David Axelrod, who as we all know is the third greatest political genius of all time, right behind King Louis XVI and Pharaoh Phukitallup I, who only lasted 2 days, is going to be busy brainstorming campaign slogans for Obama’s rerun for the White House in 2012. I don’t know what he’ll come up with, but I know what the top three slogans would be if the truth mattered . . .
I Am the Way Into the City of Woe
I Am the Way Into Eternal Pain
I Am the Way To Go Among the Lost
Those words, engraved on the archway above the Gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, precede the final words, Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. If Obama isn’t primary challenged, if corporate control over the White House isn’t broken, we can abandon all hope, because this country will keep descending from one level of Hell to the next, until we reach the last and deepest level.
Midway through their journey with Obama, Americans find themselves in a dark wood, for they have wandered from the straight and true. They weren’t led out of the darkness, they were led deeper into it. The relentless beast of corporate power comes against them, step by step, determined to drive them back to where the sun is silent evermore. So vicious is its nature, so ill-bent, it never stuffs its ravenous will enough, but after feeding hungers all the more.
Dante had the poet Virgil to guide him through Hell and lead him out.
We have this guy . . .
From behind the tinted glass of his presidential limousine, Obama surveys the desolation of a wrecked economy, the carnage of endless wars, the expansion of the surveillance state, the resurgence of racist hate, and claims this is what change looks like. This is not what change looks like. This is what Hell looks like.