The audacity of hoping hopeless hope

. . . And when you associate one thing with another over time, just the mention of the one brings the association of the other. What this will sometimes mean is that even when something is later exposed as a lie, if it was accepted as a truth for a long time, the exposure of it as a lie is not believed. It’s in one ear and out the other.—1999 Testimony of Mr. William Shaap

There are certain people; more than a few. In fact, based on certain measurement criteria they may even be considered the majority. Well, at least they were in 2008, or they were mixed and included in a certain majority back then. Not all, but certain definitions of ‘blind faith’ apply to these people; to list a few: ease of belief, rash conviction, uncriticalness, unquestioning belief, wishful belief. To a certain extent the adjective ‘fanatic’ applies to these people- fanatic as in excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a person, cause or an idea. In some ways these people can be described as biased and ignorant. Unquestionably and most definitely all of these certain people have been very audacious. They have been audacious in maintaining their ignorant, fanatic and blind faith placed not in a particular religion, cult or a cause, but in a con man. And they’ve been ignorant and blinded enough to maintain this fanatical and blind faith despite all revelatory signs and facts marching before them day in and day out; for over three years.

When these certain people are presented with the truth, that is the real truth about the man they have been conned into blindly believing in, they automatically go into this deaf mode, a trance-like state, and cease to hear or see anything before them-around them; everywhere. In this frequently occurring state, these certain people closely resemble the Whirling Dervishes, who engage in long and continuous ecstatic dancing and whirling trance-like rituals. Like these Whirling Dervishes, these certain blinded and deafened fanatics go into a self-induced trance of ignorance, and they remain there.

I am sure you know many of these certain people. At least you come into contact with them frequently. Let me give you a few hints and you’ll recognize them immediately:

Before the 2008 elections, when they were told about Obama’s track record as a senator, prior to his presidential candidacy, such as how he played a key role in passing the outrageous wiretapping bill to grant lawsuit immunity to telecommunication companies involved in illegal domestic wiretapping, these certain people:

Shrugged it off. Completely disregarded it. They were in the middle of heated ecstasy and could not be bothered with nuances like that. They were high on hallucinogens marketed and administered to them under a recently popularized brand—Audacity of Hope.

During the early stages of his campaign, Obama promised that he would only take public funds to finance his election campaign. When he very quickly changed, opted out and abandoned public financing, this is how these certain people reacted:

They shrugged it off. They ignored it. A few of them actually defended it, in a fanatical way. Those few claimed, in a blinded way, ‘He has to do what he has to do to get into the position to implement his change, promises. So what? A man must do whatever a man must do! Good for him!’

As a presidential candidate, when Obama started receiving his top donations from those same financial institutions that brought down our country’s economy, from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan, City Group, Morgan Stanley and beyond, these certain people:

They waved it off. They looked the other way. Some started spinning like Whirling Dervishes and went into self-induced trances to block the nasty smell and feeling. Others actually cheered and supported it, and said: ‘This is the reality on the ground. The ultimate goal is winning and getting the position to bring about needed audacious changes! Once Obama gets into the White house he will say to all those donors ‘screw you all’ . . . I have that much faith in him!’

When, after securing his presidency, Obama immediately went about securing the nomination of top Wall Street culprits, those who have sided with banks against the public interest—we are talking about people such as Larry Summers, Mary Schapiro, Gary Gensler Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Rahm Emanuel and others, these certain people . . .

Some of them began to engage in more whirling and spent more time in their trances. Others defended their cult-man as a president new to the job and in the process of finding his way . . . that is, a way to bring about audacious changes.

Then, Obama elated neoconservatives with his other top-tier appointees; from Dennis Ross to Robert Gates, Susan Rice, Tony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, General James Jones . . . and the list goes on and on. And, these certain people . . .

More of them engaged in frequent whirling and spending significant amounts of time in a blissful trance. Still, others were furiously defending their man although a bit more desperately. They even tried desperate and ignorant lines such as ‘What do you expect?! He has to first clean up the mess left to him by his predecessor, and it takes a few ally neocons to know and deal with old neocons . . . ’

Then, Obama began expanding and more than doubled the Bush administration’s wars under false pretenses based on false premises—from continuing the overt war in Afghanistan and starting an illegal war in Libya, to covert wars in Yemen and Somalia, and undefined drone offenses in Pakistan. Our certain people . . .

Even more of them got into the trance-inducing whirling, and boy they kept whirling. Others spent some of their time on whirling and in a trance, and, at other times. in a semi-lucid state irrationally yet fanatically qualifying Obama’s illegal acts of wars and violence as ‘so very different than Bush.’ They qualified some of his wars as ‘not wars but interventions,’ and others as ‘necessary and temporary, inherited from his predecessor, which must be dealt with . . . ’

When Obama institutionalized and further expanded the Bush administration’s illegal domestic wiretapping practices, taking them even further, by astoundingly granting the executive branch unlimited immunity for any kind of ‘illegal’ government surveillance, . . .

When Obama invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor, . . .

When Obama amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers, and set a chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning,. .

When Obama started initiating secret assassination programs and publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and actually attempted to assassinate at least one . . .

At this point almost all these certain people are spending almost all their time whirling, spinning. They have gotten themselves willfully blinded and in a trance state, and are still holding on to their blind fanatical faith.

There are a few of us who were not blinded to the history and track record of the man who sold our nation a bunch of audacious lies and conning promises. There are some of us who quickly woke up and registered the fact that we were indeed conned royally. There are others among us who took a bit longer to get persuaded and accept reality. However, there are certain people who insist on remaining in a trance, who are still blinded by their faith, and who fanatically refuse to see the real truth. They are still engaged in the audacity of hoping hopeless hope. Let us audaciously hope that they are not the majority when the time comes again in 2012.

In addition to publishing Boiling Frogs, where this article originally appeared, Sibel Edmonds is the founder and president of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding national security whistleblowers. She has appeared on national radio and TV as a commentator on matters related to whistleblowers, national security, and excessive secrecy & classification, and has been featured on CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The American Conservative, and others. Her book, ‘Shooting the Messenger,’ co-authored with Professor William Weaver, is forthcoming from Kansas University Press in the fall of 2010.