Tag: brand Obama

In case you missed it, following on the heels of the January 2010 ‘landmark’ decision in the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission case by the US Supreme Court holding that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, in which the court struck down a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that prohibited all corporations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, and unions from broadcasting ‘electioneering communications’, Pulitzer prize winning author, veteran war correspondent, and activist Chris Hedges spoke with RT America about the meaning and ramifications of an unregulated and uncontrolled flow of corporate funding into US electioneering on top of the already thirty five thousand or more paid corporate lobbyists already heavily influencing the US Congress and Administration.

Much of what Hedges has to say in this interview bears directly on why he said in his September 13 article Do Not Pity the Democrats that:

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

The progressive blogosphere has been reduced to what Churchill called “bouncing the rubble,” indulging in irrational overkill of the shattered remnants of Brand Obama. What the ProgBlogs don’t seem to grasp is that the truth they are obsessively reiterating is an impossible one: Americans will not abandon a symbol vital to their belief system, no matter how completely shattered its effigy becomes.

Brand Obama is not like Brand Tiger Woods. The unfortunate Tiger was expendable, since there are many other smooth athletic champions ready to carry the logos of the corporations. But Brand Obama is inseparable from delusional America, and no amount of brand trashing can break this delusional psychosis.

Brand Obama is the living embodiment of the invincible folly of American Exceptionalism. We make the rules because we are special. We break the rules because we are special. We are special because we are special. To repudiate Brand Obama means acknowledging that the entire American adventure has been a blood-soaked lie, a terrible, brutal story of greed, oppression, and deceit. This can never be acknowledged, and thus Brand Obama can never be destroyed, no matter how thoroughly discredited Obama becomes as a person, a politician, or a symbol.

The majority of Americans cannot accept that their sons and daughters serve willingly as paycheck killers in an endless war. They cannot accept that they are ruled by sociopathic corporations pushing our society toward a new feudalism. They cannot accept that their lifestyle is physically unsustainable. How can such people be persuaded that their champion is a weakling and that his policies are folly?

The demonstrated failings of Obama are numerous, obvious, and thoroughly documented. But the truth of his failings is the truth of America’s failure, and thus it is an impossible truth. My advice to Progressives is to save your energies for surviving the collapse of the Babel Tower of folly that America has become. Brand Obama is logically dead, but the pernicious, unkillable spirit of Brand Obama lives, and it continues to beckon America towards destruction.