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The Normalizer-in-Chief
Got an unsavory past? Does a great moral stench attend to you as you go about your daily business? Tired of having people see the things you do as grotesque vulgar and savage?
No problem. Call the Normalizer, Barack Hussein Obama.
He's cool, or so they say, he's relatively articulate and best of all he's got a skin color that suggests to people that he is naturally disposed to taking the side of the downtrodden and morally righteous.
Nov 15, 2016
Got an unsavory past? Does a great moral stench attend to you as you go about your daily business? Tired of having people see the things you do as grotesque vulgar and savage?
No problem. Call the Normalizer, Barack Hussein Obama.
He's cool, or so they say, he's relatively articulate and best of all he's got a skin color that suggests to people that he is naturally disposed to taking the side of the downtrodden and morally righteous.
And therein lies his secret power.
He long ago figured out that most liberals today are long on the celebration of semiotic perceptions and short on the empirical analysis of political actions.
Secure in this knowledge, he set up a lucrative racket, starting way back in his days at Harvard Law, of posing as a saint of progressives while shamelessly doing the bidding of society's most regressive forces.
He was at his normalizing best this week after his meeting with Donald Trump. While immigrant families and young people of color--the people it is casually and automatically assumed are the apple of his moral eye--are quaking in their boots across the country, with some spontaneously breaking into fearful sobbing in classes taught by yours truly, there he was providing a much-needed moral whitewash for the Donald.
On a day when Trump was appointing the white supremacist Steve Bannon as one of his two top aides, there was the Normalizer giving the president-elect the establishment seal of approval, going so far as to bestow on him what is arguably the most coveted descriptor in American politics: that of being "pragmatic."
And the very real fears of the constituency that, incredibly, still idolizes him after eight years of constant, in-your-face betrayals? Well, all that can wait for another day, another day, way, way far in the future.
The Normalizer knows the key right now is to make sure there be no disruptions in Empire Inc., that he provide no openings for those that might question the essential decency and good-heartedness of his paymasters in the U.S. Deep State.
Mission accomplished.
Is there a shadow of moral opprobrium pursuing you?
If so, call the Normalizer. Make your appointment now before his fees go up astronomically on Saturday, January 21st, 2017.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Thomas S. Harrington
Thomas S. Harrington is professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of Public Intellectuals and Nation Building in the Iberian Peninsula, 1900-1925: The Alchemy of Identity (Bucknell University Press, 2014).
Got an unsavory past? Does a great moral stench attend to you as you go about your daily business? Tired of having people see the things you do as grotesque vulgar and savage?
No problem. Call the Normalizer, Barack Hussein Obama.
He's cool, or so they say, he's relatively articulate and best of all he's got a skin color that suggests to people that he is naturally disposed to taking the side of the downtrodden and morally righteous.
And therein lies his secret power.
He long ago figured out that most liberals today are long on the celebration of semiotic perceptions and short on the empirical analysis of political actions.
Secure in this knowledge, he set up a lucrative racket, starting way back in his days at Harvard Law, of posing as a saint of progressives while shamelessly doing the bidding of society's most regressive forces.
He was at his normalizing best this week after his meeting with Donald Trump. While immigrant families and young people of color--the people it is casually and automatically assumed are the apple of his moral eye--are quaking in their boots across the country, with some spontaneously breaking into fearful sobbing in classes taught by yours truly, there he was providing a much-needed moral whitewash for the Donald.
On a day when Trump was appointing the white supremacist Steve Bannon as one of his two top aides, there was the Normalizer giving the president-elect the establishment seal of approval, going so far as to bestow on him what is arguably the most coveted descriptor in American politics: that of being "pragmatic."
And the very real fears of the constituency that, incredibly, still idolizes him after eight years of constant, in-your-face betrayals? Well, all that can wait for another day, another day, way, way far in the future.
The Normalizer knows the key right now is to make sure there be no disruptions in Empire Inc., that he provide no openings for those that might question the essential decency and good-heartedness of his paymasters in the U.S. Deep State.
Mission accomplished.
Is there a shadow of moral opprobrium pursuing you?
If so, call the Normalizer. Make your appointment now before his fees go up astronomically on Saturday, January 21st, 2017.
Thomas S. Harrington
Thomas S. Harrington is professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of Public Intellectuals and Nation Building in the Iberian Peninsula, 1900-1925: The Alchemy of Identity (Bucknell University Press, 2014).
Got an unsavory past? Does a great moral stench attend to you as you go about your daily business? Tired of having people see the things you do as grotesque vulgar and savage?
No problem. Call the Normalizer, Barack Hussein Obama.
He's cool, or so they say, he's relatively articulate and best of all he's got a skin color that suggests to people that he is naturally disposed to taking the side of the downtrodden and morally righteous.
And therein lies his secret power.
He long ago figured out that most liberals today are long on the celebration of semiotic perceptions and short on the empirical analysis of political actions.
Secure in this knowledge, he set up a lucrative racket, starting way back in his days at Harvard Law, of posing as a saint of progressives while shamelessly doing the bidding of society's most regressive forces.
He was at his normalizing best this week after his meeting with Donald Trump. While immigrant families and young people of color--the people it is casually and automatically assumed are the apple of his moral eye--are quaking in their boots across the country, with some spontaneously breaking into fearful sobbing in classes taught by yours truly, there he was providing a much-needed moral whitewash for the Donald.
On a day when Trump was appointing the white supremacist Steve Bannon as one of his two top aides, there was the Normalizer giving the president-elect the establishment seal of approval, going so far as to bestow on him what is arguably the most coveted descriptor in American politics: that of being "pragmatic."
And the very real fears of the constituency that, incredibly, still idolizes him after eight years of constant, in-your-face betrayals? Well, all that can wait for another day, another day, way, way far in the future.
The Normalizer knows the key right now is to make sure there be no disruptions in Empire Inc., that he provide no openings for those that might question the essential decency and good-heartedness of his paymasters in the U.S. Deep State.
Mission accomplished.
Is there a shadow of moral opprobrium pursuing you?
If so, call the Normalizer. Make your appointment now before his fees go up astronomically on Saturday, January 21st, 2017.
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