Obama's Buddha

I just saw an interesting clip from the Lion's Roar, a Buddhist E-Zine, about Obama's Buddha, which I highly recommend. Apparently, President Obama has a variety of keepsakes--gifts from admirers--that he carries in his pockets as talismans, to remind him of his larger purpose of serving humanity. Among these are a rosary from Pope Francis and a tiny Buddha, a gift from a monk.

The interview gives us a refreshing insight into the essential decency and warmth of President Obama as a person, and I have no doubt that he is sincere in sharing this private side of himself with the young woman who is interviewing him.

Still, I have many good friends who are bitterly disappointed with, and even hostile to the President, for very good reasons, and in many instances I share their disappointment, though not their hostility. My friends complain, rightly, that Obama has continued, and even expanded, the horrific Bush-Cheney policies in the Middle East, especially the ghastly Drone program that is murdering countless innocent people throughout that desperate region in a vain and heartless effort to snuff out suspected "terrorists." And he is enthusiastically pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership, which is essentially selling out our democracy to Glomart, giving a global corporate tribunal veto power over any and all legislation or policies to protect the public interest in environmental protection and labor laws--that he is, in effect, nothing but a finger puppet on the claws of the Glomart Godzilla (as my acquaintance Aditi Gowry from the U. of Texas at Austin described the role of corporate executives during a conference I attended).

All this may be true, yet it is also true, as E.O. Wilson has noted, that good people do bad things, simply because of the inherent constraints of the position they are in and the culture whose interests they uphold. (His own example of this, from growing up in Alabama, were the decent, solid folk he knew who nevertheless were staunch upholders and defenders of the blatantly racist social order in which they all lived).

My guess is that President Obama's power is largely illusory; he is constrained on all sides, but above all, I suspect he is terrified of the Imperial Secret Government--i.e. the Military Industrial Complex, the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, and corporate elite who actually run things behind the scene--who are heavily invested in the status quo of global domination, rampant consumerism, fossils fuels, the endless wars and expansion of military power and surveillance throughout the world--the same massive criminal syndicate that doubtless staged the 9/11 fraud and offed both John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. when they threatened their power.  President Obama knows well, I'm afraid, that if he tried to challenge or undercut this monster regime, they would not only kill him, but would destroy his family as well, and would wreak untold harm everywhere by backing the ascent to power of another poisonous monster like Cheney.  And so he has no choice, from his own perspective, but to enable them, while doing good within the severely limited domain of influence he actually has (e.g. the Affordable Care Act, which was the best that the combined Glomart powers of the Insurance Industry and Big Pharma would allow him).

But underneath it all, I am convinced that he is still a good, decent, gentle, and compassionate man. May that tiny Buddha in his pocket (and his friend--Pope Francis's Rosary) continue to whisper to him...