"A DIVIDED COUNTRY" AND ITS PURPORTED SAVIOR
by Paul Street
"There is a lot of talk right now," Noam Chomsky told David Barsamian last January, "about how the United States is a divided country. We have to bring it together, 'red states' and 'blue states.' In fact, it is a divided country, but not in the way that's being discussed. It's divided between the public and the power systems, the government and the corporate system." Intentionally or not, Chomsky here puts his finger on one of the key ways in which "the
Obama phenomenon is a noxious and reactionary political disease.
"Right now," Chomsky rightly adds, "the major fissure is the basic split between the public and the country's real power sectors. Both of the political parties and the business sector are well to the right of the population on a host of major issues...".
America 's "most popular politician" Barack Obama has hitched his campaign on a munificent pledge to save the Republic by overcoming the terrible divisions between "red state" (white-patriarchal and more rural and evangelical and militarist) Republicans and "blue state" (more multi-colored, feminist, gay-friendly and urban-cosmopolitan) Democrats. He's going to lead us into a glorious future of countrywide cohesion by transcending the frightening and bitter "partisan" discord inherited (he claims to think) from those awful (late) Nineteen Sixties. That's when the angry, countercultural and doctrinaire New Left cleared the way for its supposed moral equivalent (Obama thinks) the New Right. Yes, the nasty (late) Sixties nearly scared nice America to death. According to the good book of Obama, we've been crippled by horrific "culture wars" and related "partisan" conflict ever since we lost our moral and political center in the Age of Aquarius.
The "HOPE" promised by the BaRockStar is that he will be the first "post-baby-boom" leader to bring us all back together. He is the generational redeemer to guide us on the path to the rediscovery of our shared and glorious "American values." He is going to restore the Camelot of noble national unity and meaning beyond (supposedly) petty and dysfunctional squabbles over abortion, drugs, race, guns, gender, gay rights, imperialism/militarism, and the like.
Specially chosen for this great mission (on a global scale as well) by his distinctive multi-cultural background (he is the son of a white women from Kansas and a black man from Kenya and was raised by white grandparents in Hawaii and spent four years growing up in Indonesia - hooray!), he is going to un-part the Red State/Blue State sea and restore the nation's "common ground." He is the affirmative, non-threatening but all-knowing answer to Rodney King's question: "can't well all just get along?" He is going to heal us, binding rich and poor, black and white, "oppressed" and "oppressor" together in ties of shared "empathy" and agreement.
In other words, he's a narcissistic and reactionary pain in the ass – and a tool of the business class. :hide:
More. . .
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=14432
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