The Devil and Mr. Obama (Joe Bageant)

[Tace]

Joe Bageant

Barack promised change -- and sure enough, things changed for the worse

(Note: Patrick Ward, associate editor of the UK's Socialist Review asked Joe to write a piece for the party publication. This is the unabridged text of Joe's submission.)

Dec. 8, 2009 -- Well lookee here! An invite from my limey comrades to recap Barack Obama's first year in office. Well comrades, I can do this thing two ways. I can simply state that the great mocha hope turned out to be a Trojan horse for Wall Street and the Pentagon. Or I can lay in an all-night stock of tequila, limes and reefer and puke up the entire miserable tale like some 5,000-word tequila purged Congolese stomach worm. I have chosen to do the latter.

As you may know, Obama's public approval ratings are taking a beating. Millions of his former cult members have awakened with a splitting hangover to find their pockets turned inside out and eviction notices on the doors of their 4,000-square-foot subprime mortgaged cardboard fuck boxes. Many who voted for Obama out of disgust for the Bush regime are now listening to the Republicans again on their car radios as they drive around looking for a suitable place to hide their vehicles from the repo man. Don't construe this as support for the GOP. It's just the standard ping ponging of disappointment and disgust that comes after the honeymoon is over with any administration. Most Americans' party affiliations are the same as they were when Bush was elected. After all, Obama did not get elected on a landslide by any means; he got 51 percent of the vote.

Right now his approval ratings are in the 40th percentile and would be headed for the basement of the league were it not for the residual effect of the Kool-Aid love fest a year ago. However, millions of American liberals remain faithful, and believe Obama will arise from the dead in the third year and ascend to glory. You will find them at Huffington Post.

This frustrating ping pong game in which the margin of first time, disenchanted and undecided voters are batted back and forth has become the whole of American elections. That makes both the Republican and Democratic parties very happy, since it keeps the game down to fighting the enemy they know, each other, as opposed to being forced to deal with the real issues, or worse yet, an independent or third party candidate who might have a solution or two.

Thus, the game is limited to two players between two corporate parties. One is the Republican Party, which believes we should hand over our lives and resources directly to the local Chamber of Commerce, so the chamber can deliver them to the big corporations. The other, the Democratic Party, believes we should hand our lives and resources to a Democratic administration -- so it alone can deliver our asses to the big dogs who own the country. In the big picture it's always about who gets to deliver the money to the Wall Street hyena pack.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/the-devil-and-mr-obama-joe-bageant/itemid-28

[debbierlus]

1. Great post!

[polichick]

2. Excellent (though terrifying) reading. K&R

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. Give 'em hell Joe Bageant!

I half-way agree with him. I will also offer that there really was not that much of a bait and switch in regard to Obama.

[polichick]

4. Well, there was the whole "change you can believe in" thing. nt

[tom_paine]

5. So sad. However, sop pathetic are things now and so piteously clear that I am happy

that I drank the Obama Kool-Aid, even knowing it was proaby untrue, I gave myself over to it, worked and campaigned for him VERY hard, including an election-day jaunt into PA KKK Country with my armload of Obama doorhangers, walking with chin & chest stuck out, just DARING any cowardly Bushie to SAY ONE FUCKING THING.

They didn't, cowardly pigs that they are, and for all of that before and since I am grateful, even if it all was a lie (or most of it, enough to make any "real" parts of it fade to insignificance).

Why? You ask? because it was the last time I will ever believe in change, because Inverted Totalitarianisms like the American Empire aren't about change. They are about what every totalitarianism whatever it's stripe has always been about: power, control, stupidity, gullibility, wealth concentration and systemic corruption to benefiot the very few.

Ther is an old Kurt Vonnegut book, "Cat's Cradle" which centers around a fictitious religion called Bokononism.

What is on the cover of the First Book of Bokonon>

DON'T OPEN THIS BOOK! IT'S A TISSUE OF LIES!

What is on the inside flap cover of the First Book of Bokonon?

Live by the lies that make you happy and healthy and true.

As America slides into whatever dark future our Corporate Masters have planned for us (personally, I think we're going to see what function Hitler was MEANT to play by the PTB before he "went off the reservation" and turned out to be completely insane, not the controlled psyhopathy of our Global Aristocracy), I am actually thrilled that I genuinely got to experience one more time what it was to believe. The tears I shed on election night were real. The feelings were real, even if the reasons for them were lies.

And, as the First Book of Bokonon says, I am grateful for even that chance. Even though something in me knew always that it would turn out like this.

This jibes quite nicely with Joe's article, which I heartily K&R.

[tavalon]

11. Yes, it was a magnificent feeling. wasn't it?

I tamped down a lot of concern around Obama because he speechified like no other. He still does, but now, having seen what he does, what he says doesn't hold a whole lot of weight. It's a shame. He's going to turn out to be the second best Republican President. I didn't much like the first one, who could speechify real good too. He just hand an extra-marital hankering for blue dresses and the interns in them.

[bertman]

17. It's been a long time, tom_paine, but you haven't lost your touch. Thanks for saying it

so well. I'm sure there are many of us who feel as you do. I certainly do.

[juno jones]

6. K&R! great article. n/t

[Hydra]

7. Disturbing...but the truth often is n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. My favorite paragraph:

Americans may be starting to get the big picture about politics, money and corporate power. But I doubt it. Given that most still believe the war on terrorism is real, and that terrorists always just happen to be found near gas and oil deposits, there is plenty of room left to blow more smoke up their asses. Especially considering how we are conditioned to go into blind fits of patriotism at the sight of the flag, an eagle, or the mention of "our heroes," even if the heroes happen to be killing and maiming Muslim babies at the moment. Patriotism is a cataract that blinds us to all national discrepancies.

On second thought, I like this paragraph, too:

Now if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, compared to NATO country forces there, you'll find them in a nice even line along what could easily be mistaken for an oil pipeline route. One that taps into the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and, by the purest coincidence, just happens to bypass nearby Russia and Iran. But we all know that "It's about fighting terrorism over there so we won't have to fight it here!" That still plays in Peoria, so we're sticking with it.

[lildreamer316]

9. I was JUST going to post that second one!!

My fave also.
This is great writing, and a must read. One of the best articles in a week of great articles.

[autorank]

10. But Joe tell us what you really think. k*r

Damn! He's even better than he usually is.

:patriot:

[fasttense]

12. There is a lot of distortion and manipulation of facts in this article.

For example, how did President Obama kill the most people in the world, considering the huge body count under the bushes?

I find him a bit amusing but all the spinning of the facts gives me a headache.

I'm not a big President Obama fan, but I like to stick to the facts.

[yurbud]

13. I hope he's proven wrong

[yurbud]

14. great quote on jobs programs run through private contractors:

One thing I do know is that for every dollar a worker would earn under Obama's plan, a capitalist corporation employing the worker would earn almost two dollars. That Mexican guy balling sod along the new highway's median strip for the contractor may be making eight bucks an hour he wouldn't have otherwise earned. But he is making his employer about $15.50 on the same hour. As a younger man in Colorado I balled sod, hired the Mexicans and passed out the paychecks, so I know. First rule about capitalist math is: The capitalist owner gets to do the math.

[depakid]

15. Bagaent being long winded and boorish again- as only he can do

[Dr.Phool]

16. Kick and rec!

Well said Joe. We've been sold a bill of goods that don't exist.

[bertman]

18. A bit hyperbolic in places, but generally right on target. Great post, Tace.

[DemReadingDU]

19. evening kick