This article annoyed me in it's tone so I'll initiate a discussion not so much about the specifics of the article itself but about the mindset of the people who think this way and the tone in which it is written.
A few quotes:
As a black Southern woman, I have grown accustomed to navigating a many-voiced universe. In the past months, however, I have felt keenly the absence of two voices: the collective sound of my sane Republican friends calling for inquiry and, more important, the voice of my president. Lately, the former crowd has begun to stir. Somehow, this has made the hope for your voice more urgent.
My generation graduated from college, got our first jobs and became adults all under the auspices of that truth. We learned to experience politics through the lens of your eloquent presence in the White House. In this respect, you raised us. So we are unaccustomed to all of this wildness. Just because we’re grown doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear from the man who brought us up.
The one thing Williams asks is that Obama be more active, more vocal and have a greater role in the current polical environment. If not only for her sake, he needs to do it for the Millennials who grew up under eight years of Obama’s leadership, a group that now does not know how to move forward.
A New York Times op-ed article titled: "Save Us Obama" is one of the worst political op eds I've read ever. I consider it one of the worst because it promotes a mindset of acquired helplessness, obsequious follower mentality, during a time where personality cults and top down leadership is part of the problem rather than a solution.
A message to millennials, no one is coming to save us
There is no politician, no elite, no leader guy from up high, who is going to look down and single handedly save the day. The mentality that someone is going to save you, or choose you, or solve your problems, is in my opinion exactly the wrong mentality. Fortunately that mentality is not popular in the crypto community but unfortunately it is popular in the mainstream political bubble. People tend to look up to politicians like Obama, Sanders, or even Trump, thinking that these people can or will save them when in reality it doesn't work like that.
As a millennial a strategy I use and advocate is that each of us as individuals should do what we can to save ourselves first, and provide tools to help others help themselves. Steemit is an example of a tool built by millennials which solves a problem of millennials. Obama did not build Steemit, and no politician or lawyer built anything like Steemit. We the contributers and the founding developers built Steemit.
We must build tools to enable us to solve our own problems without saviors
If you have a problem then be inspired to build a tool to solve it. The blockchain and crypto tech provides us with an ability to create opportunities and new options. These abilities are uniquely a contribution of the millennial generation and while the methods of solving problems might be in the form of source code instead of lawmaking, it's ultimately the DIY point of view that created Bitcoin, Steemit, and all we see in cryptospace. If people waited for the politicians and lawyers then we wouldn't have any of these solutions. Forget waiting for a savior and do it yourself.