Obama is not your friend

(and other things I wish I could say to Americans)

“The neighbor's brother came home in a box

But he wanted to go so maybe it was his fault

Another red heart taken by the American dream…

A long, cold war with your kids at the front

Just give it one more day then you're done”

-       Ethel Cain, American Teenager (a song from Obama’s 2022 summer playlist)

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There are a few days that I pass through each year with my jaw clenched, shoulders tight, aware of a funny sort of tension in my chest that is both an old pain and something clawed out anew. To call these days dreaded would be incorrect, because I don’t spend the year in waiting for them (even begrudgingly). They exist so outside my line of vision, that not even through my periphery do I see them approaching, until they are in front of me directly: the performances of US nationalistic fervour that spread themselves sticky over social media when Obama drops his yearly playlist.

I scroll, I observe, I feel that heat within my chest.

An aspect of US politics I remain a stranger to is the citizen willingness to emotionally weld oneself to political candidates. The distance that allows Australians, for example, to refuse a Prime Minster’s handshake, to call one a dickhead, or to instruct them to get off a freshly laid lawn (all on live TV), is reversed in the US political landscape. There’s a closeness in it that seems irreplicable; one that situates politics not as adjacent to the self, but as much of the self as other signifiers of identity. To be Republican, Democrat, etc. etc. is not necessarily to be political, it simply is to be.

To expose my own entrenchment of another sort, I think back to the Addison Rae instance where fans had obtained access to her voting details, sharing that she was registered as a Republican. What ensued was varying degrees of rationalisations (she votes how her parents do) deflections (maybe it’s fake) and rejections (unfollowing her right now!!!). Being the last to sing to the Republican story of woe, I don’t intend here to make commentary on the conflict of belonging to the “wrong” political party, but to showcase the passion of politics, particularly that which is binary and oversimplified, within the personal.

Specifically in the case of the US, a political party seems to encapsulate the self. Values, morals, priorities, income, upbringing, even race, all become things that can be easily bordered within a coloured line. Wrong or right. Moral or immoral. Good or bad. (Of course, with the connotations attached to each party being a point of contention.) And so, there are caps on heads and flags on walls, bumper stickers and t-shirts, yard signs and button brooches, and most recently, NFT’s. All objects that elect the elector, that cast votes in the sphere of the inner world, emblems that say wordlessly, look, this is me.  

There’s an obvious danger that exists in such an overlap of identities under singular political umbrellas, and it lives in the inability to be an agent of the self, as in, one that is both capable of AND willing to hold the political far enough to critique it. I don’t mean to negate the fact that a similar argument can be made for other categorical identities i.e. religion, but I don’t believe I’m alone in understanding the significance of US nationalism (whichever form it may take).

It's here that I can call on Obama, arguably the most popular of modern US Presidents, whose two terms represented for many the antithesis to the prejudices, injustices, and inequalities the nation too regularly showcases. Obama was, and continues to be, a figure of difference, a symbol of what a “President”, in an idealistic sense, is meant to signify: leadership under goodness, the unification of communities, the enactment of positive change. Supporting him, then, was a radical resistance against that old, problematic, conventional USA, against conventional politics in general. It was not only an act of believing in a utopia, but also believing in one’s own alignment with what such a utopia entailed.

But there’s an aspect to which Obama owes much of his popularity that is rarely critically examined, something that Trump too shares, and that is the allure of personality. Or better yet, the pretence of one. In an attempt to humanise politics, it seems the US hasn’t called for more “humanity” in the sphere but instead injected the appearance of the human. To see a person instead of a “candidate”, to see character instead of “policy”, to see something that is familiar, and by nature, nearer to the self, than that which is removed and foreign, that is what means to support a politician.

It's with this basis that now, nearly six years on from Obama’s presidency, that masses of Americans still regard him with an unwavering fondness. While he was once adorned for representing what the US could be, he is now thought of nostalgically of what once was, what many yearn to return to. This continuing commitment is shown endlessly first through the Obamas’ post-White House success, with frequent book deals, podcasts, interviews and appearances by both him and the former first-lady, Michelle, and secondly (and most tellingly) through pop culture: namely, the yearly playlist.

I can call forth too clearly (often against my own will) the internet reactions to these summer playlists. The cartoons of Obama sitting with headphones on, the edited videos of Obama dancing to a specific song, the collages of Obama’s face next to the famed singers whose music he’d chosen. The tweets, the posts, the stories of seemingly innocent personal celebrations making that already tiny political-personal gap all the smaller: Obama listens to Beyoncé, Obama listens to Harry Styles, Obama listens to an underground Pakistani singer, he listens to songs that are explicit and songs that are “for the girls” and songs that call for the movement of hips and wrists and songs that mean something and look, Obama is just like us, just like me.

Yet in the midst of this music, when does one ask, what is innocence in politics if not naivety? What is nostalgia if not ignorance? And what is the ongoing obsession with Obama, if not those two combined?

Looking at the man with the good music taste and charm, it is so easy, too easy, to forget his politics. Which I fear seems to be the point.

I can argue at length against the legacy left by Obama. I can speak of how there is no magic in war crimes, in drone strikes and double-taps on Middle Eastern communities, in military aid packages sent to Israel. I can tell you how there is no relatability in imperialism, no good will in wishing Iranians a Happy Nowruz before increasing nationwide sanctions. I can tell you how the tightening of my chest when seeing people dance to American Teenager stating their love for “Barack” is the burn of a wound that’s not mine alone, but one shared.

Though ultimately, I have no desire to lay these things out for dissection between us, to convince you to see things exactly how I do. I don’t seek to show anyone the blood that lines a specific politician’s hands, but simply to implore you to create the distance to look. To take a step back from the lustre, to not believe the work is over when the election is won, to understand that a thing invisible to you means it is all the heavier of a burden to those that can see it.

I don’t know what Obama hears when he listens to Ethel Cain. I don’t know what images come to mind for him when thinking of a boy in a box, and kids at front lines, and I can’t guess. But I know what my father would think of, my uncles, my Middle Eastern peers who have heard the stories I have. I know the way in which these shared hurts shatter in a person, multiply, leaving no place untouched. And it is to these people, my fellow humans, to which I owe my loyalty, my feverous adoration, and I hope in some way for you, it can be the same.