Time Magazine's 2012 Person of the Year: A Celebration of the Indifferent Voter
It is the second time that Time has given Barack Obama this award. In 2008, Obama won the first time, ostensibly for making history as the first Black president of the U.S. This year, Obama managed to beat out Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who fought for education for girls, and was attacked by the Taliban for it. There were other—much less–distinguished luminaries, including Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Clearly Malala did not pursue the winning strategy: she did something constructive, and became a hero for risking her life and standing up to bullies, who shot her for it. She should have pursued a different strategy: capitulate to the bullies, repeat their stance even when you know it's wrong (Israel has a "right to self defense), pursue rights-depriving legislation, expand authority for yourself, and all the while promising that she "will use all the powers of this office" to make sure terrible things don't happen again—well after massacres occur over and over again. Perhaps she should have invited folks whose family members were murdered to remotely related celebrations at the White House and assume that such gestures would make amends for terrible injustices.
Time's Editor Richard Stengel gave some reasons for why they chose Obama (over Yousufszai):
But he's more than just a political figure; he's a cultural one. He is the first President to embrace gay marriage and to offer work permits to many young undocumented immigrants.
Obama also has a kill list and disposition matrix. He has insisted on the executive power to arrest, detain, and incarcerate anyone he chooses for an indefinite period of time—without charges, evidence, or access to lawyers, due process, or even company in jail (witness the solitary confinement and humiliations awarded to Pfc Bradley Manning, hailed as a whistleblower for turning over evidence of ethical wrongdoing to Wikileaks). He reserves the right to drone civilians and children in 6 countries and counting. He entrenched the Hyde Amendment—the one that restricts federal funding for abortions–in his infamous health insurance bill of 2010.
Since his first election in 2008, Obama sent over 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. He promised to withdraw them but only because Afghanistan wouldn't allow the U.S. to stay. His Administration promised to help oversee Afghanistan's transition to democracy, only to protest vehemently when the Afghan legislature wanted to preserve the notion of due process.
In March of this year, Obama insisted that a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Hider Shaea (or Shaye), remain in prison, ostensibly because of his "association" with Al-Qaeda, which in fact is his propensity to interview Al-Qaeda. But Shaea's real crime was reporting a December 2009 Cruise Missile strike launched by the U.S. Air Force, which killed 41 people —21 of them children– at a wedding party. It is unknown whether any terrorists, who were supposedly being targeted, were killed. Shaea, who was convicted in 2010, was on the verge of being pardoned by the Yemeni president, until President Obama called President Saleh and "expressed his concern" about Shaea's release. The pardon was immediately reversed.
Somehow, surprisingly, the editors at Time Magazine did not mention those accomplishments. What they did say, however, was that:
The President feels a responsibility to advance the values he sees reflected in the changing electorate.
Really? No candidate HAS EVER felt this before.
Of the nearly 66 million people who pulled the lever for him, Obama says, "The choice that they made was less about me and more about them, more about who they saw themselves to be." It's a lovely sentiment for a winner, but even if Obama's right, the question now is, Who exactly do they want to be? And can Barack Obama take them there?
And how exactly, did the "people" who voted for Barack Obama in the last election see themselves? Well, I can tell you how I see them.
They were voters…who were unafraid of being arrested, incarcerated, or held in solitary confinement. Voters who were indifferent to drone strikes or the thousands of deaths of children and innocent civilians in far away countries—whom they would never meet, encounter or need to think about. Voters who do not live in fear of being surveilled by FBI or CIA in mosques around the country. Voters who don't worry that the President has too much arbitrary authority to use against citizens. Voters who are not troubled by the massive number of deportations organized under the Obama Administration (1.4 million—more than under both Bush terms). Voters who don't get their news filtered through the mainstream media—in other words, Voters who read TIME magazine.
Apparently, they saw Obama as
One man, despite his failures, [who] had voters like you in mind.
Voters like "you"? According to Rush Limbaugh, Obama was elected by the low information voter. Limbaugh's translation: stupid people. My version: voters who just don't care about facts. And indeed, Time Magazine confirms both of our translations.
As Limbaugh said:
Richard Stengel, who is the editor of TIME Magazine, explaining why they chose Obama. [He] essentially says that they chose Obama because he is a symbol, the champion, of the new low-information American. It's kinda funny to listen to it," Limbaugh began before playing Stengel's explanation as follows:
"He won reelection despite a higher unemployment rate than anybody's had to face in 70 years. He's the first Democrat to actually win two consecutive terms with over 50% of the vote. That's something we haven't seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And he's basically the beneficiary and the author of a kind of new America, a new demographic, a new cultural America that he is now the symbol of."
Limbaugh also noted that Stengel said: "15% of voters actually don't care about politics. These are the people we didn't know who are gonna show up at the polls who actually like Barack Obama, in the sense they feel like he's outside of politics."
It is the first time that Rush Limbaugh and I have ever agreed on anything. I keep looking out the window for flying pigs.
Author Falguni A. ShethPosted on December 20, 2012 December 20, 2012 Categories 2013, US Politics, VotingTags Indifferent Voters, Obama, Time Magazine
2 thoughts on "Time Magazine's 2012 Person of the Year: A Celebration of the Indifferent Voter"
operatioN|Manning says:
Reblogged this on #opManning.
1729 (@emacdo) says:
This can't happen soon enough for me: http://is.gd/02DXoE
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