( – promoted by buhdydharma )
What a world!
How does one even begin to comment?
Not to diminish the achievement of President Elect Barack Obama, it does seem in some ways a dirty joke on African American aspirations that we would finally elect an African American just at THE moment in history when the country is about to tank, and tank hard. Welcome to the presidency African America. Here’s the big, reeking pile of dung we’ve turned the country into for you. Good fuckin’ luck with that!
A part of me suspects that McCain chose Palin for his running mate in a deliberate act of electoral suicide. I think at some point he may have just decided that he didn’t really want the job after all. Maybe if it had been back in the good old days of the cold war – but NOW? It’s not like Bush and them left anything to steal.
With the stranglehold corporate America and the military industrial complex has on our government, McCain had to really work hard to lose this one. For all that has happened in the Bush years, and even with Palin on board, the thoroughly repudiated and utterly disgraced (one would think) republicans only lost this election by just under 7%.
By all rights, assuming a semi-literate and marginally aware electorate, and in light of what all’s been done to them in the name of ‘hey, fuck you – I got mine!’ they should have been lucky to get 7% of the vote. In my view, that speaks to the power of propaganda and cultural programming – but whatever explains it, it’s through the looking glass territory for sure.
So now it’s up to Obama. Is he up to it? Yes, I think he is – if anyone is. It is not outside the realm of possibility, however, that the problems we now face, and have too long ignored, are now too great for any solutions we might contrive. And there are things about Obama that have long been worrisome.
Obama said he wasn’t against all wars, just dumb ones. What’s so smart about Afghanistan? It may be arguable whether or not it was EVER a good idea, but after seven long years it has certainly become just another very bad one.
But now we’re escalating it? Sending in twenty thousand more troops? With Obama’s blessing?
Why is this sane? Why does this make any sense at all? Why is this not totally fucked up?
My fear is that the Pentagon (military industrial complex) is still firmly in charge of our national policy. And the Pentagon (IMO) is little more than an unbelievably heavily armed looney bin. These are not the people we need to be in charge.
The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep.
We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.
Our Constitution is at risk. No kidding.
So now while Israel blows the shit out of Gaza, Obama is ‘monitoring the situation’. Not condemning the violence, not calling for restraint or peace, but monitoring the situation.
I’m saddened.
Militarism is madness. Obama’s as much as Bush’s.
I read recently in Newsweek that Obama would be judged by whether or not he could save capitalism. It is so wrongheaded, in my view, to try to patch up an exhausted and broken system instead of using that energy and time to reinvent the system – IOWs to create a system that will adequately serve us in a post-capitalist world. She is broken, worn out, face it. Capitalism is done for. Wasn’t such a hot deal for most of us anyway. All the energy and treasure thrown thoughtlessly into keeping those plates spinning for the corporate piggies is wasted in the end and the problems we face merely kicked a little further down the road.
Let’s get real, quit wasting money on made up wars and greedy corporate bastards, turn to science, hard work and responsible legislation to salvage what we can of the biosphere and develop intelligent ways to tred lightly upon the earth while caring properly for the entire population of the planet. Let’s start acting like responsible adult members of an intelligent species.
While I obviously reserve the right to be critical, I have supported Barack Obama, and still do – just not across the board. I can’t imagine what it must be like at that level to face the power of Corporate America and the military industrial complex – but I’m thinking it can’t be easy. I’m thinking he needs us behind him pushing hard left all the way.
However strongly we support Obama, we do him no favors when we spare him our criticism. Only by kicking his ass when he’s wrong can we ever hope to help steer him right. That’s not because of who he is – but because of who he’s up against…who we’re up against.
The era of the war profiteers and the warmongers has to be over.
President Elect Obama, I call on you to condemn the violence in the Middle East.
Peace.
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Great essay.
understanding of what has gone before:
Let’s try for something a bit more realistic. Shouldn’t that read more like…?
Obama would be judged by whether or not he could save the middle class
or maybe
Obama would be judged by whether or not he could return the rule of law to the land
or maybe even really get with the now by stating
Obama would be judged by whether he could reverse the damage done to our country in the past 8 years by saving the middle class, returning the rule of law to the land by trying and convicting all those that had broken that rule of law and by defending the Constitution and the American people by doing all the above.
That’s kinda harsh there, don’tcha think? Although Dave Barry’s explanation wasn’t much better:
We know what we don’t want, let’s start articulating what we do want.
1- Clean environment.
2- Organic agriculture and clean water.
3- Clean, sustainable energy sources.
4- High quality public education.
5- High quality public health care.
6- Rule of law, and laws that put people before ANY corporation.
Stuff like that.
…you clearly mark what is sane, what is insane, and what we must do now…
We must get fully and massively behind Barach and push him left-progressive against the regressive forces of capitalism which will do all they can to maintain the moribund captalismus quo.
Capitalism has destroyed itself of it’s own greed. “They” just refuse to admit it.
regardless of party is infected. Capitalism has come to mean democratic, the worst of capitalism free market is gospel. I don’t think that this new adminstration has any choice other then inventing a new system as the run amuk free market version we have ate itself literally.
I have been reading a lot about FDR and the revisionist historians and FDR himself said that he saved capitalism. FDR worried that once the crisis of the depression was over that if the inequities in wealth, Heratio Alger mythologies that allowed them to become the American Dream, and fear of socialism continued the country would go through the same thing over and over and we have. Obama may be saying that like FDR he will save capitalism, but no one can or should put back together what wweve been living under for decades the gospel according to both parties. I think that it’s beyond revival.
Thanks OPAL this is a good one and now is the time to let them know that criminals have no place in our government. and that the LAW is king, I ‘hope’ that they restore the laws that we had in place to prevent this from happening and I want this country to not ignore the international laws that respect humans not nation states or geopolitical opportunism that is led by the lawyers with guns and the corporations which own them. IMHO nationalism suks, the planet can’t handle it, same with capitalism.
an excellent discussion by all. Speaking of Newsweek.
These psychic intuitions and impressions I get are difficult to describe yet all of them remain clear and vivid memories. While in the lobby of a global company there was a coffee table with neatly positioned business oriented periodicals including Newsweek. For some reason I remember Newsweek above all the others as the entire pile appeared to emit stinky black evil oriented “ectoplasmic” slime which started to ooze off the table and spill onto the floor. It was the kind of thing I see for a second and out of the corner of the eye.
Funny, the things people remember.