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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

What amazes me is that the great swath of Obama supporters who decried the Bush administration's civil rights abuses are strangely quiet about the continuation of those abuses today. (Caveat: I'm not American, but if I was, I would have held my nose and voted for Obama in 2008.)

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I voted for Obama. I'm a liberal and he has lost the support of the liberals. We are not silent about the continuation, and in some circumstances extension, of the abuses. In quite a few races this past election cycle in the U.S. the Republican candidate won as a result of people like me voting for the Green party.

Obama has been a profound disappointment to me in the area of civil rights. That a former constitutional law professor does not stand against these abuses is almost beyond belief to me. He has been a disappointment in other areas but for him to not defend freedom and justice makes me despair for the future of the country.

It is worse than simple ignorance: He understand the abuses perfectly well, he just doesn't give a shit.

Let that be a lesson to all of us: politicians lie, trusting them is foolish.

Everybody lies and blindly trusting anyone is hardly a good idea. But it's the political system in the US that makes things so much worse.

There are other systems that do a little better, though no one is ideal.

It would have been one thing to blindly trust him, I don't really do that with anybody, except possibly very close family; I am talking about trusting him like you would trust a not that close friend.

But look at the greater problem: Obama or not, people don't actually do anything. Sure, there will be some forum discussions, but that's pretty much it. The EFF and ACLU seem to be the only organized movements that actually try to do anything. In the political landscape these issues just do not appear.

You're right. Most people assume their democratic duty amounts to showing up and voting once every two or four years - though almost half of eligible Americans don't even do that much - and that voting for the best candidate is enough to effect change.

Community organizer Saul Alinsky famously had a meeting with US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had just been elected in the deepest trough of the Great Depression. Alinsky spoke about the President's role in creating a more fair and prosperous society.

At the end of the meeting, FDR told Alinsky: "Okay, you've convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me!"

And when they do, they're demonized. See pretty much any protest coverage ever.

I know I personally don't do anything, because I feel pretty much powerless to effect any kind of meaningful change.

I seem to recall that there was also a small but significant minority of conservatives, who were freaked out about civil rights abuses under Clinton but then became strangely silent under Bush. Government powers are always less scary when the face on them is someone you feel is a member of your tribe.

In this example you also have to look at events during each administration. The fear after 9/11 cause many to reconsider what was reasonable encroachment on civil liberties. Everyone has an opinion on this. Mine is that it was seriously misguided and has resulted in egregious abuses.

I don't think that's accurate. If you look at large, mainstream liberal community blogs like Daily Kos, there's frequent and harsh criticism of Obama on those issues.

I think you're wrong about that. Obama has very vocal critics on the left.

They're just not in the same left Obama is (if he's in the left at all, he's much more to the centre).

Anywhere else in the industrialized world, Obama would be a moderate conservative. Only in the political Bizarro World we call America can Obama even remotely be considered a liberal, let alone any kind of leftist.

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