Those young and inexperienced are ripe for manipulation. Santa, E. Bunny, T. Fairy, etc. Little kids will believe anything, and they’re cute that way. But we forget that youth and inexperience don’t end after we slip out of puberty. No, that manipulation continues, only this time it’s not so cute.

Manipulations cut deeper now. Our realizations are no longer about night-riding, jelly bean-giving bunnies; they’re about how honesty and hard work don’t mean anything. They aren’t about where babies come from; they’re about how that presidential candidate we believed in so adamantly, for whom we campaigned so tirelessly, turned out to be a total fuckin’ fraud.

What a letdown. What a travesty to watch this president and his Democratic underlings service Wall Street like a high class hooker, reboot the hopeless/missionless/endless war in Afghanistan and, worst of all, retreat and mess up healthcare so badly that now it’s more than likely that this country will NEVER have universal healthcare — which is great for the rich white guy who opposes letting sick people get medicine, but leaves the rest of us, once again, screwed. It’s maddening, watching Mr. Yes We Can get bitched around by a bunch of no-name conservative “Democrats” on an issue that is so unbelievably vital to the life and well-being of millions upon millions of Americans. But then again we should have known that last fall was just another in a long line of manipulations. Yes We Can was an advertising slogan — effective and penetrating and meaningless. So many hours wasted, so much excitement enjoyed out of such stupidity. There is no Barack Obama.

I first saw the Big O speak at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on May 23, 2007. I drove there right after school and parked in an alley and bought a button that said SUPERBAMA while I waited in line. That anxious pre-concert buzz gripped the crowd as we murmured and waited to get our first glimpse at the lanky long shot. This was Obama pre-logo, pre-Hillary, pre-everyone in America knows he eats arugala and sucks at bowling. He was still the Big Hope then — certified fresh and inspiring with nothing to lose. Each ingredient of the event — the crowd (decidedly youthful), the stage (previously shared by Incubus, the Roots, etc.), the enormous American flag — combined to communicate a sense that something was happening.

Leaving the event I felt a part of something new and meaningful, a once in a lifetime movement to revive a fledgling nation, a massive coalition of true patriots standing behind a hero poised to heal a diseased superpower. It was storybook stuff. I took the excitement of that event and constructed a narrative in my head in which Obama was the hero. This Obama-as-hero perception stuck throughout the next year and a half, wherein I volunteered for Obama under all sorts of childish, naïve assumptions.

Up until August I kept my faith in Obama. Part of that was purely selfish. It’s embarrassing to be doped, tricked into giving your electoral power to nothing but a sly politician. Acknowledging the utter failure and hopelessness of the Democratic Party would take more than a few subtle legislative blunders. It would take a fuck up so massive in scale and idiotic in nature to snap me out of my Democratic blind allegiance. Healthcare was that massive, idiotic fuck up; it was also a true light bulb-moment for me. It’s like when you were ten and you could very clearly hear you’re parents downstairs putting your gifts from “Santa” under the tree on Christmas Eve and you thought, “Oh boy, there is no Santa,” except when you were ten you still got gifts the next morning but now all you get is a big, fat middle finger shoved between your eyes.

Universal healthcare is so basic and obvious and essential yet Obama and the Democrats have managed, in a three-month span, to end any hope of competent healthcare in America. It’s dead, D-E-A-D, underground and rotting as we speak. Whatever bill excretes from Congress will be so hollow and toothless that it will only cover a tiny sliver of the millions of people who currently don’t have insurance, and, more importantly, it will give the healthcare reform effort a bad name.

A single payer system — the most obvious healthcare plan that is currently used in nearly every industrialized nation on Earth — was never even part of the discussion while the so-called public option — a bear minimum for anything resembling universal healthcare — will be cut out of the bill entirely if key Democrats have their way (which they will). What’s left will be more of the same. More high costs. More paperwork. More pain and suffering for millions of unrepresented, spat on Americans.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom about Obama. But I just can’t reconcile the necessity of healthcare (and the pain of uninsured) with his weakness and conservatism in the pursuit of reform. It’s depressing but it should be taken as a lesson. There is no political Santa Claus — politicians are corporate Butt Boys who don’t have the wherewithal or motivation to effect obvious, necessary change. Obama is no exception. He conned a bunch of young idealists like me with a pretty package and a good speaking voice. It was a manipulation rooted in false hope.

Next time we won’t be so silly as to believe those lies.

Tony Manfred is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Tuesdays this semster.