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Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished.
There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt.
Many think that was a naïve position from the get-go. I disagree. Not only do I believe that it was a legitimate possibility, I would argue that it was the logical choice even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal fortunes. The president is every day committing political suicide by a thousand cuts because he chose not to take that track.
That's certainly his prerogative, and at this point I wish him all the worst of luck in whatever comes next. Since I never assumed he would be a progressive once elected, any bitterness that I feel is not rooted in his failure to become the new FDR. However, I am irate that, in domain after domain, President Obama has become the personification of the very Bush administration policies that Candidate Obama so roundly criticized. And I feel deep hostility toward him about the betrayal of legions of voters -- especially the young -- who believed his message of hope and thought they were getting a president on their side, not Wall Street's.
More on that in another column. Right now, the question is what comes next? The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can happen in three or seven years. But he is on a crash course for a major clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred direction. Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction.
Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores wouldn't have helped. These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house. Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in support of his policies.
So if he's lost the left, right and center, just who does he think is going to be clamoring to give him a second term three years from now, especially if the economy remains lousy for most people in the country, as it's likely to do regardless of GDP or Dow Jones growth?
There is the possibility that Obama could change course significantly, just as Bill Clinton did in 1995, following the mid-term election in which his most astute political stewardship managed to turn both houses of Congress over to the Republican Party. But Clinton turned to the right and became just a less snarly version of the Republicans, while Obama is already there. I don't really think he could conceivably turn further rightward at this point, and I don't think he has anywhere near the guts to turn to the left and do what he should have done in the first place.
What all this suggests to me is that Obama and his party will manage by 2012 to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and return the GOP -- and probably an even nastier version of it than the Bush-Cheney junta, at that -- to power. It suggests that the Democrats, who were riding high six months ago over an all but destroyed Republican Party, will be switching places with them within three years time, if not sooner -- and all because of their own cowardice, corruption and ineptitude. This outcome is hardly inevitable, but it is fast approaching. Looking out over the horizon, I see five key factors most likely to effect the health and longevity of the Obama administration, and not one of them looks positive.
The eight-hundred pound gorilla rummaging around in the kitchen right now is the economy. Indeed, this factor alone could readily swamp the combined effect of all the others, particularly if it swings dramatically in one direction or another. My guess, as a non-economist (which, of course, only means that I have a better shot at an accurate prediction than the economists do), is that the economy will exhibit some substantial signs of growth over the next three years. But I suspect the recovery will be tepid, even according to establishment measures such as GDP growth or the state of the Dow. More importantly, I strongly suspect that this will be another jobless recovery, like the last ones we've had, and that the new mean standard of living for the middle class will be pretty mean indeed, significantly diminished compared to what people were already struggling to hold on to when the Great Recession began. Personally, I think if American history teaches us anything at all about presidential elections, it is that for an incumbent president this is more or less the worst possible scenario imaginable upon which to go asking the public to punch his ticket again. Americans vote their pocketbook, and that alone is likely to be the kiss of death for Obama's second term aspirations.
Meanwhile, of course, he's also chosen to put healthcare reform on the table as the signature legislative initiative probably of his entire presidency. That's fine, but watching him in action I sometimes wonder if this clown really and actually wants a second term. I mean, if you had asked me in January, "How could Obama bungle this program most thoroughly?", I would have written a prescription that varies little from what we've observed over the last eight months: Don't frame the issue, but instead let the radical right backed by greedy industry monsters do it, on the worst possible terms for you. And to you. Don't fight back when they say the most outrageous things about your plan. In fact, don't even have a plan. Let Congress do it. Better yet, let the by-far-and-away-minority party have an equal voice in the proceedings, even if they ultimately won't vote for the bill under any circumstances, and even while they're running around trashing it and you in the most egregious terms. Have these savages negotiate with a small group of right-wing Democrats, all of them major recipients of industry campaign donations. Blow off your base completely. Cut secret sweetheart deals with the Big Pharma and Big Insurance corporate vampires. Build a communications strategy around a series of hapless press conferences and town hall meetings, waiting until it's too late to give a major speech on the issue. Set a timetable for action and then let it slip. Indicate what you want in the bill but then be completely unclear about whether you necessarily require those things. Travel all over the world doing foreign policy meet-and-greets. Go on vacation in the heat of the battle. Rinse and repeat.
Altogether, it's an astonishingly perfect recipe for getting rolled, so much so that I'm not the first person to have wondered out loud if that was actually the president's intention all along. Look at this freaking fool. Now look at the guy who ran a letter-perfect, disciplined, textbook, insurgent, victorious campaign for the White House. Can they possibly be the same person? And, since they obviously are, is there possibly another explanation for this disaster besides an intentional boot? I dunno. But what I do know is this. Obama's very best-case scenario for healthcare legislation right now represents a ton of lost votes in 2010 and 2012. And the worse that scenario gets, the worse he and his party do. But even a ‘success' in the months ahead will produce a tepid bill, a mistrustful public, an inflamed and unanswered radical right, and a mealy-mouthed new government program that doesn't even begin to go online until 2013. A real vote-getter that, eh?
Which brings us to a third major electoral liability for Obama. Human beings, by and large, like to be led. They like their leaders to inspire their confidence -- even when doing so takes the form of the most fantastically shallow dress-up kind of blowhard buffonery, à la George W. Bush -- so that they don't have to think too much about how little personal confidence they themselves actually possess. Obama is the complete antithesis of this model of the presidency. He is Harry Reid's incontinent grandmother as president. He is Neville Chamberlain's squirrely little nephew knocking shit over in the Oval Office while he plays "Mr. President", in-between episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. He is a bowl of Jell-O. That someone forgot to put in the fridge. He exhibits no competence as a chief executive. He inspires no confidence as a national leader. And, increasingly, his credibility is coming into question. Who wants to vote for that?
A related problem is that he loves to flash that big toothy grin of his right before his venomous adversaries knock his choppers back into his head. I'm trying to imagine what a wimpier president would look like, and having a very hard time coming up with an answer. I'm trying to imagine how the regressive right could possibly bathe their country's president in a more acidic pool of vitriol, and I'm having a difficult time topping their assertions that he's out to kill the elderly while simultaneously indoctrinating grade-schoolers into the ranks of the Revolutionary Spartacist League. I'm trying to conceive of how vacant a White House could possibly be of any whiff of push-back against these assaults, and I can't quite envision it. Maybe if they went out and did some real scandals and filmed it all as a gift for the GOP? Perhaps they could dig up Vince Foster's body and murder him all over again, this time on video? Or they could hire Ken Starr to just run amok in the White House for a few years, looking for anything remotely juicy? But could Obama's Keystone Kops even do a scandal properly? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty confident the public is losing trust in this guy as their Big Daddy Protector. Who in America would vote for this eunuch to be in charge of keeping their little suburban Happy Meal-stuffed brats safe from tawny evil-doers with bad intentions?
As if all that weren't enough, Obama is probably also sitting on several national security powder kegs - including Guantánamo, which he is unlikely to close; Iraq, which he is unlikely to leave; and Afghanistan, which he is unlikely to win. The latter in particular has now become his war, and lately it is smelling a lot like Vietnam, circa 1964. An decades-long struggle against a popular nationalist adversary. Endless calls from the Pentagon for more troops. Incredibly inhospitable terrain for fighting a war. An American-made puppet government hated for its corruption and for its gross incompetence at every task other than raw predation. Mmmm-mmm. What a yummy stew. Haven't dined on that fine cuisine since 1975. And what another great vote-getter to add to this sorry list, eh?
Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term. Which can mean only one thing: We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today. It won't matter. People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he survives the Democratic primaries). And that's a particularly scary notion, since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall meetings. Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Know what I mean?
So the question then becomes, what next? What happens after Obama?
I see two possible general paths going forth from that point -- one bad, and one worse. The bad path would involve a frustrated but essentially beaten-into-submission public oscillating between incompetent Republican and Democratic administrations, turning one after the other out of office -- not on ideological grounds, but instead seeking any change that has the possibility of stanching the empire's hemorrhaging wounds. This would look a fair bit like Japan or Britain does today. The former just replaced its government and the latter will likely do so next spring. But I don't think either of these major party shifts are really ideological in nature, and I don't think either new government is likely to be hugely different from the one it succeeded.
But Americans seem to me especially piggish critters these days, and the benign model that is sufficient to placate disgruntled citizens of long-lost empires may not suffice to soothe the savage soul of Yanquis still deep in the process of watching theirs crumble around their feet. That moves us from the bad path to the worse. Given what the American public is capable of happily countenancing during relatively flush times (can you say "Reagan"? "Bush"?), imagine what could happen when spoiled Baby Boomers go to the polls under conditions approaching the 1930s.
Such a crisis could conceivably entail a sharp turn to the left, and in every rational country certainly would. But this is America. We pretty much don't go anywhere near socialism, at least not overtly, and in any given decade -- especially the recent ones -- we're lucky to get away with anything less than creeping fascism. Moreover, elections are almost always reactions to the status quo. Since Obama is ridiculously -- but nevertheless widely -- perceived as a liberal, the reaction is all the more likely to involve a sharp turn to the right in response.
Under this scenario, anything portside of Torquemada would be buried alive if not annihilated, and the next regime would likely be one that could make Dick Cheney shudder. And that's the happy side of the equation. If history is any guide, a nifty (not so) little war could only be right around the corner, for the helpful purpose of jump-starting the economy, crushing the domestic opposition, and distracting the public from that pesky nuisance once affectionately referred to as ‘reality'.
I don't want to lay odds on which of these outcomes is the more likely, but I feel pretty confident, I'm sad to say, that any happier scenario is considerably less likely than either of these. For a lot of reasons, America's near-term future looks bleak to me, and this country -- which already has a remarkable tendency to make dangerously foolish and sickeningly selfish political choices -- is altogether too likely to do something that would make the Bush years look like a scene from a Norman Rockwell canvas by comparison.
This tragedy, if it comes, will have many sires who share responsibility for driving America from Republican red to fascist black. But on that list must certainly be included the powder blue of the effete Obama administration that came in between.
Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in mind when he said that.
But, who knows? Maybe that's exactly what he was thinking.
135 Comments so far
Show AllRomney/Palin self-fulfilled Armageddon it is then, maybe 3 years from now. Put your affairs in order.
My solution is break them by overwhelming the system. As long as we play their game like a bunch of zombies they win, we lose. If we could only organize we can take the country away from the corporations. The masses rule. For starters:
1. Everyone stop paying your mortgage until we all get our mortgages adjusted to a fair value.
2. Stop all payments on all credit cards.
3. Stop all payments on all health insurance premiums.
4. Stop paying all your outstanding medical bills.
5. Demand to nationalize all banks that received bailout money.
6. Demand confiscation of all assets of AIG and shut it down.
Once that gets going demand election campaign reform:
1. Pass legislation clarifying that corporations are not people and the first amendment does not apply to them.
2. Make it illegal for corporations to make election campaign or any type of contributions to elected officials directly or indirectly.
3. Limit the dollar amount of the contribution an individual could make.
4. Give candidates free air time to appeal to people for their votes.
Then:
1. Implement a progressive tax that by the time you make more than $3 million in any one year you pay a 90% income tax.
2. Eliminate all income taxes for individuals making less than $30 thousand per year. Families that make less than $50 thousand per year.
3. Capital gains tax to be only applicable for assets that you hold for more than 60-84 months. From the 60th to the 84th month you can implement a regressive tax. Less than 60 months would be ordinary income subject to the progressive income tax.
4. Provide a single payer health system for all Americans.
5. If corporate health insurance is going to stick around make legislate that 95% of all premiums be paid to medical claims by law. 5% for profit and administrative costs.
That's all for now. I'm sure that we can get more suggestions.
Obama is a big disappointment. But what is going to be the alternative in 2012? Palin/Bachman? Gingrich/Boehner? Come on we voted for Obama, we own him. Like it or not. Maybe he's counting on that in 2012. Remenber if you don't vote that is one vote for the GOP. Catch-22. Talk about Progressives being taken to the woodshed? I wish there was a real progressive third party alternative.
Disappointed liberals are the best right-wing trolls.
"Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in mind when he said that.
But, who knows? Maybe that's exactly what he was thinking."
I believe it's exactly what he's thinking. Rahm is about power and glory and the party above all. And the party means big corporate donations, hence the reason why Rahm -- followed by Obama -- was telling the Progressives to basically pipe down and step in line.
The fate of Obama in 2012 will not be determined by the opinions or the voting of the handful of people who visit this website. D. M. Green is correct that it will be the American voters at that time.
Almost every serious student of elections has concluded that what counts the most is the voter's expectations and hope for the future. Certainly, that is based in part on the performance of the administration of a president up for re-election but not totally as the 2008 election so dramatically demonstrated.
The fundamental problem for Obama is that he cannot win again with empty phrases such as "Hope that you can believe in" let alone "Four more years". It is my view that his re-election, perhaps even re-nomination may hinge almost entirely on the state of the economy at the time. A convincing Democratic victory will require a humming economy with unemployment at 5% or even less.
Even when that is the case I will not vote for Obama.
the weakness with which the obama administration conducted business is manifested not only in the domestic lack of promised legislation, particularly that of the health care reform, but international relations as well. the health care reform started in the election campaign promisses for a single payer system to public options to something else and now to triggering mechanism. the more obama made concessions to the lunatics and ultra right republican , the more they generate insatiable appetite for more concessions. on the international scene, obama couldn't even convince the israelis to stop building constructions on the occupied palastinian territories.they gave him the fingers. putin succeeded in forcing abandonment of the european missil shield and north korea is expanding its fissionable materials into new technologies.and he is only into 8 months.
I think you're absolutely wrong here. Obama never NEVER promised single payer health care. He may have believed in single payer or entertained it at some time in his career, but never mentioned that in his campaign.
As far as the Israeli situation, I do give Obama credit for condemning settlements. Nobody can make those right wing fanatics listen.
Let me be clear. I do not defend Obama because I agree with his policies, but because I feel that character assassination is not the way forward when looking at this administrations policy blunders much less grand structural problems in our society. It seems counterproductive to project our disappointments on a moderate democrat who is doing nothing but being a moderate democrat.
But Obama did say that everyone would have a seat at the table. Two weeks ago the Mad As Hell Doctors requested a meeting with Obama, presumably after their cross-country single-payer tour, which ends in D.C. They were flatly turned down. The WH took back their ABC town hall invitation to Obama's former physician of 20 years, Dr. Scheiner, after it was discovered he would speak on single payer. You would think that Obama would have a major interest in speaking with Wendell Potter. Nope. Potter is for Medicare for All. God forbid if he was allowed to speak in a town hall. It doesn't really matter what Obama did or didn't promise. This is what a significant portion of the American people want and they've been silenced at every turn.
The toughest person in this debate speaking for the people at this time is Rep. Anthony Weiner. He's been everywhere, he's been passionate, he hasn't waivered.
I don't understand your logic. You're saying he didn't promise it, so we can't be angry with him?
But unless you really think that not only did he not know what people wanted, but nobody told him, and his vague, content-free "hope" campaign was just inept communication on his part--inept communication that actually won the top award from the professional liars association--then his sole intent was to deceive everyone for his personal benefit and our ruin.
That, in my book, completely opens him up to all the anger, disgust, and repudiation we can deliver from now til the crack of doom (which might not be too far off, considering).
I think you're absolutely wrong here. Obama never NEVER promised single payer health care. He may have believed in single payer or entertained it at some time in his career, but never mentioned that in his campaign.
As far as the Israeli situation, I do give Obama credit for condemning Israels settlements. Nobody can make those right wing fanatics listen.
Let me be clear. I do not defend Obama because I agree with his policies, but because I feel that character assassination is not the way forward when looking at this administrations policy blunders much less grand structural problems in our society. It seems counterproductive to project our disappointments on a moderate democrat who is doing nothing but being a moderate democrat.
If I have to hear the phrase "Let me be clear" one more time, I'm going to puke.
Obfraud says this every time he opens his mouth, then everything following it is NOT clear.
the fact that something that seemed wonderful has turned out to be something dreadful is deeply depressing to many concerned Americans, and rightly so - but we must not give up hope - not HOPE, INC. - but real hope - i think we can all agree that we need to be a little less violent, a little less greedy, a little less smug, a little more helpful, a little more thoughtful, a little more inclined to laugh than to regret - that is, if we, the people, will assert OUR place in the Constitution - after all, it was written by and for us - we will eventually come out better than before - if we descend into fascism...well, let us all hope we're better than that...i think we are
What Next?
LET'S WORK TO DEFEAT OBAMA IN 2012.
First try to nominate a decent candidate (e.g. Kucinich) for the Democrats in 2012, and if that doesn't work than push that candidate with a 3rd party. Is there that much to lose?
We should begin now to actively develop an alternative to Obama for the 2012 nomination. There's no use wating for Obama to change course; we already know who and what he is.
Another thing we could do is massively register Green right now. Throw us under the bus? Well, there will be consequences. If nothing else, scare 'em in a big way in 2010. Don't let them take us for granted. Let's be proactive.
It is an easy thing that could be done right now. It would only be effective if we make up our minds to do it across the progressive board. How many progressives are there? Enough to seriously rock the boat IMO.
"Now look at the guy who ran a letter-perfect, disciplined, textbook, insurgent, victorious campaign for the White House. Can they possibly be the same person? And, since they obviously are, is there possibly another explanation for this disaster besides an intentional boot? "
No. It's transparently intentional. Bush in his stupidity and bald-faced lies actually believed he was doing the world good. Obama in his has no such illusions. He is executing the biggest swindle in history under the employment of the bankers who own the Federal Reserve, and he's not being in the slightest bit shy about it.
Takes an extremely deep self-loathing to work so hard to put one's self in such a position.
It's our modern political reality ...
the system is so "gamed" and media-marketing driven that candidates only know how to win not govern.
In that sense Obama = Bush 2
One thing we don't see a lot of is armchair psychologizing of this pretzel. It's pretty clear if you read his books that the man has some pretty deep-seated anxieties and a weak ego structure.
He had 3 fathers. And it shows in his "governing." He is always the capitulator, never willing to put up a fight. Translation: He's looking for love and acceptance (especially from powerful men), and looking for it even from those who would knife him in the back at every opportunity.
He is afraid of being forceful and passionate. It's called conflict avoidance. He's simply too anxious about how he is appearing to others to take it to the mat and get shit done. Unfortunately, he has this trait in spades. That would be conflict avoidance interfering with work functioning. And when you're the leader of the free world, by definition that spells INCOMPETENCE.
He's a Reagan Democrat. By definition, that means he's a Republican. How did he come to such a belief system? Because he doesn't want to identify with the working class. He wants to be part of the elitist class. To many of those people, it means being "strong" instead of being "weak." It means he feels "special" in having what he has and that those who don't have it don't "deserve" it. Redistribution of wealth (even though reformist cappie programs), civil rights equality, using government to make the lives of the working class easier - all signs of weakness.
His unending parade of media appearances speaks to his weak ego and desperate need for approval. Is this guy EVER working? It seems like he spends inordinate amounts of time making media appearances giving incomprehensible and nonsensical speeches. At this point in the game, his speeches are so lame and watered down that he can only appeal to the willfully ignorant and the stupid. Everybody else tuned him out a while ago.
He doesn't have the psychological profile of a true leader.
When you add his dysfunctional psych profile to his narcissistic need to cut deals that intentionally destroy the middle class and working people, the people you openly lied to in order to get elected, we are talking major pathology.
I don't think sociopath is too far off the mark here.
After spending most of my life believing I "knew" what motivated other people, I've finally awakened to the fact that I don't know shit -- and it's pretty liberating, actually. Looking at Obama's behavior from the perspective of his personal past is an interesting change of pace, and there's undoubtedly some truth in your conclusions. And frankly, those who are so quick to say you're wrong because Obama "obviously" is purely driven by corporatist/elitist preferences -- do we really know that for a fact, either? There just isn't a code name put-down for that kind of judgment, like, say, "psychobabble"....All we really know are the facts of Obama's actions, past and present. That information, taken together with what we know of his personal background, presents plenty of food for conjecture about his motivations, but it's all just conjecture.
As I've discovered about myself, concluding that we "know" the truth of any other person makes us feel all nice and cozy-comfy, but it's an illusion.
I see your point that we don't know that Obama is obviously driven by corporatist/elitist conclusions.
On the other hand I don't see a reason to doubt that Obama is largely in favor of the status quo. He's said so many times. When he spoke of the "audacity of hope" it was quite clear that this hope was less than audacious. And when he spoke of change, that change was modest and not structural.
Some of the charge of weakness comes from expectations that Obama has backed down from a strong prior conviction. Can we really say that? If we do say that is that because we're projecting values onto him? (That was, after all, a brilliant strategy of his campaign).
I tend to agree with all that you've said. And I've been one of those who've said that Obama is "obviously" this, that, or the other thing, including that he seems to have no strong core values. I'm just a little extra aware right now how wrong we can be about people. Assuming, projecting values onto others -- we can miss the reality, both bad and good, and that makes us less effective at influencing situations. We can really screw up outcomes because we needed to believe we knew a person instead of just responding to his/her actions without naming their motivations. (I stress that this is totally new thinking for me!!)
What do you know about Obama as a person- really. This is all facile armchair psych and I can't see how it has a place in a serious political dialogue. I also find the term "pretzel" to be offensive. Black on the outside white on the inside, right?
I share your concerns about Obama being a member of the elite. Well every other president has been a member of the political and economic elite too. I can't see this as weakness of character. Or I should say Obama is no weaker than anyone else who wants approval from the elites.
You seem to imply that Obama is weak because he takes views that will win approval from friends and enemies alike. He has no convictions and if he does he will easily buy and sell them. I can see your point, but might it not be the case that Obama's views are moderate/neo-liberal. And as a moderate neo-liberal, Obama doesn't want to stand up for the working classes or against the elites. Both blair and I have serious ideological disagreements with Obama, but does that make Obama a sociopath. And if we even entertain the notion of Obama being a sociopath, shouldn't we examine the sociopathology of neo-liberal/state capitalism?
I just can't see the point of this kind of armchair psychology? Do others see value in it that I don't see?
Didja just get that PhD diploma in the mail yesterday? wow, you must be real proud of it.
This is psychobabble. Drivel. Common grade.
Mr. Obama's issues aren't with his father...they are with the people who pay him. The lobbyists who funded his road to the white house.
we have the best government money can buy and that is, by the way, no government at all.
Sioux Rose
MOLLY J: I just viewed the film "W" last night and was surprised at the degree to which Oliver Stone made his "treatise" on George W about his relationship to his father. I guess the teaching of the myth of Oedipus stays ingrained in many educated persons, regardless of their political persuasion.
The Oliver Stone film bought the story line about 911, made "Pappy" Bush into a caring, considerate father, a moderate leader in comparison with his 'ner do well son. There was no intimation of the Carlyle Group, the legacy of Prescott Bush, and the material drawn forth by the Collateral Damage website. All as if Daddy Bush was lilly white. Although the filming of stand-ins for Condi, Rove, and the circle of neocon power was pretty chilling for its depiction of the idiocy of the persons extended so much power, the rest of the film absolutely TANKED. Brolen did a good enough acting job, but the script entirely lacked substance.
It is possible that any issues a "leader" has with his father blend into the larger portrait of his moral failings, but to make them the LEAD item reveals a flawed and mistaken analysis of any who rise high on the U.S. corporate-political "food" chain.
"Didja" think you were being cute by writing what you wrote? Yeesh. Quit while you're ahead.
Are you saying you clowns who voted for him didn't get that he had a cadre of corporate bundlers BEFORE last November? Give me a break.
I didn't vote for the asshole, but if you'd read his books, it's all there. They were written years before he ever ran for president.
Sorry - I don't give a rat's ass what you think of my opinions. I never professed to be a shrink, but bottom line is there are many environmental factors feeding why people do what they do, including politicians. That includes being informed by their past history. As far as your thinking it's psychobabble, guess what? You get what you pay for - and every opinion on this site is free, including yours.
"We have the best government money can buy." Wow, what an original thought! Someone give the broad a medal.
Blair, this is some good shit here. You've written the smartest post on this thread, and it's not a retread of what we've all heard here before.
I especially like this: "Because he doesn't want to identify with the working class. He wants to be part of the elitist class. To many of those people, it means being "strong" instead of being "weak." It means he feels "special" in having what he has and that those who don't have it don't "deserve" it." You could be talking about Joe the Plumber here. It answers the question: why do Americans make so many decisions that are against their best interests?
It is my firm belief that Bush and Cheney were both sociopaths, and I wonder at this point if it is possible for anyone BUT a sociopath to live in the White House, given the game set up as it is.
Thinking of the guys at 1600 Penn. Ave lately, we have a whole crowd of Boys With Daddy Issues. Clinton, Bush, McCain/Obama, all with that need to please the Big Men they wish they were.
I'm also glad you stated that he openly lied to the people. Many here are so busy patting themselves on the back for not buying his act that they forget that he presented a very different face to most Americans, a face that said "I'm one of you and I understand your frustration. I am going to be open and transparent with you. I'm going to throw off the opressors and let freedom ring." The fact that some savvy lefties didn't believe him doesn't mean he didn't tell a host of real whoppers. He was merely much quicker and more obvious about showing his lying face by giving us everything BUT hope and change right off the bat. He tried to sell it as bi-partisanship but the Republicans were having none of it. Will his duplicity become obvious and unbearable to enough people that it will actually cause them to change themselves? Stay tuned...
DMG, Good commentary.
Obama breathes new life into the old expression, "Don't buy a pig in a poke."
Now we've all got swine flu.
Coincidental if not comical is his campaign use of the expression, "You can put lipstick on a pig..." During the campaign he caked on liberal lipstick, and now we can see the neocon he is becoming.
Who knew he was such an admirer of Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus?
Not to mention Dick Cheney.
"Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished."
Eight months into it, it is clear that some people on the left have the patience of a five year old. 28 freaking consecutive years of neo-liberal rule and many expect it to go away in eight months? Unbelievable.
Why do you keep saying the same thing? What ever made you think Obama would end "neo-liberal" rule? On what do you base that opinion?
What steps in the right direction is Obama taking? Cabinet appointments, economic policies, respect for civil liberties, peace?
The question is why are you blind.
Guantanamo is scheduled to be closed in 2010.
Withdrawal from Iraq has begun.
"Cash for Clunkers" has removed thousands of gas guzzlers from the roads.
787 billion dollar stimulus package that wasn't a give away to bankers and tycoons.
This is just to name a few things that are clear indicators that we are AT LEAST heading in the right direction. That said, I think the current health care debate will be the litmus test for his first four years. If we can get some sort of public option and states rights to implement single payer, we'll have a big win and some serious momentum going into 10.
"Guantanamo is scheduled to be closed in 2010..."
- The other US-run prisons are NOT scheduled to be closed, & whether Guantanamo itself winds up being closed, is not yet really decided. The date is off in the future, & is "flexible." It might well wind up being delayed. And some of the alternatives being considered are just as bad as Gitmo itself.
"Withdrawal from Iraq has begun..."
- There's zero truth to your claim. There are still about 140,000 US troops there, & roughly the same number of mercenaries. The transfer of a few thousand troops to AfPak does not in any way amount to "withdrawal."
"Cash for Clunkers" has removed thousands of gas guzzlers from the roads..."
- The program was mainly an attempt to artificially inflate auto sales figures. It wasn't motivated by environmental concerns.
"787 billion dollar stimulus package that wasn't a give away to bankers and tycoons...."
- Actually, about a third of it was tax breaks, half of them for big business. Much of the pittance allocated to infrastructure projects will wind up as govt contracts to business. And of course, the overall size of the "stimulus package" is about 6% of the resources made available to the banks.
RichM, love your posts. Well thought out, evidence-based, good grammar! Keep 'em coming.
"- There's zero truth to your claim. There are still about 140,000 US troops there, & roughly the same number of mercenaries. The transfer of a few thousand troops to AfPak does not in any way amount to "withdrawal."
I disagree. 60% reduction by the end of March. Stuff is moving out TODAY.
"- The program was mainly an attempt to artificially inflate auto sales figures. It wasn't motivated by environmental concerns."
A stimulus program that decreases our dependence on fossil fuels is GOOD policy regardless of how you view it.
"- Actually, about a third of it was tax breaks, half of them for big business. Much of the pittance allocated to infrastructure projects will wind up as govt contracts to business. And of course, the overall size of the "stimulus package" is about 6% of the resources made available to the banks."
Once again, this is better policy that what we got under neo-liberal rule. Is it perfect? No. Is anything going to be perfect? No. Minimally, we are taking baby steps in the right direction.
I don't see any of it, particularly no "60% withdrawal" - of what from where to where?
Hey, they "withdrew" troops from Baghdad by redrawing the city boundaries so they wouldn't have to relocate the troops outside of town.
What good is moving a soldier out of Iraq if you're moving him to Afghanistan? It's not like they belong in either place. And 0's asking for more troops, not less.
And he's asking for more funds for military, not less.
And that says nothing of the 7 new bases in Colombia, poised for a strike at Venezuela and general intimidation of the Southern democracies.
And you'll notice 0 doesn't talk about his mercenaries.
And of course the violence in Iraq is rising again.
I don't think subsidizing car purchases will lower emissions, sorry. And 0's Green Jobs guy, just about the only one left of center in his cabinet, is now leaving.
You know, I don't think even McCain could have screwed things up this badly - he would have worked at it, certainly, but he would not have gotten as much cooperation out of a predominately democratic congress.
No, if the Demned cannot raise a decent man like Kucinich to challenge this bird's seat, I will at least enjoy some company voting Green in '10 and '12.
Withdrawal from Iraq has not "begun." Blackwater, or Xe, or whoever the fuck they are, will be there PERMANENTLY. On our dime.
As far as I know, the Marines have ALREADY withdrawn 11,000 troops and half their equipment. Equipment is leaving the country TODAY at a steady rate. Contractors are being pink slipped and we are in shut down mode. Public support for Afghanistan is dwindling and Bush's state of endless war will come to an end if and only if, WE PERSEVERE!
The cabinet and other high-level appointments by themselves should serve as a "slam dunk" to the question of Obama's true priorities to anyone politically aware. Summers, Geithner, Gates, Clinton, a slew of former Goldman Sachs people at lower levels, and on and on -- game, set, and match (to switch sports analogies).
I was almost hoodwinked into believing the Obama rhetoric during the campaign, except that his FISA vote alerted me. Then, I noticed, in most of his speeches, he was planning to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Oh, and who can forget the bank bailout vote?
That's when I began to take an even closer look, and to listen more carefully. His speeches all began to sound alike, and they were vague in both intent and substance. I found myself finishing his sentences before he could get to the end -- using his exact words. To me, that wasn't a good sign, but I was never as enamored with his oratory as many of my friends were -- also mentioned by another writer in an earlier post.
In the end, I did NOT vote for Obama, but I, like so many others, wanted to believe, but as I dug deeper into the issues, I just couldn't.
"The cabinet and other high-level appointments by themselves should serve as a "slam dunk" to the question of Obama's true priorities to anyone politically aware." -- kivals
As soon as Obama appointed Summers and Geithner, I knew we were sunk. And, what was Obama's grand rhetoric about appointing "a team of rivals' really about? You can tell a lot about a man, or a woman, by the company they keep!
I began to think that he had the social disease of "needing to be liked," and I HOPED that need would not get in the way, but it has -- he is a compromiser first. Finally, I can't help but think that Obama is more of a manager than he is a leader. And, day by day, he's muddling his managerial skills because he can't really take charge. He's lost control of his own message -- if he ever had one.
Now, here we are, with Obama wanting to commit even more soldiers and marines to Afghanistan, and Columbia, soon, will have seven U.S. military bases located in that country. In addition, Obama has betrayed our trust and made a backdoor deal with Big PhRMA, with Billy Tauzin, to NOT negotiate the price of prescription drugs, if a "health insurance reform" bill happens to pass through the legisture and land on his desk for signing. Obama also gave into the coal industry, and mountain top removal continues. And, where are the real jobs going to come from? The unemployment numbers continue to rise, and in truth are about twice as high as the authorities report. To the surprise of Wall Street, "we the people," are not spending any money, and are failing to consume. They can't quite get it through their thick skulls that we are tapped out, and we have no money to spend. Every month they scratch their heads with bewilderment as the reports roll in -- spending is down and unemployment rises. Hhhmmmmm! I get it, but they don't.
He still has 200 appointments to make out of 500 so I don't know how you can pass judgment. He had to hit the ground running because he had so many urgent problems on his hands from the start. For this reason, I think we had too many Clintonistas. That is leveling off and we are starting see union lawyers and people with solid government service backgrounds being appointed. This is in contrast to Bush's policy of appointing robber barons and their lackeys to key oversight positions.
Union lawyers? Government service background people? What the hell does "government service background" even mean? Cheney has a "government service background" and we can see how far we got with him. WTF?
If his appointment of Sotomayor is any indication, we are going to be stuck with lots of pro-corporate appointments. That is who Obfuck is - he's a corporate centrist.
Nanoo
I first read this piece on another site some time back. Apparently, Commondreams stalled on printing it here.
I appreciate this article. It says what I've been wondering.
I'm 44, so I'm already plenty cynical about American politics. I never bought Obama's rhetoric. Frankly, it sounded a bit canned, but I did have some hopes here and there.
I expected him to to run into a crapstorm of opposition. I have to remind myself that the media has enormous power to ignore and weaken him, but it's true that he's been far too compromising with Wall St, and health care is the real deal-breaker for me. The lack of a White House voice makes me wonder if as DMG says, he's the worst of all sell-outs, or terribly advised, in which case he's a patsy to Axelrod, and the Mossad agent, who apparently are total corporate stooges and strategic idiots.
It does seem an insoluble mystery why a man would run for president, and then toss it off. Would a guy who worked in the trenches in Chicago instead of a law firm be a sell-out? I guess if he wanted to be president, just for the title? The other answer is that he basically got threatened once he took office. I understand that he couldn't fight the banksters (although if he had, it would have given him hero status and clout just for trying), but to sell out health care is more than I can stand. Plus, his payoff for playing ball is now an emboldened repub party that can legitimately call the guy a wussy. The last answer is he's giving the right rope to continue to fail, so he can step in later, but this is risky and unlikely.
I dont think I'm gonna stick around the USA forever to see how it plays out. It's gotten real old. It's not just Obama. Pelosi, Reid, and the bluedogs need to all be purged. Single-payer NY Wiener(sp?) in Congress for president NOW. I hope the dems get annihilated in 2010. They deserve it. I'm about ready to go for Ron Paul. The progressives have some common ground with grassroots rightists. We need to find it. Its the people vs the rich. The left-right paradigm has to be buried.
Populism is the future. DC is delusional because the people aren't doing enough, but more trauma will shove this country into revolt.
People of all political persuasions are angry -- really, really angry -- about the trillions in taxpayer dollars that went to Wall Street with no help for Main Street, about the bought-and-paid-for Congress, the endless wars, the rising numbers of unemployed, the outsourcing of American jobs, the escalating cost of health care, and so on and so on. Is there any way to channel that collective anger in a constructive way? Short of revolution, is there any solution to this seemingly insoluble problem?
Good comments, esolesek.
There have recently been viable US Third Party populist politicians elected to state and national offices, given their own states' particular political environments and their residents, add to that the candidates abilities to grasp and explain the issues, think: US Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont, or one whose persona appealed to the masses, think: Governor Jesse Ventura, Minnesota, who served, 1998-2003.
As Obama razes the Democratic Party, follwing W's destruction of the Repubs, the felix culpa is that populist third parties will grow, and it looks like I'm heading to the Green Party.
LET'S WORK TO DEFEAT OBAMA IN 2012.
First try to nominate a decent candidate (e.g. Kucinich) for the Democrats in 2012, and if that doesn't work than push that candidate with a 3rd party. Is there that much to lose?
The error that the author of this article has made, and too many of the posters here have made, is that it is possible to reform capitalism, that capitalism is a decent system, if only various cabals or extremists, such as neoconservatives or Zionists, are removed from power. The real truth is that capitalism has always been and will always be a barbaric system. If it is not replaced by real socialism, not the fake socialism that exists in Europe, then it will destroy the human race. The late CLR James, an African American Marxist, said it best: "Hitler is capitalist man." James is the kind of black man who I would want to run the United States, not Obama. But James would be at the head of a worker's state, that is run in the interests of the working class, by the working class itself, allied with the small farmers and small business owners. This state would begin the construction of socialism worldwide. That is the only hope for the human race.
Exactly......capitalism, not democracy or a republic is what we have here. A corporatocracy. And the corporate/capitalist paradigm is inextricably linked to
the ongoing world-wide environmental disaster which is going to become more and more of a show-stealer in the near future. You cannot extract resourses, the fundamental necessity of capital growth, in an exponential, eternal spiral, when the provisions which nature has provided are clearly finite, limited, and running out.
A misplaced, misty eyed hope in technology keeps the wheels on the tracks to destruction. And since the occasional revolutionary energy source is derailed by corporate bottom line stubbornness and greed, (big oil), our fate seems sealed indeed.
I am so sorry I voted for Obama. There is only one man in the political spectrum
who I can see speaking truth to power, and who doesn't have a snowball's chance,
and who probably couldn't save us from ourselves if he was given the opportunity, but I'll vote for him anyway, even if he is not running. I speak of Nader, of course.
I haven't seen any socialist articles here since I've been reading this forum. They are all cappies.
I have to say, though, that for someone like you who seems to understand that the underlying system is the problem, how you could vote for a corporate candidate is baffling. Why would you vote for someone who wants more imperialism and killing? Why would you vote for someone who openly admits to admiring Raygun? Why aren't you voting for the Socialist or the Commie? I've been a registered Communist my entire adult life and always vote for the Socialist or the Communist in the general (although I'm planning to switch to SPUSA soon because the CP has been a left-wing arm of the Dem party for years now).
Talk about cognitive dissonance!
People don't vote on the basis of policy considerations but on the basis of whether or not a candidate appears to belong to the same group voters belong to. Obama got elected because he appealed to blacks, Hispanics, union workers, the young, and a disproportionate share of women. McCain only appealed to white men and women from the South and the Mormon states.
People will vote against their own self-interest as long as they believe a political leader is one of them. Most socialists do not understand this very basic fact and so they go election after election, never winning. Nader only appeals to white intellectuals. Not a chance he could win anything.
Socialists don't win elections because they don't get media air time. End of story.
Nader is not a socialist. He's a cappie. And I disagree he appeals only to white intellectuals. He represents many of the interests of the working class, but he's been so demonized by the press that nobody takes him seriously anymore. He as well is not given appropriate air time so that people can hear his views. But that's your loss, not his. I wouldn't vote for Nader simply because he's a capitalist, but I think he's on the right track with what he would try to do if he were the president.
"The Obama presidency is probably already toast"
The O'Bamba prezidency was REQUIRED to be toast. That's part of the contract. The contract between Demoks/Repuks is for the Demoks to hold the fort while the Repuks recuperate in the military hospital. If O'Bamba were a success then Repuks can't re-take the oval orifice and continue the cycle of imperial plunder. DMG ought to know the elites are in survival mode. They're in dire straits. Imperial plunder is the only tool left in their toolbox. So they're exercising great care. They know it is the people, not the elites, who have all the political advantage today.
"The contract between Demoks/Repuks "
bad cop; worse cop.
these guys only pretend to disagree every four years to con the public into thinking they have a choice.
voting only validates the system.
choosing the "lesser" is still choosing evil.
". Now look at the guy who ran a letter-perfect, disciplined, textbook, insurgent, victorious campaign for the White House. "
YES WE CON!
YES WE CON!
YES WE CON!*
Chants you can believe in.
*© Dept. of Hopeland Security
The USA"PATRIOT" Act, the Military Commissions Act, the FISA law...Don't hear those mentioned a lot. Here we are with a sword hanging by a thread over our diminishing liberties and our ability to bring about substantive change and they are ignored for the most part. If anything demonstrates Obama's relation to the citizens of the nation, it's his acceptance of and silence about these abominations. (The "progressive" community seems to prefer to forget about them, too.)
That thread could break any time. That's a fact. A weak president is not the best person to be in the position at the time it does break. As usual, the false front of the U.S. presents a cartoonish, one note version (aided by vast loss of historical memory) of an historical generality, say, illustrated by conditions in the Weimar Republic. There will be nothing cartoonish about the aftermath.
Mr. Green is floundering in speculations based upon the same old pathetic ("DUH, I didn't know the gun was loaded when I aimed it at my kids.") belief that the republicans and the democrats are not of the same cloth.
There is a silver lining.
Knowing how we have allowed ourselves to be deceived, bankrupted, and murdered can, if we cherish our true inner instincts, give us the path to freedom from the program of desperation within which we remain shackled.
The scattered, ripped, bloodied, tortured, decaying limbs, guts, and psychologies which we wantonly spread around the globe are, in fact, our own. We must see our guilt and our victimization and own it.
Walk away from the corporate whores who hide their fraud behind flag waving. If you stay, clinging out of fear instead of standing up and demanding what is just and decent, you are going to lose even more.
Maybe we will not "win", but we will have the knowledge that we made a commitment to an integrity of compassion and justice. There is nothing, NOTHING more valuable in this universe.
We elected the "least acceptable" corporate approved candidate. He will rock the boat only a little, as would have Hilary or McCain. They will toe the masters line and do as they are told regardless of promises made during the campaign. Notice how there are always enough corporate bought off "Blue Dogs" to derail any progressive efforts. The corporate pigs own us all and we are too stupid to figure it out and too scared to fight back.
The pendulum swings, and it swings within it's created boundaries,left to right, right to left,left to right and yet everyone continues to believe that within this preset and repeated range that something new could appear. as soon as it moves as far as it can to the right, panic and blame are expressed by the left and claims, that if and when it moves back to their side all will be well. Then when it does the same blame game starts again. Now, how many times in the history of america and the world has this scenario repeated it self ? To many to count. Nothing is ever resolved to any degree of lasting satisfaction and yet we still believe that something was overlooked that could stop this idiotic madness. It is like going to the refrigerator to get some milk and not finding any, then a few hours later we look again in hopes that we missed it the first time. Again we look and again we look and again. Well you get the picture or maybe not. it is not that we have not found a better political system or a better candidate, it is the age/era we live in and therefore no political system, no religion, no education, no anything will come to fruition. The universe is in the process of dismantling itself. The only thing that can achieve fulfillment is the observer falling back into itself.
"Many think that was a naïve position from the get-go. I disagree. Not only do I believe that it was a legitimate possibility, I would argue that it was the logical choice even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal fortunes. "
So tired of this. "even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal fortunes." This has got to be the most obscure defense of Obama I've ever read. Is he actually suggesting that despite having the same politics as McCain, a good reason to vote for Obama was he was only recently coming in to money?
Anyhow, it wasn't just "naïve" to believe Obama embodied "change", it was delusional. People decided that Obama stood for values or policies which he clearly communicated, over and over again, that he didn't.
"to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. "
I don't agree with DMG that FDR was a progressive. Unless he means that they both saved capitalism from itself. But regardless, he had NO reason to assume that Obama would be progressive.
Obama was a political nobody who was mysteriously given the keynote address at the 2004 DNC before even being elected to the Senate (awfully suspicious if you ask me). But after being elected to the Senate, we have four years of his votes and policy statements to examine, and they which consistently prove that he is not a progressive, and that he actively votes against progressive policies. His accomplishments in the Senate are scarce to nonexistent. In fact, he spent so much time campaigning in 2008, he was really only an active Senator for three years.
Here is a list of Obama's Senate accomplishments compiled by an Obama supporter.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4678548
Judge for yourself, but I'm not impressed.
Why someone like DMG would choose to ignore or dismiss the only political record of a newcomer like Obama, while still endorsing him for president, is just bizarre.
first off i want to congratulate david on his humor - this article has some classic lines:
That's fine, but watching him in action I sometimes wonder if this clown really and actually wants a second term.
My guess, as a non-economist (which, of course, only means that I have a better shot at an accurate prediction than the economists do)
Indicate what you want in the bill but then be completely unclear about whether you necessarily require those things. Travel all over the world doing foreign policy meet-and-greets. Go on vacation in the heat of the battle. Rinse and repeat.
Altogether, it's an astonishingly perfect recipe for getting rolled
Obama is the complete antithesis of this model of the presidency. He is Harry Reid's incontinent grandmother as president. He is Neville Chamberlain's squirrely little nephew knocking shit over in the Oval Office while he plays "Mr. President", in-between episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. He is a bowl of Jell-O. That someone forgot to put in the fridge.
good stuff - even though i am laughing through my tears..
david has another great column on obama found here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/green08192009.html
called: Guess What? He's a Terrible President
you know what: he sure is
<<<>>>> by David Michael Green, author of the above article.
Things would not be so confusing if you accept these assumptions, Mr. Green:
1. The 911 attack was planned and executed by CIA and the Pentagon
2. The directions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unexpected and our political elite was caught in it.
3. The financial collapse on Wall Street was not part of the picture from the biginning.
For the purpose of bringing the 911 conspiracy to a fruitful conclusion America needs a Barack Hussein Obama. Palin and Macain as candidates for the presidential election guaranteed that we get a President Obama and the alternative "smart power" to facilitate the incorporation of Iraq and Afghanistan into the Empire and the playing out of our national strategy in the New World Order which was launched by the 911 "Pearl Harbour".
The only way to deal with the trouble on Wall Street that would not be detrimental to this on going USA strategy for the New World Order is exactly what was being done. Health care issue, whatsoever, must not be allowed to divert us from the New World Order strategy.
Give our elite a bit more time it will begin to make sense. In my opinion the grand strategy of 911 still has a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding in the way it was originally planned.
To get out of this mess over time, we need the Progressive Caucus in the House (the only true democrats left in congress) and Bernie Sanders to form their own party. Its time for progressive dems nationwide to piss away Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and finally Barack Obama. There will be birth pangs to be sure, along with charges that we are handing the 2012 election to the GOP, but that is the only way to plant the seeds for a more hopeful future.
There is no salvation in this system. The two parties are thoroughly co-opted, and the barriers to other parties' entrance into the game, never mind on a level field, are nigh on impossible--
But keep hopin', mate. It's what America is good at.
I feel sad and empty. I never had any genuine hope that Obama would be an FDR--there was all of that money that funded his campaign. But so little refutation of Bush's worst offenses--support for torture through non-action, the big looting of the treasury for the banks, the big kiss-off to auto-workers. Who's his daddy? It ain't the American people.
Writing my congressmen is an act of futility.
Revolution will likely bring violence.
poor sad USA.
"Writing my congressmen is an act of futility."
it may just keep the USPS solvent.
"it may just keep the USPS solvent."
Good point!
"Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, it's not working out like we expected, waahh, waahhh".
So, whiner crybabies, what's happening next? Sit home and wait for the next great Democorporatic candidate to fill you with illusions?
Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan sat nearly alone on Martha's Vineyard, trying to drum up support for her antiwar stance. Did any democratic organizations lend her support? Move on? Code Pink? Anyone? Anyone?
No, because the antiwar President is in office. Pay no attention to the escalation of war, at least we got Bush and his kind out of office right? All the outrage wasn't about war, or corporate bailouts, or torture, it was about Bush. The left hates Bush and his kind, He's gone! Now we can all go home.
If "The left hates Bush and his kind," then there's no reason "we can all go home" because Obama is as bad if not worse than Bush. But your point is well taken.
“Which brings us to a third major electoral liability for Obama. Human beings, by and large, like to be led.” …. “I'm pretty confident the public is losing trust in this guy as their Big Daddy Protector.” –
And maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe some people will stop needing to have a Daddy Leader and start thinking of ways to get things done themselves.
Thanks for the article. Except that it was always obvious that Obama was going to disappoint the world.
"Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.'
"I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in mind when he said that.
"But, who knows? Maybe that's exactly what he was thinking.
"Or -- perhaps most likely of all -- maybe nobody at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is doing much thinking whatsoever these days."
So, according to Green, either Rahm Emanuel is steering his president and the country toward corporate-controlled fascism or Emanuel is dumber than a sack of rocks. But why would any rational observer suppose for even a moment that Emanuel, who is named after a Stern Gang terrorist and who served in the Israeli military during the first Gulf War, would really get behind Obama's plan to force on Israel something resembling a just resolution of the long-running crisis in Palestine? What Green describes as his worst case prognostication for the USA, rigidly ultranationalistic corporate fascism and militarism, is actually a fairly accurate description of Israel, except of course that Israelis have more freedom of speech than Americans have even today, thanks to Big Media corporations that are owned and operated or heavily influenced by Zionists and those who do their bidding. Perhaps Obama is simply frightened witless by the possibility that he will not survive his first term if he crosses the pro-Israel crowd, which is to say the neocons of the Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber parties. The Right has certainly been attempting to frighten the president and everyone else, and that sort of fear very conveniently hands significant leverage to the Israel-first crowd. Of course, if he somehow finds the gumption to do what needs to be done on the most important domestic and foreign policy issues, Obama still has a chance to be something other than the biggest disappointment in modern American political history. I'm not holding my breath while waiting for that to happen, but neither have I given up hope. Who knows? The nation's first African American president may have something like courage forced upon him.
""Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
That's straight Chicago Boys talk. See Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
In our relief to get rid of the thief, we were beguiled into thinking that one politician could conquer Mammon in his own home.
Or would even want to.
Does anybody think it is beyond the realm of possibility that Obfuck may not run in 2012? Would he simply relinquish his power, cash in his corporate chips, and call it a day?
I love Green's writing style. :-)
FWIW, I think Obama will be true to his shallow and bankrupt concept of "pragmatism".
Thus, IMO he would only decline to run for a second term if he and his maladministration became so universally unpopular that his chances of re-election reached a statistical vanishing point.
I'm certain that presidential candidates routinely incorporate a two-term strategy into their calculations, although it would be presumptuous and indecorous to disclose this fact. So they begin with a two-term mindset.
I don't think Obama would be in any way inclined to quit while he's "ahead", even marginally; political animals are narcissists, and only handwriting on the wall in big neon letters would counter the impulse to, er, move forward.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yeah, sure thing! But this rabbit hole is deeper, lets face it, most of us are put back to sleep as soon as our own 'comfort-zone' is reestablished.
We have been rendered greedy and narcissistic by our unconscious choices. Can't you see it coming, the convergence of our selfish ideologies into one global f'n disaster.
For many that day has already arrived, we are just further down the list!
Looking to the 'top' for 'salvation' is ignorant and naive.
If we want change we need to start with emancipating our minds. Yes, we have to challenge our Own values, how WE relate to the world, are we living in a SUSTAINABLE fashion, are we living 'JUST' next to all other living things, or are we like a cancer is to its host?
If we want to get a country out of this and hurt these SOBs that are responsible to a large degree, we have to stop buying from them!!! And I mean that in a fundamental way!
It is as simple and hard as that, but oh no, the rabbit hole is far deeper then that...
The problem is not the team we are playing for! The problem is the game that we are playing!
So are you ready for fundamental change? Somehow, I don't think so :(
This diatribe is dead on, but it blasts the wrong target. Obama is not the cause of this crisis. He stands at the end of a long trail of decisions made by powerful elites in business and government over many decades. These decisions box the type of decisions that can be made into tight crevices, into one of which Obama is now cramped. One man, even if he is President, can't reverse the momentum of that long trail. As beautiful a sight as it would be to see Obama challenging the power of Wall Street, we can easily foresee the consequence. The ruling elite would find a way to remove him, either politically or physically, if necessary.
However, a real leader would have used the opportunity, even if he faced certain defeat. He would realize that "the political center" is an optical illusion. He would have instinctively understood that Republican support could only be a cruel hoax. Instead, he would have rallied his newly fledged legions of young fans and proclaimed positions radical enough to get them excited, even if he secretly knew they would face severe obstacles. He would set the bar high enough for real achievement to be possible.
But Obama was not that leader. The reason he never challenged entrenched power is that he was chosen by that power to fulfill specific corporate goals. The wonderful paragraph Green gives us about his health care missteps may not be simply a caricature of incompetence. The result of his political moves will be the defeat of real health care reform for at least the next four years. There are many who would consider that a significant success.
Another foreseeable result of the cumulative crises which he is bound to mishandle will be the election of a far-right Republican president in 2012. This Republican may have the intellectual chops of an Arnold Schwartzenegger or the feckless, good-old-girl charm of Sarah Palin, but it won't matter. This president will take orders from the same corporate headquarters as Obama, but with the incomparable advantage of arriving after 4 years of feckless "liberalism." It's the Hannity and Colmes strategy. Use a cartoonish liberal cliche to highlight the granite chin of fascism.
This new president will be empowered to wipe away what's left of the Constitution, establish military rule, and eliminate all government programs other than the armed forces, law enforcement, and the prison system. Anything less will be characterized as "Obamism."
Agree. I can imagine that this scenario was gamed in some think tank prior to the establishment's annointment of Obama as a major candidate in 06' (e.g. the glowing cover on Time magazine "Why Barack Obama Could Be President" 10/23/06 was a kind of coming out/product kickoff). The think tankers are paid to do this for a living.
camus13
Professor Green is right on the money except for one item.
Fascism
Check the following and see how close we are, if not there.
American Fascism
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14-defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. TOP
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
**(Sound like any certain party and/or President and administration that we know? Hmm??)
________________________________
An interesting note to end this article: As of January 2004, the United States fulfills all fourteen points of fascism and all seven warning signs are present. But we're not alone. Israel also fulfills all fourteen points and all seven warning signs as well.
Perfectly correct on the US, we are well on the road to fascism. But as wrong as could be on Israel, and is itself nothing but an expression of the vilest anti-semitism. What's most disturbing about this statement, in fact, is that the anti-semitism that's becoming so prevalent in the US, on BOTH the left and right, is itself another and quintessential sign of fascism: finding some minority group to blame things on and persecute!!! See Nazi Germany for a good example of this!!!
Stop blaming everything on this small country thousands of miles away. It is one of the most progressive countries in the world, and Jews in general are far and away the most progressive people on the planet, and the ones who have done the most to fight fascism. (See the life works of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and countless others.) It has its faults as do all countries, but to suggest that it is even remotely fascist is beyond absurd and a blatant lie. Start blaming it on the Democrats and the Republicans, and the apathetic minority who continue to vote for them.
Mikep,
So long as you took your fathers money, he probably felt he had a right to have a say in your affairs. "This small country thousands of miles away" should stop taking money from the U.S. and start paying us back some of the billions we've handed them over the years. Maybe you Mikep, could show your true loyalty, move to Israel and help improve conditions there. You'd be doing everyone a favor, I think.
"...But as wrong as could be on Israel, and is itself nothing but an expression of the vilest anti-semitism..."
- Mikep: Here's a categorical truth: all attempts (like yours) to defend Israel by claims that criticizing it is "anti-Semitic", are the purest BS. They don't even pass the laugh test.
Yes, some criticism of Israel is doubtless motivated by anti-Semitism. But much of it is objectively accurate, wholly warranted, & has nothing whatever to do with anti-Semitism.
Israel is not remotely "one of the most progressive countries in the world." It can't be, even in theory, for the simple reason that it has (in effect) an official state religion. You've heard about "separation of church and state," I presume? A progressive state must keep religion & state separate.
Apart from theory, Israel is one of the world's most consistent & unrepentant violators of international law, having seized land that doesn't belong to it by armed force, then occupied & colonized it. It has repeatedly bombed populations of helpless civilians, targetting vital pieces of civilian infrastructure. That's a war crime, pure & simple. Several of its prime ministers (Shamir, Begin) were literally bomb-throwing terrorists. Its current prime minister is a lunatic warmonger. Its last prime minister is under indictment for corruption. (The PM before that was Sharon, who was both a lunatic warmonger AND nearly indicted for nepotism & corruption.) Its Foreign Minister (& Deputy Prime Minister), Avigdor Lieberman, is openly fascist & racist. No one can seriously claim that non-Jews and Jews receive equal treatment under the law in Israel. There's horrible social inequality in Israel -- similar to that in the US, which is the worst in the developed world. // {And I haven't even mentioned what they do to the Palestinians, in terms of daily brutal humiliation, not to mention starvation.}
It's true that there's a growing tendency in the US to blame the US's own vile actions on Israel. (If anyone doubts this, check out the comment threads at InformationClearingHouse.info sometime. The site owner posts great stuff -- many of the same articles that appear on CD. But numerous members of the regular posting crowd there regularly bash Jews & Israel, even on matters having nothing to do with Israel.) This tendency is disturbing, of course. It reflects simply the desire on the part of numerous ignorant Americans to blame someone else for the rottenness of their own country.
Overall, the level of "national virtue" possessed by Israel is about the same as the level of "virtue" of the US -- which is to say, terrible. This is no accident, since most of Israel's money comes from here, & the US has an implicit veto over anything Israel does. Of course, the US is the worse of the two, since it's much bigger, & since Israel's actions often simply reflect what the US wants it to do.
Excellent response, Rich M. Thanks.
mike: could you post a complete list of the medications you are currently using
i want to go to happy town too...
mikep September 5th, 2009 7:28 pm...........Do you know anything about Judaism, Zionism, the State of Israel or Palestine. Israel is a country. Judaism is a religion. Were any of the people you mention born in Israel? Incidentally, Dylan is a born again Jew.
Screw you, mikep. People like Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman would flee you like the plague. It's you who are the new fascism that is upon us. Go away.
Yes, for some time the Obama USA has been transforming itself into a USA version of the Weimar Republic. The neocon corporate-sponsored right-wingers are rapidly positioning themselves for the take-over. Soon those gun-toting disruptors of the Town Hall meetings and the like will be wearing coloured shirts (though probably not brown ones to be too obvious) and bashing all who aren't with them. It's bloody scary but it's hard to see any other likely future.
Green sez: "Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.'
I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in mind when he said that."
***
That's exactly what Rahm had in mind. Although "corporate-controlled fascism" would seem to be an oxymoron.
These people, including Obama, are not stupid, nor are they fools.
He was black. He became the President. The circle in now complete, and African Americans have now "arrived". From slave, to Slavemaster.
We put way too much stock into what we think the presidency stands for. Democracy. Justice. Moving humanity forward. Its none of that.
Moving the money -- and the Empire's borders -- are what matters and its the only thing that matters.
Green says, "Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction," and then procedes to show what that "direction" is--ever further to the right. Paul Street was very able to see and describe what that direction would be prior to the election. I'm not surprised at his direction either, as it's the direction the national government's been moving in since they overthrew the Articles of Confederation and created the conditions for the rise of our national monstrosity.
(accidental double post)
I have to wonder, with Green, if the purpose of an Obama presidency was to pave the way for the next Republican one, worse than the last... The instant he was in office the great give-away began, while the majority of the country was still blinded by "hope" and that smile. Once the give-away was finished, maybe the purpose of the presidency had been fulfilled, and everything after that is just a big game of international travel, vacations, and biding time.
I wonder though if there wouldn't still be a very large group of African-American voters who will feel compelled to get him a second term, joined by the die-hard contingent of his original supporters who may still refuse to consider any of his actions as anything but wise, prudent, patient, long-suffering, blah, blah, blah.... With regard to the former, we could maybe add that long-delayed national racial turmoil to Green's list of things to come.
Actually, the "great give-away" began while Bush was still in office, but your substance is correct because Obama spoke and voted for that giveaway and has since escalated it. President Taft is a red leftist when compared to Obama; and given that comparison, one could call Taft a Progressive. Obama stands to the right of most Torys, who are mostly left of Republicans and even most Democrats. I would argue the Democrats were only the party of the CommonMan during FDR's first two terms. If only the Populists hadn't merged with the Democrats in the 1890s--Sigh... another of History's What Ifs?
What follows Obama is dependent upon what occurs between now and the end of 2011.
Just two comments:
"I don't really think he could conceivably turn further rightward at this point"
Think again.
"An American-made puppet government hated for its corruption and for its gross incompetence at every task other than raw predation."
This is our government.
Welcome to coporatocracy. Next stop corporatic fascism or the 1960's. I moving to the 1960's. Actually, it has always been the 1960's. It is always the 1960's. It is always a struggle of the sane against the ravenous. Stop being one of the ravenous. Spend less and live better by not accumulating. Every purchase of a corporation produced "consumer good" supports your own political, social and economic domination.
If you are tuned in, you realize you have already been dropped out.
We don't need a new political party. We need a new political consciousness and a new politics. They will look remarkably like the old one's we left behind. The new politics will take place in the street, no permits required, no bail for the arrested. (When it come to "filling the jails", it does not work if they are only filled for an afternoon.)
Let's see where has this worked before? In the US, regarding civil rights and Vietnam. In India, regarding independence. In Eastern Europe, regarding the iron curtain. In the Philippines, regarding Ms. Aquino. In Russia, regarding Yeltsin.
It doesn't work right away, witness Palestine. So,...
Let's get it on.
See you in the streets and at music festivals.
Peace and Love, man.
"...Spend less and live better by not accumulating. Every purchase of a corporation produced "consumer good" supports your own...domination..."
- There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not in any way a political program. It's not enough, or even close to enough. // Ironically, it's just the sort of notion that would naturally occur to people raised in consumer culture: the main way to "fight" is by altering one's shopping habits. A serious fight is not just a matter of one's shopping habits.
"...We don't need a new political party. We need a new political consciousness and a new politics. They will look remarkably like the old one's we left behind...."
- I don't know what you're saying there (& doubt that you do, either). Yes we certainly do need a new political party. It must be based on what one could call a "new political consciousness," but the needed ideas are not really new (even if they'd be new to most Americans). No, the new consciousness would not look the slightest bit like the old ones we left behind.
If the US continues to be governed only by the 2 official big-business parties, there's simply no escaping the disaster that's enveloping us -- even if tens of thousands grow their own veggies & boycott certain consumer goods.
RichM -- I'm with you on developing a political program and that "growing your own" and so on is good but not effective politically as stated. In my opinion, you are correct in saying it's from a consumerist seed, and I think it should be added that it can be, in consequence, a self-involved option. What is required is a structure of political solidarity which it can be part of.
I differ on your last sentence (or maybe I'd just tweak it slightly.) With corporations and lobbyists and the MIC writing the legislation, I think it can be safely said that we are "governed" by the plutocracy and that the two parties of the Corporatocracy are simply tools, like the front office.
That being the case, not only do we need to develop political structures for our purposes, but we need to disengage ourselves from everything that benefits the corporatocracy. I believe boycotts are an essential element of that disengagement...not the only element, of course. I'm not talking about a 'buy nothing" day. I'm speaking of massive boycotts designed to achieve a political purpose. Naturally, we'd have to build a sustaining fall-back economy and organization, which we'd better start doing right now.
Yes, I'm totally fine with the idea of mass organized boycotts (& mass organized strikes, & mass organized civil disobedience) as elements of a larger political program. // As I'm sure you understood, I was objecting only to the idea that it's sufficient simply for individuals to say, "I'm going to boycott Whole Foods and switch my checking account to a local credit union." Done on an individual basis, those things are fine -- but they're not enough.
Oh, I was pretty sure I understood what you were saying. Just advancing the dialogue a bit. A few years ago I tried to organize some big corporate boycotts. It was one of the most frustrating things I ever did. I just couldn't get beyond the "individual basis" in people's minds. I don't think you would even believe me if I told you the adamant and solid wall I came up against. It's like no one had ever heard of boycotts and strikes being used to achieve a political purpose. That part of their brain was "no entry". I couldn't even discuss the pros and cons because "boycott" had only one connotation in their minds.
It was depressing. I didn't know whether to attribute it to lack of education or to the continuing corporate colonization of the mind and isolation of the spirit.
It's like when I was trying to register people into the Green Party, we'd have these vehement discussions, "By god, that's right" and so on, then, "Well, join the Greens, it's your party"...A film comes over the eyes, a blank, confused stare. "I may think about it." Or, "I'm just not ready."
OK, I've vented. That's water under the bridge. I'm coming at this from another angle, refreshed, I hope.
No, RichM. The Black Swan is right. I have seen no better model of hope in the past 40-odd years than the '60s revolt. Bring it back! Off the pigs! Make love, not war!
Without the egregious mistakes, without the selling out. With more political consciousness. But, at its best, distilled, it was a powerful anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist statement and a way of life that really did explore ways of living on the earth with respect. No way can we fault it for what it tried to do. (Must have hit a nerve, the apoplexy it elicited at the time, seemingly far out of proportion to its threat...or was it?)
I'd love to see it happen, but those who don't consume corporate crap are enemies of the plutocracy. "Making love, not war" isn't easy.
"...I have seen no better model of hope in the past 40-odd years than the '60s revolt..."
- Sure, if you limit things to just the past 40-odd years, the '60's revolt was by definition the "best model of hope" in that period, since it was the ONLY period of resistance in that time frame.
That doesn't change the fact that as a movement, it had grievous shortcomings. Those shortcomings are not addressed by silly slogans about "offing the pigs," or by pretending that changing your shopping habits will lead to meaningful social change.
What's wrong with "offing the pigs?" The cops are protectors of capital. That's their role.
The most revolutionary group in the 1960s and early 70s was the Panthers. They got their start as a community program in Oakland to keep the cops in line because blacks were (and always have been) overcriminalized by the local police force. Seale, Cleaver, and Newton eventually shifted the focus of the party to community outreach, including starting medical clinics, free legal assistance, and providing breakfast meals for kids. The whole point was to educate blacks about the power structure so they could fight back against it. Those guys were reading Marx, Lenin, Mao, Che, Fanon, and Malcolm. Talk about a threat to the establishment. At the height of the Panthers' run, 20% of black Americans self-identified as "revolutionary" and supported what the BPP was doing. At the time that poll was taken, the Panthers had only been around for FOUR YEARS. Pretty remarkable.
But we all know what happened to the Panthers. Hoover infiltrated the group and worked informants, started media disinformation campaigns, and got a bunch of them wrongfully arrested. Some of the leaders were murdered by the pigs including Fred Hampton.
When I think of "revolution" in the 60s, I think of the Panthers. The "revolutionary" history as told by the boomers is largely revisionist. Those Vietnam protests dried up like tofu left out overnight as soon as the draft got stopped. In other words, once it was only poor kids doing the killing and getting killed, nobody cared.
The Civil Rights Movement? The heavy lifting was done by the generation before the boomers. Brown v. Board was in 1954. The Deacons of Defense, the march on SElma, the march on Washington - all done before 1964. Note the dates. Unless the boomers want to argue that the heavy lifting was done by brave 10- to 18-year-olds, it wasn't them.
Same with the feminist movement. Friedan was published in 1960. Everything after 1966 was mop-up, "second generation" coattails shit.
Hell, the boomers can't even take credit for rock and roll. R&R kicked off in the 50s with performers who were born in the 30s - Little Richard, Frankie Lymon, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.
Almost everything the boomers take credit for was started by and the heavy lifting done by the "Silent" Generation.
Oh, I guess there are a few things we can pin on the boomers, though - they swept Ronald Reagan into office, they overwhelmingly voted as a cohort for Prop. 13 in California (the start of the 30-year tax-cutting orgy in this country), and they voted overwhelmingly for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Somehow, whenever I see boomers on forums describing how heroic their generation is, they always manage to leave out this bit of history.
I agree with most of this except; he may make a second term. I see no credible opposition in four years. A slow muddle, muddle and economic decline is the future of U.S. The dissolution of Empire is not dramatic. It is painful for many and a gigantic stew of corruption and moral decay for historians to sip. For individuals leaning toward social pathology,the decline offers opportunity.
Those are all excellent points. //
There's far too much expectation on CD that Obama will lose in 2012, "just" because he's totally betrayed his own base, & governed essentially just like Bush. But that's not how politics works. Bush didn't deserve to be re-elected in 2004, yet he was. The same might (or might not) happen for Obama.
Obama has done very well for his REAL constituency -- Wall Street. He has also completely de-activated the antiwar movement. Those who benefited from these betrayals may see advantages in keeping him around. Or they may not. But I wouldn't dismiss out of hand the possibility that he might still be seen as very useful to elites, in 3 years.
Bush was NOT legitimately re-elected in 2004. See Ohio and the excellent work of Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman on this subject. Some people even went to jail over that scam.
"And I feel deep hostility toward him about the betrayal of legions of voters..." Yep, he screwed the little guy over real good in favor of the banksters. And I'd not be surprised to learn that it was Rahm, investment banker, ex-IDF soldier who 'advised' the president to make his own little Gaza-fication of the people while handing the cash over to Goldman Sachs.
Olden ways of the kleptocracy held that the ripoffs hit segments of the people on a rotating basis for a steady stream of disappointment and thefts. This guy, drives a tank/bulldozer over us as if we're Palestinians.
"jobless recovery"
(sigh)
Yes, prof. Green, I do think it was a naive position from the get-go, and I take no pleasure in the Cassandra complex that has been prodding me to say "I told you so" ever since I washed my hands of mainstream parties in 1996.
Instead of hoping and wishing for the success of the essential emptiness that is style without substance, I hope you'll let me welcome you into the cohort that thinks attractive emptiness isn't good enough ***and continues to express that in the democratic franchise***.
We may not have immediate electoral success, but it's a far better alternative than adding to the mess by voting for policies that are the opposite of what we believe.
Voting is only one small element. As ED notes above (1:37), we need a people's movement. Socialist, also above (2:16), reminds us of the influence of monied interests and the vital need to oppose them.
There's a lot to do. Wishful thinking has run its course. Now comes the hard part, and we can only hope to live long enough to see it bear fruit.
Take it down once, I'll put it up again, as best I can remember it, minus the well-deserved obscenity.
I feel deep hostility toward him (Obama) about the betrayal of legions of voters -- especially the young -- who believed his message of hope.
Obama has not shown one iota of shame or guilt about the monstrous lies he told during his campaign or the fact that he is no better than what he replaced. I too wish him the worst of luck. After eight years of Bush/Cheney, it is now possible for the United States to sink into the basest kinds of depravity. And Obama has given that possibility his personal seal of approval.
I'm hoping our country can rise above its leaders. Is it possible for the left and right to come together and pull our country out of trouble in spite of our government? And once its righted and the economy restored go back to squabbling about which direction to take. I almost think it is with the level of disgust on all sides.
Green does a big boo-hoo on behalf of the disappointed Democratic Party liberal voter and I have no sympathy for the guy at all. This all was so utterly predictable that only a professor of political science could not see it coming. If Green was a real activist he would never have to put on this sordid act. To Green's credit though, he's not continuing his honeymoon with this particular individual cretin put up by the corporate DP. He's waiting to 'be fooled' the next time coming! And so goes the DP liberal voter...
When Obama embarked on a reconstitution of the Clinton Cabinet, I knew we were in trouble and labeled him a fraud.
He has sold out everyone who believed in him and voted for him to Wall Street, Health Care Corporations, Big Pharmaceutical Companies; you name it.
Taking all of his ineptness and grand deception into consideration, coupled with the absolute jokes claiming to be the next generation of Republican leadership and, it can safely be said, we are in crisis mode.
We are urgently in need of a new political party that will address the problems of all those disenfranchised by 16 combined years of Clinton Republicrats and George W. Bush Republicans. That adds up to quite a few divergent interests that could well have the power to change things for the better. Progressives, Independents, Liberal Republicans, Organized Labor, Free Trade Opponents and the like.
Paul Wellstone's political philosopy might be the place to start.
If we can get back in touch with the finest within us by becoming informed and standing for what is good and decent within us, Americans are a fromidable force with which to be reckoned. We need to start by no longer allowing corporations, the corporate news media and entertainment giants to shape our opinions and our values. We sell ourselves short when we defer to all those who peddle "feel good" crap and seduce us with rhetoric designed to convince us to be what they want us to be, rather than what we should be.
We are not the proverbial sheep waiting to be led to the slaughter. Rather, we are a sleeping giant with which to be reckoned sooner, rather than later.
pioagape: I was thinking myself of the "sleeping giant" imagery as I reflected on Mr. Green's essay, but in a somewhat different way than you use the term. I fully concur that we have to look within slumbering capacities and aspirations within ourselves if we are going to get on the road to recovery from our current malaise. But my thought was of the "sleeping giant" of the immigrants rights movement that unexpectedly awoke (however briefly as it was clubbed back to sleep) 3 years ago. I'm thinking of sleeping giant somewhat as Marx thought of the slumbering "false consciousness" of the proletariat that concealed for a time the fact of their exploitation by the capitalist system that victimized them but to which they clung for a time, something like Tom Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas" description of poor Kansans clinging to the Republican plutocrats who abused them. How do a mass of people---call it proletariat or whatever---ever rise to the level of "true" consciousness and action in their own best interest? Marx of course sees capitalism itself as creating the seeds of it own destruction as, by the "immanent law of capitalist concentration, it forces more and more of the middle class into proletarian status and, by the laws of ruthless competition, it forces them to ever more miserable conditions. When a critical mass is reached, it requires very little in terms of a revolution for the people to assert their right to self-determination.
Doesn't this sound like the kind of state to which we have come in Obama's America?
Untold but ever-growing numbers of people thrown out of work or home, incarcerated in jails because of draconian mandatory drug sentences, terrified by prospects of global warming and facing real environmental degradations of their own neighborhoods, sending their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and sweethearts to fight and perhaps to die in "wars" supposedly about spreading democracy or defending the homeland, but actually about securing the resources of other people for our own exploitation.
History teaches us, if anything, that people will not indefinitely lie asleep as their deprivations at the hand of the powerful forces in their society continue to victimize them. The revolution will come, though it may not be televised. Instead of despairing as does Green because he does not think outside the box of the dreadful alternatives of left, center and right political alternatives, he and we all need to look southward to where better times are actually coming in the form of the "social movements" of one after another of the countries of Latin America as they reclaim their own destinies from the hand of home-grown and foreign despoilers. "After Obama?" Maybe it will be Louis XV's "apres moi,le deluge," only let us hope that we will not follow the French King's example of "eat drink and be merry" while our deaths impend. We definitely need to think "after Obama," because it's coming if not already here, but we have to be prepared to identify with the aspirations of that growing "proletariat" of people who are driven to despair by the operation of social forces in "Obama's America."
Sioux Rose
JERRY: Excellent post. Thanks for elaborating at length.
Jerry, those "new" "wonderful" social movements have been coming and going my entire lifetime.
It won't be long before Chavez seizes control of the countries media and next seize control of the educational syatem, controlling addmittance to the schools and what they teach. Thats the way it usually works. He's a good example of what will happen in all these Southern countries.
Socialism has been a failure in every single country its been tried in has it not?
Henry8: your post-mortem on Chavez and on "socialism" generally is no doubt written from the perspective of the capitalist-corporate media who furnish most of the "news" about events in the South to people elsewhere. Likewise you'd no doubt label Castro's Cuba as a "failure" because those same media tell you so. There are alternative news sources that would give you very different "information": like Narco News, Venezuelaanalysis and countless others that either you don't read or you discount them as "propaganda" (as if, what else is the news "fit to print" but our corporate media propagands?). Before you make such sweeping denunciations of the "failure" of socialism, I'd urge you to "consider your sources."
From article: "Many think that was a naïve position from the get-go. I disagree. Not only do I believe that it was a legitimate possibility, I would argue that it was the logical choice even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal fortunes. The president is every day committing political suicide by a thousand cuts because he chose not to take that track."
It sure looks like Green is being naively optimistic here. Since when did a D president in the last 4 decades do anything to further social justice? Dr. Green should know, as a Polsci lecturer, that our so-called democratic process is rigged for candidates who command the largest financial resources. Corporations that have personhood and money as free speech ensure that large corporate interests are the forces behind policy formulation and implementation.
No candidate can win in our institutionally corrupt system without kow-towing to the monied interests and toeing the corporate line, period. Full stop.
This happens time after time after time, yet few recognize it. At least some like Nader and McKinney are aware of this, for exmaple.
WOW!!!!
WHERE IS EVERYBODY? This is wild. I'll have to read this again, I'm off for a walk. I have to hold my evaluation of this. Some of it makes so much sense. Some of it,well I didn't want to give up hope yet. You see, I thought to begin with that things were SSSSSOOOOOO bad anyway that no one can fix them. Between the economy, the energy situation and climate change, we are behind the 8 ball and have been now for a while. We all were kept in the dark about the climate thing that really started, what two decades ago?
I Also have a side theory that anyone with good intentions and good ideas, taking on this disaster, would have such a HHHuuuugggeee threat coming from the "other side" ya' know the dark side, that it would take mega tons of courage to do what you knew was right any way. I know some of you will pooh pooh this idea- that Obama is under threat from "powerful" sources. But ya' know it does kind of explain the reversals... or maybe this was Obama's plan all along.
I don't know. All I do know is, like I said. I think things are so bad that there is no solution. Not one that includes our keeping what we've had-the life style that we have gotten used to. Because between climate change and the energy thing, WE ARE TOO LATE...
"I didn't want to give up hope yet"
there is nothing to hope for but hope itself.
theinitiate....your assumption that there may be something more from 'the other side may be the only answer...a little blackmail, something so powerful that he has no choice but to go 'with the flow.' I hate to think that is a possibility, but at the same time there aren't too many other valid reasons why he would just drop the ball after having received it on a clear playing field.
OH, DMG, I usually love your take on things, but this time, and even if you're right on from all vantage points...I would like to believe that Obama has enough soul that he is practicing a form of satygraha, passive resistence, letting the opposition burn themselves out...I never discount the possibility that anything can happen that is beyond our imaginings, calculation, and intelligence, anytime...and if you expect it, does...(yes, I'm talking miracles and wonders here, but I believe in them by experience in the real world, maybe that is what 'Hope we can believe in' is) We need to get rid of special interests campaign finance bribes and all those who have taken them, and see the planet from afar, for it's needs and sustainability beyond profit...our time here is sacred and has been coopted by the evil forces of man for too long..if we can just wake up... what was the story where the woman finally figures out what the purpose of existence is, only to be immediately wiped out as the planet explodes?...seems like we can be more proactive than that...start by honestly questioning, "What is going on here?!" and be brave enough to face the answer...and when we do, veils of ignorance will fall.
Satyagraha, my ass. It's that Israelite Rahm Emanuel who's calling the shots.
This is Shangri-La you're describing, not the shark tank that is the United States with all of us as chum in the water. Obama does not possess such wisdom. He possesses no wisdom at all. What he possesses is Rahm Emanuel, hired to be his political assassin but who turns out to be Gomer Pyle attending MIT.
yick.
Better stop smoking whatever that is.
Om mani padma freakin om.
Satyagraha, eh?
Haven't heard that one before!
Do you suppose that his big new speech on health care next week will propose that each citizen be issued spinning wheels?
· Yr Obd't Servant
I have come to the conclusion that David Michael Green does not like the course Obama has taken.
And I of course agree that they have handed the Congress back to the Republicans in 2010 and the Presidency in 2012. I see no hope of him turning this around.
I do not agree they will be worse, the Neocons have run their trail, a new, more moderate group will be in charge.
What a display of incompetence and inexperience by this administration.
If you are looking for a new, more moderate group to take charge, do not expect either the Republicans or Democrats to be any part of it. Party loyalty and bitter partisanship has only gotten worse. I may sound stale saying this but the only way we will get a truly moderate group to take charge is when more people open their minds and hearts and take the issues deep down serious. At first, it can feel strange and uncomfortable but once you get used to it, the feeling of political loneliness won't stop you from voting inside and out.
Hmmm...
The line with all those "progressive" Obama supporters was that they wouldn't vote for Nader because he couldn't win.
So if now those same people are saying Obama can't win in 2012, I guess they'll have to vote Republican. After all, they only vote for people already guaranteed to win the election, right? They would never support a candidate who stood a chance of losing.
If they register early, they can vote for the "lesser evil" in the Republican primaries.
I'm sorry but I am sick and tired of hearing these "he/she is unwinnable" excuses. I voted thrice for Nader while most of the electorate voted for candidates who were hell bent on selling out these same 3 elections. More people need to open their minds and hearts to judging candidates on the issues. People don't get hired on silly dilly "personality" and special group affiliations. Politicians deserve no better. I'm tired of pols who wiggle their ways in and then put us into tears. Obama and Dubya won alright (ok, Dubya in 2000 didn't on the popular vote) but we the people lost and are paying the price every day, week, month and year for it. Sorry to sound frustrated.
No need to apologize. Your frustration is an indication of sanity.
For me, one of the worst points was when Norman Solomon was covering the DNC for CD as a DELEGATE. And even though Obama had basically wrapped-up the nomination, Solomon refused withhold his vote in a merely symbolic protest against Obama's neoconservative policies, OR the over 150 protesters arrested outside the convention (including Amy Goodman) for refusing to be put in free speech zones. We hear a lot about the abuses at the 2008 RNC, but for some reason, much less about the 2008 DNC.
And then there was that awful moment when Michael Moore and Bill Maher got on their knees and begged NADER not to run in 2004. That was pretty bad too.
Michael Moore never did respond to Carl Mayer's "Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience? An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal)".
http://www.counterpunch.org/mayer09222008.html
Hi Jennifer!
I'm afraid its going to be the Republicans. I really don't see the Democrats holding....they have offended jusdt about everybody and Obama is a sorry excusde fort a leader. Its too late for him to recover. I believe he simply has too many inexperienced and foolish people around him.
I do believe a more moderate and conservative, younger Republican is coming up, more Pawlenty than Coburn.
I don't trust the Republicans either with the rare exception of a few like Ron Paul and even he is questionable on half the issues. I don't trust either Pawlenty or Coburn. Coburn I know he's an open nut. Pawlenty reminds me of Dubya and Obama. Both of them pretended to be "moderate" when they campaigned and yet ended up being PUPPETS once in office. Pawlenty sounds more like that and what's the guarentee he won't surround himself with mafia like Republicans ala Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Kashkari, Paulson, etc... I guess you finally forced me to confess another reason I strongly distrust both parties. I don't know Pawlenty very well but what indication is there to tell me that he's a moderate Republican. Any plans to end the wars and occupations in the Middle East, end the drug wars and legalize cannabis, fund public transportation and help make it lively, reward gas sippers instead of gas guzzlers, put single payer or at least multipayer that does not allow Big Insurance/Pharma unlimited profiteering ala Germany and Switzerland, getting rid of Big Agri subsidies and allowing small farmers more leeway, reining in "free" trade and switching to fair trade ?? Maybe I'm asking too much but I promised myself and someone that I'd take the weekend to compile a list of issues I have against this administration. I'm tired of both parties fudging the word "moderate" and stealing independent voters with their lying and selling out.
I don't know enough about Pawlenty myself, just that his remarks and reports of him would indicate a moderate.
Look forward to seeing your list.
i'm sure others will be along to insist, with cogent arguments, that everything Obama has done is purposeful, with understood and intended consequences.
As i watch the disaster unfold, i'm leaning toward Green's conclusion - "maybe nobody at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is doing much thinking whatsoever these days."
"i'm sure others will be along to insist, with cogent arguments, that everything Obama has done is purposeful, with understood and intended consequences."
You mean intentional suicide? (LOL)
The Corporatist/War Party for U.S. Global Empire will continue, regardless which wing of it (Dumbocraps or RepubliKKKlans) is in "control".
Stop looking to any one person or party to truly represent us any longer.
We must create a People's Movement for OUR Needs (not those of the parasitical corporations).
Short of a Nationwide General Strike for People's Needs, there is little we can do for now. So we'd better start organizing our Movement ASAP, as the Empire's endless wars and health care DEFORM continue to kill hundreds of thousands of us.