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Wall of Fear
“Frankly, this does look a lot like Jimmy Carter. Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher, because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators — when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead.”
The chicken hawks still have a mega-forum. This was Newt Gingrich the other day, discussing “the handshake” on “Fox and Friends,” and having his words — no matter how simplistic they were, no matter the moral cowardice they masked — widely and uncritically quoted throughout the media afterward.
The handshake! The empire trembles. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, grinning like only a “harsh critic of America” can grin, shakes hands with Barack Obama, the naive young president, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago last weekend. They have their pictures taken. Click, gotcha! Then Chavez really pushes the envelope, giving Obama a ’70s-era book, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,” by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano — which is critical of Europe, the West, colonial exploitation. The world’s only superpower may not recover from this unprovoked assault on its ignorance. Or something.
“Jimmy Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher . . .”
It doesn’t matter how stupid the arguments these people — Gingrich, most Republicans, far too many Democrats, the Washington Establishment, the mainstream media, the military industrial complex — put forth. What matters is the decibel level, the aggressive certainty and the presence of Satan (who eats weaklings for breakfast). Call it the Wall of Fear. Call it Godzilla. It’s alive, it’s visceral, it’s consistent: Be. Very. Afraid.
And it works. Americans are quick to pick up their guns and play Alamo. Any progressive agenda this country adapts, any global initiative that involves cooperation — talking to Iran, shaking hands with Venezuela — has to pass through the Wall of Fear.
Forget disarmament. Obama is kept busy having to defend a handshake . . . with a democratically elected “dictator” who somehow managed to bloodlessly dodge the 2002, U.S.-backed coup against him, and who isn’t implicated in death squads and other brutalities that were the standard practice of traditional U.S. allies in Latin America, such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Efrain (“If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea”) Rios Montt of Guatemala.
Obama defended the handshake forthrightly: “Even within this imaginative crowd,” he told reporters, “I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.”
Of course, that was about it. Like some other recent initiatives of his administration that have the tinge of campaign-promised “change,” he only went so far. For instance, the White House announced the easing of travel restrictions with Cuba, but said the crushing economic embargo would remain in place. The secret CIA torture memos have been released, but Obama remains coy as to whether anyone — in particular, the Bush administration officials who provided legal justification for these war crimes — would be prosecuted. Mostly he has emphasized the need to “move forward,” rather than dwell on the crimes and horrors of the Bush era and demand a measure of accountability.
And this attitude is causing fury to amount among the activist and politically astute sector of the Obama constituency. The criticism from this sector is sometimes as harsh on Obama as it was on Bush, accompanied by cries of betrayal and “they’re all alike.”
This is understandable, of course. Obama wasn’t elected to play politics. He was elected to change the country: to change its relationship with the world and with itself. He was elected to end the Bush wars and clean up the financial mess. But on some, if not most, days, he seems cautious, timid, responsive more to the Wall Street greedheads and fear-based special interests than to the people who voted for him — more of a participant in established corruption than an agent of change.
While noting this, I remain far more (cautiously) optimistic with Obama in office than I’d be if McPain/Bush III had won the 2008 election. Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, writing about the CIA memos, gets at why:
“I think the significance of Obama’s decision to release those memos — and the political courage it took — shouldn’t be minimized,” he wrote last week, describing the likelihood that the pressure not to do so was enormous, that a “twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class” and bucking it “is simply not done.. . . Obama knowingly infuriated the CIA” for very little political gain.
The fear crowd will cry weakness every step of the way. They will oppose the sanity of global cooperation and obfuscate the privileges and crimes of the governing status quo with every last resource at their disposal. If they can’t win Obama fully to their side, they’ll try to bring him down. Right now he’s straddling the future and the past, and it’s up to us — a passionate and vocal citizenry — to pull him to the future.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllYes he is doing some things correctly,mainly enviormental ( but even there he supports coal).
I also see Obama as timid, I think time will show us Obama knows what is correct but is to wimpy to do it.
Obama's timidity in allowing the financial industry to steamroll his economic and health care agendas will have far greater negative impact on the future of the US than any perceived or actual timidity he may have in applying military strategies.
Certainly a strong argument can be made that it is counterproductive for a political leader to shake hands with mendacious, ruthless, criminal thugs, and so shaking hands with a thug like Newt Gingrich is probably inadvisable. A weaker argument can be made that a political leader should avoid warm friendly handshakes with questionable characters, and that is probably more on point with regard to the Obama-Chavez handshake. However, I think President Chavez can be forgiven for shaking Obama's hand, as Hugo should try to work with the US president to the extent possible, regardless of the character of that president.
And how can we forget the affectionate handholding in the gardens with the Saudi King -W was never so affectionate in public with Pickles.
Socialists like Chavez only get elected when the unregulated capitalist machine becomes so oppressive that socialism appears to be a better alternative.
In today's global economy capitalism and socialism are competing for support. Unregulated capitalism is not likely to be the first choice of people who have been oppressed by it for more than a century.
Particularly if they bother to take a look over our way and see where it ultimately takes you.
The easiest way to avoid an issue is to throw it into committee. We learned everything about the Plaime outing before the committee. We learned very little once it went into committee.
As long as the Plaime case was being tried in the court of public opinion, there was consistent news. New information came from public information and as information built, so also did outrage build. The outrage and pressure on our elected officials ended once the committee began.
Let the outrage build. Let the media and the well-connected review all of the documents. These documents will result in newer and better documants and in newer and better information.
MSM, the blogs, newspapers and other journalistic sources are all focused on torture, repsonsibility...criminal acts and global laws.....
No committee has the time or desire to do what several million "interested" parties can do - openly in the public arena.
For example, Janice Karpinsky, on Keith last night opened quite a few doors and directions to be explored. Her sense of outrage was divine and very real.
She was there...She knows the truth...there are others who know as well. Draw them into the outrage and the court of public opinion.
No committees yet...let it build...
Obama Timid? 500 years of oppression gone in 100 days? Please, comrades, this country has an enormous right wing power structure, which is not going to give up its privileges without a fight. Perhaps we should look at this "timidity" more as "keeping your powder dry".
"he must follow, for he is our leader"
What a bunch of baloney. How could it have taken any "courage" to release memos? And how could that release put that fraud Obama at odds with the CIA? And how is it that so many people are talking about this non-issue?
The U.s. knows it's on the ropes and that since they've openly exposed themselves to the world in a situation in which they cannot hide behind "plausible deniability" that things are going to get tough for them in many spheres. In a way, they are now fighting for their continued existence and they have a palpable fear of losing power. So they are trotting out some distractions to keep the real issues from being addressed. It's the same kind of diversionary ploy that the Canadian government trotted out when that national and historic disgrace, former PM, Brian Mulroney was caught taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes and to cover it up the Canadian government created a scandal to get people to talk about something else. In that case they put some memo about a NATO meeting in a new minister's newly-acquired girlfriend's flat and claimed that security was violated. The said minister, who obviously agreed to fall on his sword to keep how those politicians really do business, in cash money, from being widely talked about, even suggested the large breasted girl wear a low cut dress to his confirmation. This in a room where all of the other women were following tradition and were wearing clothes as conservative as the Queen. Those torture memos mean nothing and are nothing more than the equivalent of that girl's large bosom being displayed endlessly on tv and in the media.
Everyone saw the photos from Abu Ghraib and everyone knows who is really culpable. Why rehash that old news when everyone here knows in advance that "justice" will never be acquainted with the real instigators?
“Frankly, this does look a lot like Jimmy Carter. Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher, because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators — when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead.”
I now have an arsenal of automatic weapons and RPG's. My house is sandbagged and heavily fortified. I now await Venezuela's invasion of the United States. Come and get me, you cabrones, and pry the weapons out of my cold, dead hands!
President Obama is weak and wimpy compared to whom? George Bush, who was scared of his own shadow and needed to keep everything he and scared crony Cheney ever did under tight secrecy so no one could know what they had done.
It doesn`t take courage to bluster around about being the Commander in Chief and the Decider while sending off thousands of other people`s kids of to death and wrecked lives. George Washington did not sit in comfort in a barracaded White House but was out with the troops.
Obama is trying to return our nation to the place we held before the Bush years and does not feel he has to strut around talking about how anyone not supporting us could be smashed like Iraq was for no reason. Usually bullies are not very successful in the long run and our country is better than that.
Try waterboarding Bush and Cheney and see how tough they are then. It is not torture so it should not bother them and they could prove their point by how well they managed to take it.
President Obama is wimpy compared to Candidate Obama (somewhat), and certainly to Dennis Kucinich (totally).
More and more, he is behaving like a wimp for all seasons. So there.
"Wall of Fear"
Conservative Wall of Fear.
BO is doing the political version of good cop-bad cop: some pretty words and a crumb for his "supporters," trillions for his controllers.
Every once in a while, the mafia would finance a hospital or a church for the same reason...
The train is rolling faster now, some have awakened disoriented but still on the train with no brakes and no way off. The captains of industry and finance have run off with all the marbles. Global climate change is upon us, we have been and still are being poisoned every day and still they listen to to the monotone drone of politicians and the forth estate, still trying to keep the empire they so love under control.
To the left we have those that hold to the premise that civilization will be saved by if only they are followed, to the right they will save their civilization by doing nothing as they have always done.
The murder of humans and none humans continues in support of those that would have us believe that the rape of of the world, though in a kinder gentler fashion is the real change they bring. Fear, handshakes, smiles, torture, what a waste, events call for something more. Until those that are lost in these useless endeavors awaken to the actual life and death issues that confront life here on this island we can only adapt or die.