Super Hero Fail

Well, it looks like the National Enquirer who brought us the live burial of John Edwards has finally got the goods on Barack Obama. It’s not enough Obama is an African Nationalist, Muslim Communist and Political Promise Breaker. Not enough he is a shiny-happy war criminal and smooth talking flim-flam man. Not enough Obama swings both ways while he lectures black daddies to take care of their birthing and babies.

President Obama is a philanderer. Our Tiger Woods President.

They say power corrupts but the truth is the corrupt seek power. Same as it ever was.

And, if true, is it really so surprising? Isn’t Obama just following in the footsteps of countless other men of power who say one thing and do another? Isn’t temptation just another word for succumb?

Another ‘hero’ bites the dust. Another myth shattered. Another reason to shake the head and gnash the teeth of disillusion.

Yet, it doesn’t matter Obama did or didn’t have an affair six years ago or is having one now. What’s more important is Obama wages Bush’s wars with Bush’s lies as their justification. What’s more important is Obama plays Pyramid Scheme Politics and reverse Robin Hood voodoo economics just like Republicans. Trickle up a few trillion to the banks in hopes they trickle some down to ease the credit crunch for the common man brought on by a Usury-centric finance system which seeks to enslave, smother and beat you into submission.

It doesn’t matter Obama smokes cigarettes, crack or super-glue and admits to nothing like Israel and her nukes. What matters is he says one thing and does another like Guantanamo, DADT, Renditions, Health Care Reform, Transparency and Accountability. What matters is his pious affected black preacher drawl in the pulpit moralizing to the families of dead coal miners while he sends drones to kill non-existent enemies and murder countless innocents in the name of a crime which has never been properly investigated and the blame for which has never been proven beyond the accusations of known liars, war criminals and profiteers.

What matters is not his possible amorality but his subservience to entrenched elite interests while he wags the tongue of populist propaganda in support of the common man. What matters is not his supposed succumbing to temptation but his worship of the military-industrial-complex and his sophomoric Bushist view of the world: His American Exceptionalism as America elevates itself to  global monster. His glib arrogance in the face of serious questions. His complete disregard for the liberals who elected him.

Barack Obama is a poseur, a pretender, an imposter. He is not self-made but a created product of Mad Men brought to you by FIRE, Energy and War Mongers. He is the 21st Century poster boy for egregious profit and unbridled greed. He is spokesperson for the status-quo of the few against the many. He is a shill, a tool; a co-opted politician owned and operated by those who shovel double-speak into both sides of his mouth and expect triple digit returns on their investment.

Many people still “buy” Obama and don’t want to hear about his imperfections. Indeed, Tiger Woods was well received by the galleries at The Masters. We love Tiger because he is a genius at his game not because he is a duplicitous, hypocritical sex addict who’s career and endorsement empire was built upon a squeaky clean sparkling smile of home and hearth. So many folks give Obama the benefit of doubt and say he does all he can in the face of ‘power’. But Obama is the opposite of Horton the Elephant who says what he means and means what he says. If Dr. Seuss can bring ethics in a nutshell to elementary school children why is it so hard for so many adults to walk the walk instead of talk the walk – say one thing and do another. Indeed, isn’t that the adult lesson so many children hear? Do as I say, not as I do.

I guess it’s just so hard to be an adult in the real world. We can’t live up to childhood ideals. We can’t measure up to storybook heroes and fairytale morality. We sell out our dreams for food on the table and jettison our beliefs in the name of getting along to go along. 80% of folks are unhappy with the way things are and 90% of them are paralyzed with fear, frozen with perceived impotence of usurped power. We have raised bitching, moaning and whining to an art, but we have forgotten how to organize, mobilize and actualize.

Cynicism has replaced confidence. A long time ago we sent men to the moon and now we just go around in circles and do high school science experiments. A long time ago we set ourselves free from millennial servitude only to piss it all away to Private Banks who own us just as sure as antebellum plantation owners clamped chains on slaves and traded them like baseball cards.

But isn’t it understandable cynicism reigns at the height of civilization because humanity has proven itself incapable of Good (not to mention self-governance)? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse run rampant over the landscape. Diseases are created in laboratories and spread to populations for pharmaceutical companies to profit. Wars are created for fun and profit by arms merchants and loan sharks. Starvation and poverty is the breakfast of champions for billions of our brothers and sisters who we regard as feckless losers because they can’t pull themselves up by the bootstraps out of hell. A plague of proverbial locusts contaminate our water, air and soil. Maybe God didn’t rest on the Seventh Day because creation was good, but went into hiding for the shame of humanity.

Our Soviet-style elected leaders of our two-sides-of-the-same-coin political system suck up bribes from corporations like vampires drink the blood of anything that moves in order to survive. Congress builds moats instead of bridges and politicians cower instead of engage. The people are sheep or cogs or units of measure but are never human unless it serves the purpose of a politician to pretend when the natives get restless and the sheep begin to look up and need the somnolent of rhetorical cliche and feel-good sweet-nothings.

So, who cares if our personages of respected authority are nothing but walking, talking blow-up sex dolls? Hell, all of us are addicted to something to assuage the misery of modern civilization. Sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, shopping, over-eating, gambling and incessant channel surfing are all indicative of people running from the past, afraid of the future and unable to deal with the now.

The point here is to understand our heroes are human and very likely frauds built up by PR media machines to turn a profit or get a vote. And just because one is flawed does not mean one isn’t effective. If Obama is a cad it doesn’t mean he can’t be a good President. What makes him a lousy President is not his shallow character but his old-fashioned, out-of-date, neo-liberal, colonial policies  Time and time again people who thirst for the salvation of leadership turn the leader into a super-hero and forget the promised land we’re hopefully led to. Obama swore to the Promised Land of Change and delivered the swampy-quagmire-quicksand of business-as-usual. More war, more corporatacracy, more disenfranchisement of citizenry. And in time this hero worship morphs into dogmatic belief-systems as long dead heroes are embodied by present-day charlatans. So we have hate-mongers for Jesus. Hate-mongers for Mohammad. Hate-mongers for Zion. Hate-mongers for Krishna. Hate-mongers for every cult figure to come down the pike.

And thus we have apologists for Obama. Apologists for Clinton. Apologists for Reagan. Apologists for Disaster Capitalism. Apologists for evil.

We have Coneheads and Stupids fomenting rebellion. We have Simpletons for Creation Science. We have Democrats for Fascism. And Republicans for Hell on Earth.

We have a whirling dervish of opposing opinions; a cacophony of sound and fury of absolute certainties all signifying utter ignorance of the truth. We have henny-penny-chicken-littles running around the proverbial barnyard with heads cut off shouting about the falling sky and who is to blame.

But, what we don’t have is a modicum of self-reflection about why humanity as a whole is a failed system responsible for ALL it laments. Western Civilization is in the last throes of death by a thousand cuts. We are in a dark age of quickly creeping totalitarianism. Man’s aspiration is now nothing more than to survive the day without losing more than has already been taken away from him. Keep the head down, keep the line straight, keep it moving forward in an orderly way. Tote the barge, lift the bale, push the paper, serve the master. Shuffle along until the last breath makes you a trifling footnote.

Shakespeare said all the world was a stage and we are players upon it. But, in reality, most of us are not players because we have lost the ability to control our destiny and create our world. We react to circumstances and don’t make them.

In order for the bleak picture painted here to turn around and renew and rebuild human endeavor with the joy of the human spirit and intelligence of creative mind, we, all of us, every one of us, must stop watching the world go by in an addictive stupor of numb complacency and denial and each become the hero of our own drama and discover new worlds of understanding, cooperation and purpose.

The hero is not someone else. The hero is each and every one of us.