Promise change. Don't deliver. Your ratings sink.

How much clearer could it be? Obama was elected to the presidency because he promised change; he had super-high approval ratings when people still thought he would deliver. Now, as it becomes clear that he won't, that he's not even trying to fight the establishment and make real change--in health care, in the economy, in our approach to the world, in adhering to the Constitution--his approval ratings have gone down. It's not because of the tea party people, it's not because he's too radical (!); it's not because he doesn't listen to the Repugs; it's because he's not doing what he said he'd do. People voted for change, they're not getting it, they're disappointed. So simple. The Repugs of course do everything to obfuscate this obvious point, and the press is their effing handmaiden. The press, like the Repugs, doesn't see it because they don't want to see it. Otherwise, how dumb can they be?

So, the fog over the country is not just created by job loss and home loss; people wanted change so much that they actually elected a young Black man, and not by a slim margin. They gave him a Congress dominated by his own party. And nothing much happened --business as usual. So how despairing does that make a people who have been endlessly buffeted by tales of terrorists, to the point that they're shivering in their boots when the wind blows a door shut? This presidency pretty much seems to put the nail in the coffin of the America we all admired and loved. If this election didn't do it, why bother? That feeling is pervasive; the people aren't as stupid as they look. They know they're now owned by the corporate state--they might not articulate it, but they know it. And they don't like it, but they feel completely powerless to change it now. That's how I feel, certainly.