Camille Paglia, who voted for Obama in '08, delivers a fine rant about why she's not voting for him this time.

She's interviewed on video here, by Glenn Reynolds. Most of the interview is about art in America and her new book "Glittering Images" (which I just bought, in Kindle). But in the end, she's asked why she's not voting for Obama — she's voting for Jill Stein — and out flow the words, which I started transcribing without knowing how long she'd go on. I kept transcribing, because it was all such great material, so here it is (with a few screen grabs, taken from the art section of the interview):

I was very excited about him. I thought he was a moderate. I thought that his election would promote racial healing in the country. 

This is the point at which I started transcribing, thinking: This is how I felt, when I voted for Obama in 2008. Except I wouldn't say I was "very excited." I wasn't caught up in the ecstasy. I thought it was the better bet, compared to the GOP alternative, and I hoped for the moderation and advancement in attitudes about race.

It would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead: one thing after another. Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races. 

Yes, this hope for racial transformation got squandered early, over that awful Henry Louis Gates incident. Back to Paglia:

But beyond that, I am just sick and tired of endless war. I was in favor of bombing the hell out of the Afghanistan mountains after 9/11, but I would have never agreed to this land war in Afghanistan, this endless land war, as well as things like this Libyan incursion that Obama appears to have been pushed into by these women, like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, the chaos in foreign policy, the bowing to foreign leaders.

Also the Obamacare: of course, we need health care reform in this country. What a mess! Everyone agrees about that. But the Obamacare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion — okay? — into American culture.

The creation of this culture of surveillance, from these bureaucracies, which is also carried over into Obama's endorsement of drones on the military level as well as for police control of the population. I mean, I don't understand how any... veteran of the 1960s who's a Democrat could not see the dangers here, that Obama is a statist. It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," okay?

I paused the video at "It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about" and asked Meade what song she's about to name, and he said "Masters of War," and I said "That's what I thought." But it's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and as soon as she says it, we know why. (Look out kid/They keep it all hid/Better jump down a manhole/Light yourself a candle...)

You don't want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people's lives like this. The controlling force in Obamacare is the IRS! Okay? This flies in the face of what the Free Speech Movement was about at Berkeley or about any of the values, I feel, of my generation.

Yes. Exactly. This is how the Democratic Party lost me — by trading freedom for statism.

So I feel the Democratic Party needs to be shattered and remade to recover its true progressive roots. I don't see progressives. All I see is white upper-middle-class liberals who speak in this unctuous way about the needs of the poor.

Unctuous. Yes. White upper-middle-class liberals lubricating themselves.

They have no connection whatever with the working class. Okay? It's the professional class gone amok. And that's why they don't notice what a bureaucratic nightmare Obamacare is.