Obama is someone I used to admire, some of his stances and opinions. One of his qoutes which is something along the lines of “The only way to fight back against hateful speech is with more speech” He’s done a total 180 recently, and now I basically have no respect for the guy.
Obama has consistently been a smooth operator who talked a good game in front of people during speeches, while taking opportunities to increase federal authority in the background. He shut down whistleblowers, expanded federal surveillance, eroded 4th amendment privacy rights, and attacked internet freedom and privacy. He also was anti-gun-rights while he ran a failed sting that allowed Mexican cartels to acquire hundreds of guns, which went on to be used in crimes.
Obama was always smart enough to handle his PR and keep controversies away from the surface. He had a genuinely good personality! If I can put on my tinfoil hat a little, I think that the US news companies which would later go NUTS trying to win the election for dems in 2016 were already going to bat for him at this point too.
Basically, people like Obama because he had a cool head and good attitude unlike any presidential candidate since then, but he was always doing this stuff. Remember SOPA/PIPA?
That’s definitely an interesting theory and honestly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was the case. I do remember SOPA and PIPA, but from my memory, Obama is the one who stopped those bills in their path to getting made into law. He even promised that bills like that would never get into law while he was president. Maybe I’m not remembering very much.
I wasn’t even old enough to vote back then, so I didn’t pay much attention. I know my dad absolutely hated Obama, though, lol. But my dad was also the type of person who would see the color blue or a D next to a candidates name and immediately cross them out. So, not exactly the most unbias person in the world, lol.
On review, I’ve got that wrong- that was going on during his administration, but he was against it (IE publicly stated he would veto, which is pretty solid). I stand by the statement that FBI digital surveillance, which began under Bush, continued to grow at an ever-accelerating rate under Obama at the very least. We also all know how he treated Snowden and Assange, though I’m not sure of any other notable whistleblowers to make a wider track record out of.
I was doing some more searching trying to remember some of the things which soured my opinion on him, and I remembered this: He also was pretty big on drone strikes. One time he killed US Citizens in Yemem and he also stated he would be willing to kill citizens on US soil with drone strikes if he felt it necessary.
From my perspective, Obama was possibly the most recent president to direct federal policy on this. The FBI was actively refusing to cooperate with Trump for most of his presidency, and I don’t think Joe Biden is really leading the feder government more than other federal agency leaders are leading him. We also know drones are being used to spy on protests recently. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there were already armed drones in the air over these protests at some point, but we probably won’t get to know for sure.
