Obama Addicts: Will They Ever Learn?

Years ago I worked at a methadone maintenance program in New York City. My job was to counsel heroin addicts as they sought to overcome their addictions. Yet as hard as I tried, I could not reach some clients who stubbornly refused to do what was needed to remain clean.
As might be imagined, this was terribly frustrating. Eventually I reached the conclusion that the best I could do was hold out a hand to those willing to take it. Clients who weren’t, I left to bang their heads against the dependency wall until they hurt so badly they were ready to accept assistance.
Something similar is happening in our current political impasse. Dyed-in-the-wool liberals (as my sister who lives in New Jersey assures me) continue to support Barack Obama and his policies. Moreover, they continue to blame George W. Bush and Republicans for all that goes wrong—including the gulf oil spill.
In this, they too are banging their heads against a wall. They continue to ignore reality and trust to shop-worn platitudes to save the nation. No matter how often their predictions are disconfirmed, they are certain a little more of the same will eventually succeed.
The trouble is that it is not only their own heads that they are banging against the wall. They are also battering those of people who disagree with them. In other words, they insist on giving the rest of us a headache rather than acknowledge their own habit.
We saw this when Obama gave his televised pep talk on the oil spill. Many of us listened with the sickening feeling that we had heard this before. It was simply a rerun of his health care tactics—and as such was both disappointing and boring.
By now many dozens of commentators have noted that this is one more example of taking advantage of a crisis in order to promote an unrelated agenda. In this case, the goal is to resurrect cap-and trade energy policies. In the past, of course, it was the stimulus bill and health care.
Obama and company are also addicted to blaming others for their own shortcomings. In the past it was Bush who bore the brunt of their excuses, whereas today it is still Bush, as augmented by British Petroleum and the state of Arizona.
As should be obvious, no matter what BP does it will be insufficient as compared with the current administration’s brilliant performance from “day one.” Nor can Arizonan’s get off the hook by pointing out that their immigration laws are more protective of immigrant rights than those of the federal government.
To the contrary, both BP and Arizona can expect lawsuits. They must be punished in order to prove that Obama was correct in every detail. They need to be singled out as the “enemy” so that the president’s allies can rally to his defense.
Sadly, many liberals are indeed flocking to the cause. They are ready to provide rationalizations for the administration’s policies, whether these concern oil, the economy, or Israel and Iran.
The problem is that they are harming others in order to palliate their own distress. Spending and taxing more, as the plan to do, will only increase the federal deficit. Likewise, regulating and scapegoating, whether of BP or Wall Street, will not fix what is broken.
Yet liberals are not paying attention. They are too transfixed by their own addictions. In so doing, however, they demonstrate that smart people can do dumb things. As addicts, they literally fail to use their brains when these reveal unwelcome truths.
President Obama himself is currently on another political campaign to divert attention from his inadequacies. He is hoping that he can hide his own botched tactics. This must not be allowed to succeed. Those of us who are not blinded by a pseudo-chemical desire to defend him must remember what needs to be done next November.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University