Obama is a political gamesman. He lied his way into power.
Now he is determined to do and say anything to ensure a second term in 2012. That is his priority. His focus. His limited character.
Human needs and rights of others? Not so important.
Peace and a sensibility of the common good for this country and the globe seem permanently off the table for him. I am not talking about say-anything lip service about things humanitarian. I mean actual recognition and action. A true sense of responsibility as a fellow human being with the power to make change yes we could have believed in. Responsibility? The ability to respond? He hasn’t got it. At least in a moral way.
Maybe if it were pragmatically politically useful to him, Obama might just give altruism a go. But that ain’t gonna happen. The ruling class elite is not about altruism and Obama’s political ambitions have been fulfilled thanks to their mentorship. He will, of course, continue to pretzel himself for their continuing support.
Obama also knows he needs to counterpoint all those idiots who incredibly still think he is a liberal. Led by Rush Limbaugh, the Koch brothers, et al. Must list further and further to the right to futilely coax the irrationally uncoaxable to a recognition of his ever escalating disdain for the needs of the average citizens.
You might want to ponder that quote, Barack, by Groucho about the wisdom of only wanting to belong to a club that won’t have you as a member.
Obama perceives he must act tough about US foreign policy. Thus he will. It is called "reaction formation." Of course that is well worth lives lost or devastated to him. Thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands. The posturing for 2012 is all.
The bloody irony that Obama ran as the anti-war President is a colossal insult to all of us so disenfranchised today, the people of conscience whom Cindy Sheehan describes as “lost in the wilderness of integrity.” (By the way, Hillary Clinton is certainly proving that a woman in a leadership position can be just as coldly militaristic and amorally game-playing as any man. Nice counter-pointing yourself, Hill. Hope it is worth it to you, all the gratuitous death, to prove you are no girlie woman!)
Arthur Silber expressed some rage for all of us recently. He describes us as a “nation led by blood-guzzling, flesh eating pigfuckers.”
I too feel such rage at the KILL KILL KILL, our only tool is a hammer then everything is a nail, gotta destroy the village to save it, violent military industrial security complex corporate-pimped monster that our leadership Pavlovianly answers to every time, that devours a minimal $500 million a week isn’t that what Kucinich estimates for its wars?
Hey, there are 330 million Americans. What if instead of fighting one little week we have a 7-day moratorium and each of us Americans gets one of those $500 million? Please please please? Just for that one week can’t we use the money for ourselves and not to bomb the shit out of fellow human beings and watch so many of our own young people get maimed or killed to promote corporate interests? Just for a week, guys ... and gals? Seven short days? Or, okay, maybe just give that money out to the people instead of bombing them? See where that gets us? Not money to their corrupt leaders. But to them! How novel would that be?
Sorry!!! I know, I know. What am I thinking???? That is just CRAZY talk, isn’t it?
That money must go into the mission creep addiction of spreading global death and destruction, again, using our overly-trusting, unfoundedly patriotic young people to sacrifice their lives and sanity to commit homicide for profits for corporations. I know. We need the oil. Blood for oil. A trade the leadership is willing to make for our own good, right?
It is the American Way. IT IS THE AMERICAN WAY!!!!
I guess for half a sec those fools who gave Obama that Peace Prize thought they could nudge him into a different direction. As well as the millions who hit the pavement for him in 2008. How wrong so many of us were. Charles Ferguson said on Tavis Smiley recently that Obama has singlehandedly wiped out American idealism for a generation or two. Way to go, Barack. What a bunch of optimistic wimps we all were apparently in your eyes. You really pulled the biggest fast one in American history, I’d say. You are so shameless you are beyond acknowledging your flip-floppiness. Colossal flip-floppiness. You did tell us you adored Reagan. Big clue, I admit. Many of us were lazy liberals led by a disinforming media.
This is America. Where lying to win is more than okay. It gets you big hugs from Oprah and a media just as pimped by the corporate overlords as the politicians who took oaths to represent our needs.
As for the Bush-era Dems now so thoroughly lobotomized to moral sensibility that they defend this President and his war-mongering, his assumption of the right to assassinate citizens, to authorize and defend torture of a soldier whistleblower of war crimes, all against those bad ol’ tea partiers, I am still at a loss. Is being on a “winning team” or never having to admit you were wrong that irrationally strong for them?
More and more when I click on the tv I brace myself and know I am going to be “played.” I crave certain websites and commentators whom I am learning to trust on the net. I wonder how long before that plug will be pulled on us, or the honest ones eliminated?
We’ve got our death squads in most countries in the world. Why not our own? How much more patience will the fascist regime have in citizens speaking out like this? I guess the status quo is so strong for now, such objections based on morality are just crazy talk. Naive crazy talk.
The fast hardening of soft fascism seems to be happening with little conscious struggle among the masses. A big ol’ amiable smile and a Democrat in name only at the helm is all that is required as our constitutional republic becomes toast.
There is a provocative quote from one of the most haunting pieces of science fiction (novel and movie) by Ray Bradury, Fahrenheit 451. It offers a glimmer of hope for those calling out for morality.
Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."
Let me repeat:
... we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.
Jim Quinn also offers this comment on his website about Fahrenheit 451.
Montag is stalked by the Mechanical Hound throughout the book. It was programmed to hunt down Montag and lethally inject him with poison. Bradbury didn't know it, but he had described an early version of a predator drone. Today, a man can sit in front of his computer in the Pentagon and direct an unmanned predator drone to fire missiles at "enemies" without faces, halfway around the world. No danger, no consequences, no responsibility. The American public blindly believes the state is protecting them by murdering "enemies of the state". They will think differently when predator drones circle the skies above their towns seeking out "domestic terrorists" and non-conformists.
As I type this Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates are on a replay of Meet the Press congratulating themselves on the humanitarian intervention. Spin time. War for peace. Oxymoronic and evil. Hillary Clinton talking about the war crimes of Gaddafi. Robert Gates saying the hammer isn’t the only tool in our tool box. Mirror, anyone?
Tell me, David Gregory. What is the Obama doctrine coming up after the commercial? I'd say "the say anything big con."
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
Yes, there are a lot of fronts. And in this particular blog I am taking on the Obama one in an angry way for the most but not only part.
Lotsa "too cool for the golden rule folk" who go after legitimate feelings of outrage and horror. Messengers are easier than the perpetrators of problems, aren' they? Gotta say, imho that is contributing to the problem not the solution.
As for the callowness of Obama, it awes me how protective the rationalizers are of him still. He out-teflons Reagan. Give him that. People will protect Obama as our democracy circles the bowl. I mean, being more personality likable than Bush gets a lot of slack cut for one, doesn't it? And if one minimizes destructive evil in others, like Obama, well, then, how much easier to discount it in oneself and one's countrypeople.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27777.htm
"Ah yes, of course, Manning is being tortured for his own good. Someone please remind me — Did Georgieboy ever stoop to using that particular absurdity to excuse prisoner hell at Guantanamo?
"Is it that Barack Obama is not bothered by the insult to Bradley Manning's human rights, the daily wearing away of this brave young man's mental stability?
"The answer to the question is No. The president is not bothered by these things.
"How do I know? Because Barack Obama is not bothered by anything as long as he can exult in being the president of the United States, eat his hamburgers, and play his basketball. Let me repeat once again what I first wrote in May 2009:
"The problem, I'm increasingly afraid, is that the man doesn't really believe strongly in anything, certainly not in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without clearly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying anything, how to leave his listeners' heads filled with stirring clichés, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked! What could happen now, having reached the presidency of the United States, to induce him to change his style?"
"Remember that in his own book, "The Audacity of Hope", Obama wrote: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.""
"Obama is a product of marketing. He is the prime example of the product "As seen on TV"."
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