Matt Damon Blasts Obama: “One-Term President With Balls” Would Be Better

[The Doctor.]

37. Sorry Matt, but no... it wouldn't be better.

I assume having 'balls' means 'putting up a massive fight' over everything. Here in reality, things simply don't work that way, and here's why:

Has anyone ever noticed that the more you make an issue of something, the more people will set themselves against that issue regardless of reason? It's psychology. At a visceral level, many people are programmed to resist any intention immediately upon recognition that it is not something they themselves already 'want'. It doesn't matter that it might be reasonable or in their best interests, their instinct is to 'resist' the intentions of others because of the innate fear and insecurity that still pervades the human psyche.

So imagine that you insist to such a person that an idea is a good one. What do you usually get in return?

Well, if there are legitimate flaws in the idea and your audience has the intellectual rigor and honesty to research them, you wind up with a discussion of the points and usually some sort of resolution.

But, when starting with an adverse environment, even if the idea is perfectly reasonable and sound, and could perhaps even improve a community in some way, something fascinating happens.

People become irrational. This happens because of the the predisposition against another person. On DU, we have many examples of Obama supporters or critics being dismissed out of hand and without reason simply because they were perceived as 'the opposition'. Heck, here's a good example of the idea that we should not be dishonest with each-other about Obama on either side, but look at the irrational rejection, not of the idea but with the fact that it was put forward. Not one person could point to anything they disagreed about the idea without deliberately mischaracterizing it. They even made stuff up that wasn't there in order to argue about something they could try to attribute to the idea itself.

Think about that. Why do people behave this way?
[font color=white]Oh, I know... now come the irrational ones who want to be 'right' but can't reason their way out of a breeze.[/font]
They needed to fight the idea, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it came from someone they decided was the 'opposition'. Once the fight ensues, the 'adversaries' seek out any and every excuse to attack the messenger because they cannot assail the message.


Now, let's look at national politics. If this phenomenon can happen here, then it's inexorable in national politics where the 'sides' have been so severely polarized.

Obama cannot 'put up a big fight' on anything. He has to do it carefully. If Obama stood up and said "I want universal health care for the US, and we're going to get it!", a half-billion dollars would flood the media and K-Street that very evening and the corporate media would have their marching orders on the spot. The likely hood that no bill would have passed at all would have bordered on 'certainty' at that point. Why? For the same reason that people will oppose what they see as 'being forced upon them'.
There is nothing Obama can do without opposition. 'Having balls' would make him and his agenda seem to be a bigger threat, and that is what people respond to viscerally.
Had Obama gone for the boldest possible moves, the opposition would have stopped him in his tracks. We've seen that many liberals and progressives are perfectly willing to throw him under the bus for 'not getting enough done', just imagine if he accomplished nothing in his first term.

It would also be his last, and we'd have nothing to show for it.