Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Oh, The Pain of The Believer: Barack’s Betrayals Offer Lessons We Can’t Deny
Journalists are not supposed to have political opinions, and yet we all do. Our “biases” are usually disguised, not blatant or overtly partisan, and can be divined in what stories we cover and how we cover them,
Even ‘just the facts, ma'am,’ journos for big Media have to decide which facts to include and which to ignore.
Our outlooks are always shaped by our worldviews, values and experience, not to mention the outlets we work for.
Which brings me to the challenge of seeking truth and recognizing it when you see it.
I have to admit that I was seduced by the idea of Barack Obama. 
I wanted to believe because I needed to believe, needed to believe it was possible to change the American behemoth, to believe that, as he kept saying, “it could be different this time.” (photo: Celeste Hodges)
The idea of a black President, the idea of a young President, the idea of an articulate President, and the idea of a man married to such a stand up woman from a working class family was hard to resist.
Here’s a guy who seemed really smart, not just because he went to Harvard but because professors there I liked were impressed with him. (I taught at Harvard, and know very well how not so smart many students there can be!)
In the end, it doesn’t mean much, but in that period he lived about a block away from the house I once shared on Dartmouth Street in Somerville.
Was that a degree of separation?
He had also been a community organizer, starting in politics at the grassroots in Chicago. I also worked at Saul Alinsky-style organizing and even knew the iconic organizer personally.
Was that another degree?
He’s invoked the spirit of the civil rights movement but was not part of it. He treated Dr. King as a monument before the new memorial was conceived, embracing him as a symbol of the past, not a guide to the future.
He took an anti-war stance on pragmatic grounds only, preferring Afghanistan to Iraq. He hasn’t extricated us from either battlefield.
His strategy borrowed heavily from the Bush Doctrine. What’s the difference, really, as US troops now intervene worldwide and Guantanamo remains open for business?
There was a lot I didn’t know. I didn’t know the backgrounds of those that groomed him and funded him. His relationship with the centrist DLC was murky as were the details on the services he performed for a shadowy firm, Business International, said to have CIA links.
There were those who warned, but I guess I didn’t want to listen.
Why? I didn’t want to reinforce my own skepticism and sense of despair. I feigned at being hopeful even as I took quite a few critical whacks at his positions in my blog. His deviations from a liberal agenda and his paens to the “free market” were considered necessary for his “electability.”
I was also influenced by the euphoria for him overseas that had become infectious but has since soured.
To be honest, I was so disgusted with eight years of George Bush for all the right reasons that I wanted him gone full stop, as did millions of Americans.
Hillary didn’t appeal to me, not because she’s a woman but because of her slavish affinity for the Israel lobby and middle of the road Democrats. (Yes, Obama, did his mea-culpa to AIPAC too!)
I was denounced as a super sexist by a few for not buying into her centrist Clintonista crusade.
She had gone from a student advocate to part of a ruling family; he went from bottom-up activism to top-down elitism.
When she joined his “team,” you knew they were always in the same league.
When the right bashed him for associating with radical Bill Ayers, who I knew, it made me suspect he might even be cooler than I thought, even as he raced to distance himself. His membership in Reverend Wright’s church hinted at a deeper consciousness until he buckled in the media heat and threw the man that married him under the bus.
And yet, I wanted to believe because I needed to believe, needed to believe it was possible to change the American behemoth, to believe that, as he kept saying, “it could be different this time.”
As the late writer David Foster Wallace put it, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life…there is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship… else (what) you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.”
So, in a sense, I became a worshiper like so many, not of the man or the dance he was doing in an infected political environment, but because I convinced myself that I worshiped possibility, that there are times when the unexpected, even the unbelievable occurs. I had seen Mandela go from prison to the presidency of South Africa.
After all, how does a progressive blast a candidate who has Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger singing the uncensored version of “This Land Is Your Land” at his inaugural?
Yet, there was always a nagging question: was he with us or just co-opting us?
Yes We Can?
Slowly, despite the glow and the aura, deeper truths surfaced, realities I had winked away. Its not surprising that his mantra has gone, as the Washington Post reports, from the “fierce urgency of now,” to “Be patient, democracy is big and tough and messy.”
Yes, I knew, I may have been rationalizing a false god, who was only another, if more attractive, politician who says one thing and does another in a political system where power, not personalities prevail.
Like many of his predecessors he would be “captured” by the power structures, by the military men and contractors at the Pentagon and the money men on Wall Street.
He was in office but never really in charge. Clearly, he didn’t have the votes to enact a real change agenda. But that was because his own party was long ago bought and paid for.
He never had a chance, even if as I wanted to believe, he wanted one. He said he wanted to be transformational figure but the system transformed him—and quickly.
Everyone runs “against Washington,” even a Senator, who was part of it.
And so I held my nose and voted, hoping against my wiser instincts. I even made a positive film about the campaign that showed how he used social media and texting to mobilize new voters. When I tried to get a copy to the White House, through an insider there, I found they couldn’t be less interested.
By then, he had gone from playing the “outside game” to opting into the “inside game” built around compromise in the name of “pragmatism," or "getting it done,” in his words. In the end he was a rookie who may have outsmarted himself or just served the interests who put him there.
He couldn’t dump his most passionate and issue-oriented followers fast enough.
While his backers were still hot to trot, he became cooler toward them, and, in effect, repudiated them with few progressive appointments. He put on his flag pin and relished the symbolism of the “office.” He became the master of the uplifting speech disguising a quite different policy agenda.
He spoke for the people but served the power. His wanted the other side to love him too, even as his stabs at “bi-partisanship” proved non-starters.
When you lie down with those “lambs,” (or is it snakes?) you betray not only supporters, but their hopes. FDR was soon spinning in his grave.
I am not surprised that knowledgeable critics of his economic policies not only consider him bull-headed and wrong, but actually corrupt, aligned and complicit, with the banksters who are still ripping us off. No wonder he’s "bundled” more donations from the greedsters and financiers this year than in 2008! No wonder he turned his back on consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren and is trying to kill prosecutions of bank fraud in high places.
Christopher Whalen who writes for Reuters say there will be a cost for his doing nothing: “The path of least resistance politically has been to temporize and talk. But by following the advice of Rubin and Summers, and avoiding tough decisions about banks and solvency, President Obama has only made the crisis more serious and steadily eroded public confidence. In political terms, Obama is morphing into Herbert Hoover.”
Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse. Watch and weep as today’s rebels become next year’s rationalizers.
It reminds me of when activists were asked to vote for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 with the slogan “Part of the Way with LBJ.” That way ended with an endless escalation of war in Vietnam, and guns trumping butter. Sound familiar?
The search for truth and reality has hit a wall but has to continue. The lessons need to be learned. We have to say we were wrong, when we were, not in our beliefs, but in pinning our hopes on a shrewd, ambitious, and double-faced political performance artist.
While people who still back him dismiss the accusation that’s he’s a hidden socialist, Kenyan, or space alien, all too many suspect he may be a secret Republican. He is who he is, aloof, cautious, and a man in the middle. He’s staying there.
Let’s give David Foster the last word.
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness,…
… It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over…”
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
222 Comments so far
Show AllMe again. :)
If anyone wishes to create an ongoing discussion on the topic of ideas for actually doing something, I'll be happy to create a distribution list and forward related emails to everyone who would like to be on the list. Perhaps a longer-term solution would be to set up a "LET'S DO SOMTHING" blog at Blogspot or another blog or discussion site.
I'm willing to do something. How about you guys?
here's my email: ongho@lvnworth.com
I am 74 years old, from a small town on the West Coast. I was born in the depression, grew up during WW II did not graduate from college so it would seem fruitless to match wits with you Danny. I’m really perplexed. From my perspective the only really important thing politically is the survival of my children, grandchildren and everyone else’s. I was very pleased by Barry’s election but I never believed that it really had anything to do with America finally growing up and accepting non-white people, instead it was a testament to the sheer stupidity and incompetence of the republicans which left him as the only option. The DLC loves losing candidates such as Michael Dukakis. When an outsider gets elected, e.g. Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama they can expect to get stabbed in the back by the liberals. After the election I hoped that Barry would kick some liberal ass and try to get a working team together. This was not his style unfortunately. My major criterion for my candidate is that he or she be smarter than me. I have succeeded at some difficult jobs but being president is not in the same galaxy as anything that I (or you for that matter) have ever experienced. I grew up believe that I had no right to castigate anyone for not living up to an endeavor that I was not qualified to judge. Our planet’s ability to support complex life is evaporating at an incredibly fast rate. If you can’t see this your education was really wasted. As I see it the president’s job is preserve the USA anyway it can be done. Now in the technological state we are in that also means saving the rest of the planet too. Small job. I do not feel that his job is to live up to my expectations. I would hope to live up to his expectations of me as part of the electorate. I am sorry he has disappointed you Danny, but to me you are a spoiled brat and one of the bastards sticking his knife in the back of the only one in office right now who has ANY chance of saving us.
"Failure is not an option. It's mandatory." - Thomas Frank
I don't think so. As I have said else where, o is a sociopath. He has NO conscience or any compassion(he can't understand that) or remorse. You say o is the only one to save us. That is like saying john mccain and sara palin were the only ones to save us if o had lost and the same situation was going on in this country which would have been the case.
Being a sociopath carries with it as being insane to a degree, only here what would o do that would save us. All is actions have for me demonstrated that he is out for himself and to serve those who direct his decisions. If you were able to talk to o face to face, even give logical facts about how to 'save us' or vice versa, he explained how he would do it, you would be disappointed because he has no conscience and would therefor do as he would for himself, not the people. And what he is doing or not doing is like repeating the samo thing over and over and over and coming up with the same results. In o's case, he is carrying out the orders of the people who got him into office.
You're stand that he will be the only one to 'save us' won't do, as he will instead just go on sticking his knife in all of our backs. Choices are boiled down to this, either vote o out and put a republican in the white house, the other choices are closed.
So apparently there will NOT BE another democrat to oppose o in the primaries which would be great if there was. And last, a third party just won't work in this rigged electoral system. The stage has been set for quite awhile and the players are all selected. Somewhere I feel as if this is what is supposed to happen, civil disobedience.
BuckwheatBob,
"The DLC loves losing candidates such as Michael Dukakis. When an outsider gets elected, e.g. Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama they can expect to get stabbed in the back by the liberals."
I'd like to point out that Kennedy and Clinton were not outsiders. Kennedy was part of a long-standing political dynasty. Clinton, if I recall correctly, was a *founder* of the DLC. Obama wasn't an outsider to Democrat politics, either: he worked his way up in the famed Chicago political "machine", and was anointed by the Dems to run for state office, and then the Senate. Don't believe politicians who all claim to be "outsiders". When they're running for office, they *all* run against Washington, Democrat and Republican alike.
On a final note, I am having difficulty seeing how Obama is "saving us". He's finishing the job the Republicans started, way back in Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics" days of deficit spending: bankrupting America. Obama has also continued to expand the security state apparatus begun under Bill Clinton and institutionalized by Bush Jr., not to mention keep America entangled in the Bush wars (Afghanistan, which Obama escalated, and Iraq), but to start new wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Frankly, it seems to me that killing brown people with drones is likely to make them very, very angry, and gives them to motive for revenge against the U.S. That's not good. That doesn't sound to me like Obama is doing a very good job of keeping America safe. He's just as dangerous for our grandchildren as the Republicans, it seems to me.
Is opposing bankruptcy and war "stabbing in the back"? Or the other way around?
Buckwheat Bob,
I just checked the DLC website, and guess what? They don't like Michael Dukakis! They also describe Dukakis as an "outsider". Somehow you got things all reversed, it looks like.
"Nixon and Reagan each won 49 states in their reelection campaigns, but Republican strategists are proudest of the negative campaign that Lee Atwater ran to elect the first George Bush in 1988. Mike Dukakis was everything they had always wanted in a Democratic opponent -- culturally liberal, soft on defense, a total stranger on Main Street.
The surest sign that Republicans are preparing to run against Dukakis again is that now they're defending him. "The idea that's developed that we're going to run against Kerry like he is Mike Dukakis is a bunch of baloney," Matthew Dowd, the president's pollster, told the New York Times. "Mike Dukakis was an outsider, and compared to John Kerry, Mike Dukakis is mainstream." "
Washington Post | Column | February 22, 2004
They'll Run Against Dukakis. Don't Let Them
By Bruce Reed
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252406&kaid=85&subid=65
Technically, Dukakis is an outsider since he ran while governor of MA. He wasn't all that bad compared to Clinton and after but he never knew how to run a populist campaign let alone govern as one.
I will NOT be voting for Obama this time. Better are known enemy than a traitor in my camp. I think it was Truman who said that, when faces with a fake Republican and a real Republican, America will vote for the real one 100% of the time. That's Obama, a fake Republican and I'll be voting for ANYONE else to take his place. Rewarding betrayal is not the route to good government, but instituting openly insane government just might be. NO INCUMBENTS in 2012, no matter what "party" or the quality of the opposition. NO INCUMBENTS is my vote.
It seems to me that not only is Obama nothing like the progressive he pretended to be, I don't think he's even a black man if being black is less about the color of a persons skin nowadays and more about a certain outlook, a way of being in the world. A way that says "I know how it feels to be down and discriminated against, poor in a world of haves" and to then fight for change. Barry has failed and betrayed anyone who believed even a little in his message of hope and change.
insanity, as they say, is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
it strikes me that if you participate in a poker game with someone who cheats skillfully, you don't see continuously losing as enough incentive to discontinue playing - ironically it makes you an enabler of the charade.
presidential politics will always draw a crowd of enablers - those who feel that any chance at affecting the outcome of a contest, however trivial, justifies playing the game. and thus perpetuates the crime. what exactly is the crime?
it's falling for the same slight of hand, betting the house on a stacked deck, every time. when is it ever going to dawn on people to first and foremost refuse to play that game? then to create, along with others who choose to step outside the parlor, a life of depth and meaning.
but one first needs to renounce the foolishness that has become no more than a house of cards.
" I have to admit I was seduced by Barack Obama ". Yeah Danny, BO seduced miilions in the last election and that is why I called BO in the last election, the consummate con man. As there is no doubt BO was a very good political, con man. When he used his campaign mantra of: " YES WE CAN " . BO was telling the truth, but most people failed to recognize that the we he was talking about was not them. And I will say it again, what he really meant is yes we can betray all the well meaning and hard working people that believe this BS!
"How to serve man".....from the Twilight Zone. Turned out it was a cookbook.
During the campaign i would reference this vintage T.Z. episode to the O'Bots. I may have posted it right here, actually.
Unfortunately, President Obama is the best Democrat the Republicans have bought.
ONE OF THE FINEST ARTICLES EVER WRITTEN ON THIS DIMENSION OF PROBLEM! Hackers are at war with me and yet I can't stop admiring and wanting as usual to say a few words after reading this paper. Many wonder about what politics is or should be. People play it all the time, When the writer laments over the absence of a better option or alternative under the present conditions; to many he turns a hero on the current state of realism in the US!
The "is" and "should" in politics remain our big challenge. Tailoring systems in either of the directions remains the burden we carry in our search for overnight wonders in situations where it took ages to handicap our smooth paths in life. I indeed admire the brilliance of the author of this paper!
SELF-DECEPTION AND OUR NEED FOR IT
At the basis of the expressions of "betrayal" (etc.) lies the groundless assumption
by progressives/liberals that actually liberals are part of the "democratic"
party and it would behave as liberals and progressives wish if it only could.
This is patently false.
Liberal democrats often express liberal beliefs and an adherence to some
liberal-like tendencies.
One example should suffice: the battle for universal health care. There were
many liberal democratic co-sponsors in the US Congress. Many labor
unions came out with strong expressions of support for universal (aka
"single-payer") health care. The Executive Committee of the AFL-CIO
issued a statement of its strong support. It was all very, very impressive
indeed. In the end, those who expressed support in the House disappaeared.
[One assumes with "encouragement" by the White House ! ] It just so
happened (what a coincidence!) that the President was flying in his A-1
plane to the Congressional district of Congressman Dennis Kucinich to
talk about jobs. He so cordially invited Cong. Kucinich aboard. Kucinich
was at that time one of the last hold-outs. There is no record of any
discussions that took place. However, quite suddenly, Congressman Kucinich
abashedly withdrew his criticsms of the Obama Plan which opposed
single-payer. Kucinich became a supporter of the White House.
In a similar way, Labor has traditionally chosen to be a supporter of
the establishment Democratic positions working hard to get out the
vote and forsaking any "principles" it had earlier expressed.
One could easily have been "betrayed", cynical, depressed unless one
recognized that Obama and the core of the Democratic Party never
was about progressive ideas in the first place. Many of the respondents
to this article needed to believe this and felt strangely betrayed as a
consequence. [ The intricacies of the arguments are not touched here.]
Similar experiences also came to pass in other fields and on other issues.
Whether you choose to support Obama in 2012 ---and I shall not--- you
must recognize the true impact of your decision.
MY EMAIL: peterloeb@yahoo.com
I shall not, either, Mr. Loeb. When will we ever unite to REALLY expose and challenge these folks who do nothing but betray "the People"? There are many good books out here. We highly encourage folks to read both Naomi Klein and Antonia Juhasz. Both nail it and frame it!
On the day that Mr. Obama was assuming his role, I was reading excerpts from this book by Eric Hoffer written in 1955. Obama's people could have taken his rhetoric directly from it. "The True Believer" is a layman's analysis of Mass Movements! Very well-said, Peter. Thanks, WP
I shall not, either, Mr. Loeb. When will we ever unite to REALLY expose and challenge these folks who do nothing but betray "the People"? There are many good books out here. We highly encourage folks to read both Naomi Klein and Antonia Juhasz. Both nail it and frame it!
On the day that Mr. Obama was assuming his role, I was reading excerpts from this book by Eric Hoffer written in 1955. Obama's people could have taken his rhetoric directly from it. "The True Believer" is a layman's analysis of Mass Movements! Very well-said, Peter. Thanks, WP
Ya Danny boy, you and all of the other Obamabots bit the big shit log in 2008 and are getting ready for a second heaping helping in 2012! Tastes good huh? There will be a number of alternative candidates running in 2012, but you and so many others refuse to see anything but Republicans and Democrats. So be it, bon appetit!
Glad Mr. Schechter is finally waking up. I've been referring to the president as "Barack the Betrayer" for more than a year now, this in my blog, Outside Agitator's Notebook.
I've also been pointing out how "change we can believe in" is the biggest Big Lie ever fed the U.S. electorate.
(OAN used to be at lorenbliss.typepad.com, but I was ousted in retaliation for my increasingly Marxist politics, especially for pointing out that cutbacks in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be deadly and are thus are a form of genocide, whether inflicted by Republicans, Democrats or the Betrayer himself. Now my blog is at lorenbliss-outsideagitatorsnotebook.blogspot.com.)
Why "increasingly Marxist?" Because I'm increasingly convinced capitalism is the greatest evil in human history -- and only Marxism offers the discipline essential to defeating it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Schecter, welcome to the Resistance.
Stop this "we will vote for him anyway". B.S!
Let the Republicans have it the next 4 years -
use the time to make a new movement.
Voting for Obama does no one any good.
Let the Dems see where their leader has led
them - into the jaws of death and defeat.
"Let the Dems see where their leader has led
them - into the jaws of death and defeat."
Yes.
I'm nominally a Democrat, so I can vote in the primaries. I don't think I have voted for the winning nominee in a primary since Dukakis - the last Democratic Presidential nominee I actually was enthusiastic about. I held my nose - twice - and voted for Clinton, and got sold down the river. In 2000, disgusted with lackluster Al, I voted for Nader, someone I have admired since I was a teenager. In desperation to get rid of Bush in '04, after having been an early Dean-iac, I not only voted for Kerry in the general election, I donated to his campaign - only to watch him fold-up like a cheap pup tent in the face of obvious Republican election fraud in Ohio and other states.
Maybe it's not so much prescience on my part, as having become cynical from being burned so many times, but I never bought into the Obama "hope-y, change-y thing", voted for Kucinich in the primary, and then voted for the REAL black candidate in the general election, Cynthia McKinney.
I have voted/worked for third party candidates for President three times in my life (Anderson, Nader, and McKinney), and those are the votes that I have a clear conscience about. I was going to vote for Gene McCarthy in '76 (the first Presidential election I was elegible to vote in), but a close friend persuaded me to vote for Carter in order to keep Ford from winning. Turns out that if Ford had won that election, we might have avoided eight years of the Reagan disaster. I'm at a point in my life that I swear that in the future I will ONLY vote my conscience in elections, and will not hesitate to leave a line blank if I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate running for an office. Doing the supposedly "adult", or "smart" thing and compromising one's principles to cast a "strategic" vote, often comes back to bite us all in the ass. The only real answer is to take the money out of elections, open up the process to any qualified candidate, and make sure that everyone who possibly can, votes. Until those incredibly difficult events can happen, we will continue to be screwed with our pants on.
We need to hope for some kind of audacity.
“Don’t hate the media: Become the media!”
- Jello Biafra
Alright folks, READ ALL ABOUT IT! -- Low Power FM (LPFM) radio station license applications for non-profit organizations in medium and large-sized cities to commence summer of 2012. This is the first time that’s been done by the FCC in thirty (30) years. Get’em while they’re hot!
This the idea I've been pushing on CD for five years now. This opportunity won't come again. Non-profit progressive groups (including labor interest groups) need to get those licenses while they're hot.
Enough of these stations blanketing a medium-sized or large city with contiguous broadcast ranges could potentially mimic the audience market penetration of large commercial FM stations—ONLY WITHOUT CORPORATE CENSORSHIP.
These stations could become part of a nationwide, populist progressive information cooperative network that airs local programming most of the time but cooperates to concentrate on regional and national issues of importance, averting or responding to crises, and covering independent progressive candidates during election cycles.
The other good idea to get around the Establishment right now is Americanselect.org. Check it out. Via this online idea, anyone can become a citizen delegate and nominate whomever they want and, so the site operators say, get on the ballot in all 50 States. This would circumvent the Dem/GOP/Federal Election Commission lock on the nomination process.
If we had both these ideas, low power FM and citizen delegate nominations in all 50 States—independent of corporate media and the Dem/GOP/FEC nomination Machine, respectively, then we could use the LPFM stations to educate the masses about OUR CANDIDATES and get OUR IDEAS out without having to go through corporate "mainstream" media filters.
CARPE DIEM! Start talking these ideas up in your family, church, community resilience circle, or other progressive group and research what it takes to get these stations up and running. This is a once in a generation-and-a-half opportunity and if we don’t seize it, sooner or later the right-wing will.
So, get off your fat carbo-potato monkey butt and sweat your old agitator mind and body for a change! You progressive retirees who still have your health: There’s no excuse not to. Let me tell you, I’ve worked in radio before and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It will be even more fun to use radio to help build local community resilience and resistance and stick it to all those creeps who’ve been screwing us locally and nationally since Reagan. And we can use our own media voices that can’t be silenced by corporate media to help locally and nationally organize our own politics to go around theirs!!
"V" for peace and victory over our true oppressors!
I read this article as one denoting a definitive "between the lines" analysis.
"Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse."
Everyone knows $1 Billion in campaign funds BUYS an election (OH, FL, Voting Machines, Election Officials, etc.) It doesn't matter who you vote for. The fix is in.
"I didn’t know the backgrounds of those that groomed him and funded him. His relationship with the centrist DLC was murky as were the details on the services he performed for a shadowy firm, Business International, said to have CIA links."
The CIA is steering this one. It doesn't matter who you vote for. The fix is in.
"Hillary didn’t appeal to me, not because she’s a woman but because of her slavish affinity for the Israel lobby and middle of the road Democrats. (Yes, Obama, did his mea-culpa to AIPAC too!)"
Jews who worry about religious zealots Bachmann, Perry, etc, just shouldn't. It doesn't matter who you vote for. The fix is in.
I should remind folks that a woman in Alaska recently won a senatorial election as a write in candidate.
I have dreamed of the same thing happening on a presidential level, but as they say, if dreams were horses, beggars would ride. Main stream Repubs in AK were able to pull it off because they can organize, are able to temper ideologies with pragmatism, and above all are capable of typing a name in, especially one as hard for the common man to spell as Mukowski (did I spell that correctly EH). I doubt very much that out of control, disorganized, centrists and progressive ideologues would be able to pull that off. But consider, Sanders is easy to spell.
That write-in case is a special one. She was Republican before that and well-supported by the Republican establishment.
The only Democrat that showed courage integrity and compassion was Denis Kucincih. He was ignored or ridiculed by the press as they were smitten by the IDEA of Obama. He was even forbidden the right to speak at the Arizona debate with no objection from Obama or Hillary. He was the onloy one not bought and paid for by the insurance/drug industry who got what they wanted with Obama's mandate to buy insurance. Obama even had the gall to say it was the right thing to do because of all the jobs that the insurance industry had that would be lost with a single payer, Medicare for all health plan. I have no problem in not voting for Obama. The Democtars have no backbone and the republicans have no compassion. I'm tired of picking the lesser of two evils. Its still evil. Let the Republicans win and have some Rick Perry or Bachman take over and be not duplicitous about where they stand. If the country wants these morons its a statement about the voters an not the candidate. Maybe after that experience people will be ready for a real leader.
If voting made any difference they would have made it illegal. We are always offered to choose between tweedledum and tweedledee. I choose neither.
"... many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again ..."
Yes, probably many and maybe enough, but not this former believer. Even if it was between Rick Perry — and I'm a Texan who knows how destructively he rules — and Barack Obama, I would have to abstain. Then if Mr. Perry won I would in good conscience do all that I could to prevent and contain the destruction.
I have been exhorting my representatives, including Mr. Obama, to act based on positive principles, for the people and the country, instead of looking only to fundraisers and the next election. So how can I do less than vote my principles? I don't know what principles Mr. Obama holds, but I do know they fail to represent my principles.
Dennis Kucinich
The mea culpa is great yet the betrayed are the voters who were not informed by the progressive/liberal media about Obama's ties because the media they depend on were too in love with him for just the reasons you have written about- "The idea of a black President, the idea of a young President, the idea of an articulate President, and the idea of a man married to such a stand up woman from a working class family was hard to resist." So the voter went to the poles uneducated as to what Barack Obama was all about. Progressive magazines across the board were loathe to dig to deeply and didn't offer any true progressive candidates as an alternative- although they were out there! (But they were white and male so not nearly as attractive as Hillary and Obama.)
So now we'll vote with a gun to our head for a candidate whose policies are just as destructive as the Bush administration because the alternative will undoubtedly be Rick Perry or another Republican tea bagger (Michelle Bachman??)- because the Obama administration has so destroyed morale in this country that the only people who will vote will the tea baggers and those who don't want the tea party or the far right republicans to take over the country. Gotta love that kind of democracy.
Guilt complex or help the voters correct their mistakes? Your move, sir.
By the way, just reread your post and I realized that I overlooked what you said about the "progressive" magazines and their fallacious writing. I can't argue with that part.
Glad you pointed out the failure of the "progressive" media - lap dogs to the DLC. Not bad enough that they pushed a phoney like Obama, but added insult to injury by dissing or ignoring a legit candidate like Nader.
I remember frantically e-mailing DN about all sorts of interesting connections in the financial industry in the run up to the '08 elections - but it was clear they weren't going to rain on Obama's parade .....
We bitch about the MSM - but too much of "progressive" media is complicit in maintaining the hold of the "duopoly" ......
I'd love to see a bit more acknowledgement by the "progressive" media of their role in perpetuating the system, but they drone on and on, in seemingly blissful "unawareness", not even considering the charge worth denying ....
Obama's scam:
MUST-SEE 4-minute youtube video on Smart meters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8JNFr_j6kdI
Unfortunately, we humans are not as rational as we would like to think we are. Our perceptions, conclusions, and assumptions are based more on our biases and desires than on objective reality. Like so many people in this country, Danny Schechter apparently saw and heard what he hoped for in Obama, not what Obama was actually saying, and then was disappointed because Obama did not perform as he assumed he would. Obama, during his campaign, made it very clear that his approach would be to try to bring the country together, through bipartisan efforts to solve the problems we faced, and by listening to the people at large and keeping them informed. What the Schechters wanted and expected instead was opposition to the Republicans, fighting them and ignoring them, not working with them. Since this was not Obama’s approach, the Schechters feel they have been deceived and forsaken.
It appears that Obama is beginning to realize that the Republicans have no intention of working with him, and, sadly, that negotiation and compromise is not a workable approach in our political system. Instead, we are locked into a confrontational, winner take all approach, and Obama will have to learn to fight, which is not his style.
Albert R. Wight
4167 Hwy 14A
Cody, WY 82414
albertrwight@aim.com
People should read this article and the Common Dreams article about Ron Paul's 5 problematic stances.
I say this - Obama has done nothing for the Democratic base and certainly less than nothing for the progressive base. So, it is better that he goes and makes way for someone else.
Well, who next? Obama, Romney, Perry, Bachmann - all the horse of a different color. Paul is the only one that will stop American Imperialism, stop funding Israel, bring our troops home from all overseas misadventures and with those savings, help kick start an economic bubble. Paul will undoubtabley have problems for any Democrat or Progressive, but at least we will be done with wars.
We need to look long term, identify our basic needs and think 20 years down the road. Elect Ron Paul to get us out of wars. Then, four years later, when Paul shows a little of his mysoginist and un-Civil Rights ways, throw him out for a progressive.
Remember, the President can end wars(actually Iraq and Afghanistan aren't wars, they are actions authorized by the War Powers Act - a Presidential prerogative), but it takes congress to overturn Civil Rights, Medicare, Social Security and other social programs, which will not happen under Paul or any President.
How about Ralph Nader or whoever the Green Party nominee is? Why settle for compromises with either Obama or Paul?
Nader is calling for Progressives to get behind Paul, despite our areas of difference. On so many of the most important issues concerning corportism, we're in agreement.
Check it out for yourself. This is a BIG development.
I live in NH, and am registered as an Independent, so I have the opportunity to do something I've never done in my entire voting life (since 84): Vote in the Republican Primary.
...strange bedfellows...
Could you give a specific citation where Nader is calling for Progressives to get behind Paul? I would really like to "check it out for (my)self" .....
I think it's only up to the Republican primary. Unless next year's election was only between Paul and Obama with no other parties on the ballot, I can't see Nader seriously endorsing Paul in the general election.
Personally I am mad as hell, and I won't vote for Obama ever again. With that said, I will support any reasonable third party candidate for president who intends to do what they say if elected, no two faced back peddling turn coat need apply. I am done with Democrats and with Republicans because they appear to be the same. THey talk about what they will do, and don't do anything and blame the other side. Mean while the banksters and gangsters steal us blind, Enough!
Funny, but all of Schechter's belated revelations about Obama were evident to me in 2008 - and I did NOT vote for him, nor will I in 2012. Frankly, I would rather have a raving lunatic Tea Partier in office than Barak the Wall Street pimp. The next four years would be entertaining, if nothing else.
A TeaPartier in the White House? Are you nuts?
To keep it short, I agree. Obama works for Wall Street and for the defense industry. He's cuter than bush and Hillary Clinton, but that's the only difference. He's not going to do anything to help the working people of this country as the financial criminal cartels continue to destroy our nation. None of them are. No politician or other "leader" will help us. The Van Jones/Move-On groups coming out of the woods now are mostly designed to get people "involved" in something which will get them to vote in 2012. They don't really want anything except democratic votes. Which, as we know, won't help the people of this country.
So what should we do?
I figure (1) don't spend a second on any election. Vote or not, depending on your views, but that's it. Don't even discuss it -- it's like discussing a soap opera on daytime TV, and pretending that it's all real. Elections are a con. They're already purchased by others, and despite the theoretical possibility of all the people waking up, all the people getting involved, there still won't be any decent candidates they could vote for even if they show up. How can we get better candidates? We need to start our own party, set out our own platform, make the politicians sign a commitment that they will pursue our policies only or, if they don't, they will resign. And the campaigning will be by internet, with a limit of $10 donation per person, no bundling, no money from finance.
2) Engage in mass civil disobedience. About what? It almost doesn't matter. Sit in at the bank, or at the school, on the freeway, at a subway entrance, demonstrate at a ball park. Anytime, anywhere, get people to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. We have no ability to control the government, but we can try to make sure the trains don't keep running on time. Fill the jails.
3) Refuse to cooperate. Cash checks, halt the on-line billpaying and make companies process your paper. Stand in line, make them hire people. Our demands should include the demolition of every single wall street firm and all the banks. Enforce the anti-trust and anti-fraud laws, and use them to destroy wall street. Seize their assets, then shut them down. Local banks only, no more national financial control of our country.
4) Rescind all trade deals and ban all imports of labor or goods. Make it, buy it, sell it, use it, recycle it here. Create a national labor union for all working people and demand a real living wage, national healthcare including dental, and a fully-funded pension. Enough with the nonsensical idea that people should be able to fund half their own retirement, just use social security for vacations. Most people are wiped out several times during their working years by unemployment, divorce, health problems, sick and dependent parents, and various other issues. We need a fully-funded retirement system that pays working people a full income, funded with taxes on wealth.
There were plenty of warning signs during the 2008 campaign that Obama wasn't any more liberal than any of the presidents we have had in the last 30 years. He told us he would escalate the war in Afghanistan, and he did. There was his private conversation with someone in Canada assuring him that he would not mess with NAFTA, after he told the public that he would take a second look at all our trade agreements, and fix their flaws. A real red flag for me was his refusal to take pulbic money. He talked a good game about health care, but stood back and saw it turned into something not much different from what we have.
Even though I saw him for the center-right candidate that he was, I voted for him. The alternative was downright scary. I still feel betrayed however, by the way he bows and scrapes to the elephants in the room. I feel betrayed because of the people he appointed as Secretary of the Treasury and financial advisor. I was horrified by those choices and knew than that we were in for just the same old shit. He hasn't proven me wrong either.
I am angry at Obama, angry at Congress, and most of all I'm angry at so many of the American public. I'm damned sick and tired of fundamentalists who never voted before 1973, all of a sudden coming out of their caves so they could vote for the phonies who promised them an end to legalized abortion. They are abysmally ignorant about everything else, and I wish they would stay home and mind their own business. They pass themselves off as the "real Americans." Excuse me folks, but people who never involved themselves in the country's business until 1973, are not good citizens. The people they vote for get dumber and dumber and more and more radical.
Another group I am angry at are the 20 somethings, who seem to be rather phlegmatic about their plight. They come out of college, most of them in debt, and what do they find? A buck-3.98 job that will keep them living at home forever. Many can't find any job at all. Why aren't they marching in the streets demanding jobs? Why were most of the people that have gotten arrested for demonstrating against the tar sands pipeline over 50?
There is only a handful of people in Washington who are worth a thing. The rest of them aren't worth the powder to blow them to hell. I won't vote for Obama next time around. I will write in Bernie Sanders' name.
President Obama is the best Republican president we've had in years. I would support a Bernie Sanders candidacy in 2012. Signed, a betrayed Democrat.
Gotta admit, i'm angry at, or perhaps more properly enormously frustrated with, all those who saw him for what he was and voted for him "anyway" - there WAS an alternative for progressives, that too many ignored .... So tired of the BS "TWNA" .....
Folks who voted for him got what they voted for - perhaps not what they wanted or hoped for and certainly not what they needed, but indeed what they voted for. If one knew what he was and voted for him "anyway", how can one feel "betrayed"? What did one expect?
i have been watching this dynamic now at least since '96 - bitching about lousy candidates then rationalizing voting for them when there are better, much better, ones to choose from, then bitching again when their lousy candidates perform true to expectations. Frankly i would have thought that people would be a bit embarrassed to admit they continue to participate in this obvious idiocy .....
Nothing personal, here - you just happen to have entered a post exemplifying an approach that drives me bonkers .....
AMEN, Aquifer...! It burns me up when I hear all the whining and outrage and pledges not to be fooled again during the first 2 or 3 years of a Presidential Administration. Then, suddenly, in spite of all oaths and protestations to the contrary those same whiners, like our current President, buckle and cave in to 'pragmatism' and 'lesser evil-ism' and slink off to the polls where, they are convinced, they have only 2 options.
Why? Because DNC hacks have been pounding the same mantra into everyone's head for years: "A vote for a 3rd-party candidate is a 'wasted' vote--a vote that is rightly the property of the Democratic Party candidate" or some similar pronouncements involving terms like 'spoiler', 'turncoat', 'closet Republican'. We are assured over and over again by the DNC that, "A 3rd-party candidate 'cannot win'." Then we are warned that THIS election will be THE most important election of this century...we can't afford a Republican victory. Hey....it's their job to convince voters (by hook or by crook) that the Dems are, at least, 'less evil' than the Reps.
I'll agree that a Republican victory would set American civilization back more than a few years; but it would not cause the sky to fall. We survived 8 years of the dumbest and most regressive administration in our history. It was a very ugly and brutish 8 years to be sure, and the thought of even 4 more such years chills my blood; but we DID survive it
Those of us with the temerity (and good sense) to vote our conscience rather than our fears end up being vilified for our stupidity and/or treachery; but, to me, our votes are sacred things...not to be extorted by threats of "Greater Evils". When I vote, I keep in mind that future generations should not be bound by this generation's fear. If I have the integrity to cast my vote for the candidate who comes closest to my own perspective on the issues, I serve notice thereby that I won't be cowed by predictions of doom.
If even half of America's progressives were to vote their hopes instead of their fears, a lot of people (most notably the wiseguy consultants at DNC headquarters!) would realize that 'progressivism' really does represent the hopes and dreams of America's citizenry. Given the state of affairs currently maintaining in the U.S. of A., the time has never been more auspicious for a progressive challenge to the "two" 'status quo' parties. There are more poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans than there are corporate CEOs. If we could get ourselves out from under the thumb of the Dem Party fearmongers, we'd stand an excellent chance of gaining control of Congress......or the streets.
You touched on a couple of good "thinks" here - 1) the value of the vote - folks died to get it for us and we treat it like a cheap ticket to a grade "B" movie, if we use it at all. It is precious and not to be given lightly to any fancy pants orator. Think about it - corporations know how valuable votes are - they spend mega bucks to get them in the halls of government, and we give them away for a little sweet talk. 2) our responsibility to use that vote not just for ourselves but for our progeny.
I would politely suggest, however, that you might(?) want to rethink the concept of voting our "hopes" - that's what Obama voters did. I think of it more as voting our needs and aspirations. This requires that we can actually articulate them and that we do "due diligence" in selecting those who would have the power to facilitate them in the halls of government - a diligence sorely lacking in the choosing of Obama ....
Progressive whack a noodle democrats are just as destructive to the democratic party as neo-con republicans are to the republican party.
Your trivialization of centrist democrats is despicable.