Concerning Obama

Those who know a little about me might be surprised that I consider myself a committed left-winger, pretty much a socialist. My father after all, I think it's safe to say, is close to being a neo-conservative, being a Libertarian and an ACT party supporter. But I don't inherit my political beliefs from my father. My mother, and my immediate family generally, are all over on the Left side of political spectrum – in fact, when my father and mother first married he was a Labor supporter who moved to the Right at the same time as the Labour party did, during the '84 Lange government. Possibly I didn't inherit my political beliefs from anyone at all: they just came to me naturally as an expression of my core personality.

Despite being a New Zealander, I find American politics fascinating, perhaps because the differences between the Left and Right is much more clearly drawn there than here in New Zealand. I like Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Bill Maher and liked John Stewart very much; in New Zealand, there are few voices on the Left in the media – but then the political consensus is generally far further over to the Left here than in the States. Sometimes it seems to me that the US lags behind the rest of the world on some issues, like health care, but on other issues, like cannabis decriminalization, it is ahead of the curve, or, at least, ahead of New Zealand.

The 'illness' that I suffered was very political. It is hard to overstate just how much psychotic episodes were influenced by what I read in the newspaper, by politics generally. The episodes I suffered for most of 2009 began in the interval between Obama's election and his inauguration. My father recently said to me, "You don't think there's a connection?" Well, yes… but not because I am a representative of the Loony Left but for reasons more complicated than that. I sometimes think part of the reason I became sick was as a reaction to idiots on the Right. In 2009 and early 2010, when I was hearing voices continuously, I used to hear Barack Obama a lot and this is what I want to talk about in today's post.

Obama is currently enjoying massive popularity and so it is easy to forget that that wasn't always the case. During the early years of his presidency, many Democrats were very disappointed with Obama. He campaigned in 2008 on the promise of closing Guantanomo Bay but has never managed to do so; he has failed to properly address the topic of income inequality despite the 99% movement; he has never been able to get any kind of sensible gun regulations passed despite the fact that a majority of Americans want them. Arguably, the fact that the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for most of his two terms paralyzed him, prevented him from achieving his wanted goals. But also arguably Obama has had a tendency to listen more to his opponents than to his supporters, to conciliate rather than lead. Particularly in late 2009, when I believed I was telepathic, I used to talk often with Obama in my head. This is crazy I know. The impression he gave me then, the Obama I talked to in my head, was of someone who felt trapped, unable to accomplish what he wanted, of someone only just barely coping with stress of the job he had taken on. He had no-one else but me (and Jon Stewart) with whom to talk to about it.  We were all trapped in a box together. I also sensed that he felt himself the object of virulent racism and that this caused him some considerable distress. This was the era of the Tea Party Movement after all. I remember, at one point, during a concert I attended, he addressed, and it seemed to me he knew he was he was taking a risk when he said it, as "nigger-lover" - a derogatory term used in the Southern US for white people who like black people.

People are affected by what others think of them. (This has been a theme in some of my posts.) Last year I saw the real Obama deliver his State of the Union address and one thing I noticed was that, when talking about Muslim Americans, he gestured towards himself. Was he unconsciously signaling that he was secretly a Muslim, as Donald Trump and so many bigots on Fox News have suggested? Of course not. He was simply involuntarily registering his awareness that a wide swath of Americans had decided, out of prejudice and paranoia , that he's Muslim. Obama is not immune to what those on the Right say about him and can't entirely ignore hostile opinions. This is not altogether a bad thing. Obama understands Islamaphobia. He understands it because, even though he is not a Muslim, he has himself been the victim of it. Lefties often identify, without being fully conscious of it, with the oppressed groups they fight for - for instance, Jon Stewart, when talking about racism, probably became in his mind a little bit black as a result. Support for oppressed groups has its cost though - I remember a piece by Jessica Williams effectively chastising Stewart for being a "helper whitey". In a way, to return to Obama though, perhaps being perceived as a Muslim makes him better at understanding the war on Islamic jihadism.

But the Barack Obama of 2015 was different from the Obama of 2009 and I want to return to 2009.

Certainly the most significant piece of legislation passed during Obama's two terms has been Obamacare. I felt strongly about it at the time - New Zealand has a robust public health care system and there is virtually no-one, except maybe a few radical libertarians, who thinks we should adopt the American insurance-based system. America needs and still needs to bring its health care system into line with the rest of the developed world. A story illustrates how important it was to me. One day in November 2009 I was at work, taking bets on horses over the phone, my job at the time– I was hearing voices continuously and the voices I heard that evening were my father and step-mother telling me how bad the Affordable Care Act was, how disastrous the consequences would be. I came home and told my brother who was looking after me for a couple of days (my mother needing a break from me) about the end of The Crying of Lot 49 where Oedipa Maas is left unable to decide whether she has uncovered a massive conspiracy or whether it is all in her mind. I went to bed and, lying in bed, heard in my head the Republicans in the Congress or Senate arguing against the Affordable Care Bill. After a time I couldn't bear this any longer, climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom to vomit in the basin. When I went back to bed, I heard, this time, the Democrat side of the debate and was finally able to get to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I read in the newspaper that the Affordable Care Act had been passed the previous day. I honestly had had no idea that, when all this was going on in my head, it was being debated in Washington.

This was a significantly bizarre event in my life and I think it occurred as the result of a significant event in history. I know Obamacare is imperfect. But I still consider it an important step in the right direction.

Another issue that has always greatly concerned me was climate change. I have almost always believed that it is occurring and that it is anthropogenic. My father has always been a global warming denier (although he has been quiet about this issue in recent times). In late 2009, the warming trend had reversed for a couple of years and there seemed some possibility that the climate change deniers might be right; I was, of course, talking with Obama and Stewart in my head and they themselves seemed worried and unsure. So I spent time researching absorption spectroscopy on the Internet and talking about it with them to reassure them the science was valid. Of course, if I'm to be rational, I would have to say that I was reassuring myself rather than them but it seemed to me at the time that they themselves needed convincing.

My psychosis of 2009 was often concerned with such issues. It seems absurd to me now that I should have been so involved, in my head, with American politics back then. There is a lot more I could say about this period but I have referred to it in previous posts. Perhaps as a New Zealander I should now keep my nose out of American politics and focus on what's going on here at home. There are issues here. There are some issues however that are universal - and one is the treatment of the mentally 'ill', here in New Zealand and elsewhere. This is perhaps the issue that I should be writing about, the one I know the most about because it directly concerns me and the people I know.

This post is about Obama though and so I should perhaps conclude by talking about him a little more. Barack's manner has changed considerably over the years, since 2009. In the early days he could seem stilted and professorial, aloof. He could seem overly intellectual and detached from others. As time has passed, though, it feels as though he has relaxed into the role of president and become more comfortable with himself and the rest of the world. His approval ratings reflect this change in attitude. If it is permissible for me to venture this idea, it seems to me that today he has embraced his blackness, and that he is less concerned with racist Republicans than he once was. His public persona reflects now the person he really is. Perhaps Obama has achieved less in the way of concrete legislative change than he promised in 2008, but his stature as a public figure is indisputable. What he will probably be remembered for most is his wonderful oratory, his speeches, his rhetoric. What we say changes the world and Obama, more than most, is aware of that. Words, as I have said before, shape the world and Obama knows it.