I read OPOL’s beautiful diary on JFK with tears in my eyes. JFK’s valiant words are radical-sounding in Bush-ruled America. Today is a difficult day for me because the issues of the day are writ so large, and the remedies provided are so meager. The Clinton/Obama tussle has driven me from dkos back into international and counterculture media, and back to this site as a possible refuge. I’m wondering if others are as concerned as I am about the outcome today.
At dkos I posted a diary awhile ago about some Obama advisors who concern me. I’ll share a bit of my perspective. The times are too troubled to accommodate some of the political thinking I see coming out of the Obama camp. Please share your thoughts about some of the points I raise.
I do believe that Clinton could be a more than passing-fair president, and that Obama has advisors like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Austan Goolsbee that quite possibly have a different purview than he does, and that they have the potential to contaminate his presidency with more corporatism and more militarism. Brzezinski wants to destabilize Russia and China to perpetuate American global hegemony, and Goolsbee wants to make Obama’s domestic policy more “friendly to business” than he thinks a Clinton presidency would be.
It is to be hoped that Obama admirers look beyond their candidate’s obvious charm and talent, and look to the people he would look to for advice. I definitely don’t like what I see there, hence my support for Clinton.
I had backed Kucinich, then Edwards, because they held more people-friendly, less militaristic policies. But now that they are out of the running, I have turned to Hillary and her known deficiencies. On his own merits, Obama appears a stellar candidate, but he has elected to surround himself with a couple of senior advisors I believe hold positions contrary to the interests of most Americans. While I like and admire the inspiration Obama has generated, I do not have much confidence that an Obama presidency would deliver the goods on national health care and more transparency in government, let alone navigate foreign policy more peacefully than a Clinton presidency would.
The Goldman Sachs candidate glitters, but that does not mean he’s golden.
Diary postscript: My husband said our 26-year-old son had tears in his eyes after he voted today. He didn’t like the options he had to pick from. Husband himself said he was saddened by how cynical he’s become over the electoral process. Many would say the process of disillusionment is the process of waking up to the reality of our political situation. We are controlled by a small group which possesses major wealth and power, and the interests of that small clique often run counter to the many without their material advantages and political connections.
The lessons of history are that We, the People, have the power when we act together, when we act collectively. The political right has been masterful in its mastery of the art of the divide – by gender, religion, race, by whatever wedge that can be used to make us mistrust one another. We, the People, may have the numbers, but through guile and cunning and some very effective lobbying and campaign contributions those democratic (small “d”) advantages have been disarmed. Privatization, consolidation and outsourcing have all been conducted under a diminished regulatory environment. This has greatly leveraged corporate advantages over public interests.
We do have the power if we have the wit and wisdom to exercise it. But our wisdom has been carefully limited by our lack of access to good information in our media. It takes time and energy and a certain amount of knowledge to even know where to look to become more informed. And corporate control of access to information has long been a goal of media consolidation. Our corporations have enjoyed remarkable success in dumbing down the nightly news and most news programs. Humor is one of the last refuges of political truth in our country, as in Colbert and SNL.
That’s the tragi-comedy of today as I view it: whoever wins the day in voting booths across America, (big-G) corporate Government will get back in next January.