Obama mentioning poor people? Wrack your brain all you want, he hasn’t brought it up and he never will.
* (Thanks to Obama, the poor people who couldn’t afford health insurance may now have to pay for it or get a fine! But only if he actually gets a Health Care Bill through both houses.)
12.) Obama will continue to look great on television, and people will continue to feel all warm inside when he sounds reassuring and presidential.
* (I haven’t had a television in over a year, so I can’t speak on this. He sounds about the same on NPR at any rate. But I suspect that the charm is wearing off.)
13.) Exciting revelations about the horrible things done by the Bush administration will pop up continually throughout the Obama administration, even if Obama gets two terms.
* (I was expecting more of this. Obama needs to learn that you can only leave the sins of the past behind and have forward-thinking if you actually have some forward momentum.)
14.) The environment will continue to degrade, and people will continue to make token and ineffectual gestures to ameliorate the problem.
* (The raccoons seem to be doing fine in the urban environment. So we will have at least one North American animal for a while.)
15.) The liberalization of international trade will continue in the form of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, etc., without slowing down.
* (You know, I haven’t heard anyone even mention these things in the past year. I guess they won.)
16.) The world will suddenly think America is awesome. Except for Venezuela, which will still hate us.
* (Right after the election the world thought we were awesome. Now they think we’re "meh.")
17.) Conservatives in Congress will do everything possible to dig their feet into the ground. There will be no unity and no consensus building. If Obama asks Congress to breath air, they will hold their breath until they die. There will be lawsuits, special investigators, filibustered appointees, and the minute they get a majority (which will happen mid-term elections second term), they will attempt an impeachment. Lieberman will continue to be a putz.
* (Wow. This gives me shivers. Am I really this psychic? Or is Obama really that dumb to think that there will be bi-partisan cooperation just because he says it will be great?)
18.) Something as weird and improbable as a black guy with a funny name becoming president will happen, but none of us will get close to predicting what that will be.
* (Balloon boy? The underwear bomber? Dinosaurs with stripes? I’m still waiting for something truly weird to happen.)
19.) Nobody from the Bush administration will be held accountable for their crimes.
* (Not only have they not received the slightest slap on the wrist, they’re getting book deals and tenure at Berkeley. Yeah, I’m talking to you, John Yoo, you motherfucking sadistic yes-man scuzzbag.)
20.) George Bush will write his memoirs. In crayon.
* (Apparently he wrote the first couple chapters with a white crayon and couldn’t remember which pages were blank.)
21.) President Obama will repeatedly remind us that the Democratic party is also the party of big business.
* (Corporations are now people. They will flood the Democratic party with yet more bribes-slash-donations. Kiss your democracy goodbye.)
22.) The next version of Firefox will have a spellchecker that includes both "Obama" and "Barack" in its dictionary.
* (Um, Firefox? You’ve had three updates. You read the newspaper? You have Steve, Barclay, Fillmore, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Clinton, and Chavez. I think you’re forgetting someone.)
The take home lesson here, is that when you feel like being cynical, you should ask yourself if you’re really being cynical enough. With the exception of the assassination prediction, it all turned out as bad or far worse than I feared.
Of course no-one tried to assassinate Clinton or Carter, so I guess the conservatives learned from the JFK assassination (and the following Great Society) that it’s easier and more effective to character assassinate.
I feel a little blind-sided by the Obama administration’s failure to conduct the "War on Terror" in a humane method. We still have extraordinary rendition. We still have Gitmo, and there are now prisons in Afghanistan that are likely as bad or worse. I guess our people in uniform have more or less stopped torturing people outright, but that’s up for debate.
I wouldn’t have thought that the Obama administration would be so incompetent at passing legislation and such a failure at establishing ethical foreign policy.
To quote my food-frakking deputy Julia from six-months ago, "I thought it would be at least a year before I would be disappointed with the Obama administration."
Now that it’s been a year, I can’t believe I was so hopeful to begin with.
I’m going to make myself feel better by punching a midget.
