Pete Souza/White House President Obama, pictured here in a White House meeting on Afghanistan policy, has adopted strikingly militarist positions. He’s escalated the war in Afghanistan, expanded the use of drone strikes to kill U.S. enemies (and civilian bystanders), and supported the notion More

Official White House Photo/Pete Souza President Obama has placated Israeli hawks with his willingness to legitimize the notion of a preemptive strike on Iran. Here, Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More

Top: Jo Freeman Demonstrators protest outside the White House following Obama’s militaristic speech on Iran at AIPAC’s March 2012 conference. More

Snow White | Juanjo Oller More

Pete Souza/White House President-elect Obama pauses for one last look in the mirror before taking the oath of office on January 20, 2009. Imagine the possibilities if Obama—and all of us—could take a closer look at how we’ve internalized the distorted assumptions of the capitalist world. More

Pete Souza/White House When Obama signed the health care reform bill in March 2010, he was widely praised for attaining health coverage for 34 million uninsured people. The issue has now become politically toxic. More

Pete Souza/White House Obama, shown here shaking hands with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), has approached his presidency with an orientation toward compromise. “Conciliation was not merely his default mode,” Gary Dorrien writes. “It was his chief operating mode.” More

“Girl in White” Vincent Van Gogh More

Michael D’Antuono ( artandresponse.com ) “White supremacy is the handmaiden of capitalism, serving to fuel, justify, and strengthen it at every turn,” Pinkard writes. Artist Michael D’Antuono created this painting, A Tale of Two Hoodies , following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen More

Michelle Obama harvests vegetables from the White House kitchen garden during a “Let’s Move!” event in June 2010. More

George Evans Emmett Till by George Evans. Black and white digital print. More

Derrick Maddox It Is What It Ain’t by Derrick Maddox. Acrylic on white bread and mixed media. More

Prison Creative Arts Project Perpetuation by Darius White. Prisma Pencil. More

White House/Pete Souza Obama pays a surprise visit to the Boys and Girls Club of Cleveland in 2012. “Obama won in great part because he prevailed overwhelmingly among . . . oppressed groups who rejected the Republican Party’s plutocratic (and often sexist, racist, and homophobic) vision,” Blum More

White House/Pete Souza A diverse coalition of identity groups came together to elect Obama, but once in office, the president hewed closely to the expectations of Washington establishment insiders such as Timothy Geithner and Gene Sperling (pictured here in the Oval Office). More

Library of Congress/John Vachon “I grew up as the child of a white activist in the Civil Rights Movement,” Greenberg writes. “At that time, to sit with people of different races was a radical act in the South.” More