The more things change…
Obama ordered Gitmo closed, but Gitmo is still Gitmo. Obama ordered the end of torture, but did not stop secret prisons, renditions or sending suspected terrorists (usually completely innocent busboys and shepherds) to third party torturers. Obama ordered the terror trials at Gitmo stopped but the presiding judge told his new president to go fuck himself. Obama played the three hear-no, see-no and speak-no evil monkeys when it came to Gaza. His administration continues to parrot the discredited ruminations about “terror” which the Bush Administration used to make itself into the greatest war crimes abuser since (insert your favorite evildoer here).
In another words, except for words, Obama has done nothing in the foreign policy realm to reverse the catastrophic travesty of the horrific Bush regime. Obama is a captive of the Kissinger/Brezinski/CFR world view which deconstructs flesh and blood human tapestry into coldly calculated real-politikal chess movements. Let’s be clear, age does not guarantee wisdom and the wisdom of some of these old men Obama looks to for counsel makes meatloaf look like Sophocles.
What about domestically? The sky is falling!!! The sky is falling mostly because of the Republicans who are nothing but neo-paleo-nutjobs whose entire political cosmology is the destruction of the common man. Republicans are to evil what a syringe is to heroin; the delivery mechanism.
For the last fifty years the Republicans have bribed, coerced, threatened and fear-mongered their way to the greatest wealth confiscation in the history of the known Octi-dimensional universe with their insane ideological reverse-Robin Hood, trickle-down, voodoo economical witchcraft which believes a dehydrated man can be saved with drop of water. Republicans waged a class war which fulfilled the prophecy of Marx and fomented the demise of capitalism as religion (which is a good thing, except the religion was shattered through the victim-hood of billions of innocent people). Republicans and their supporters, who are legion, (which speaks volumes for a dumbed-down, propagandized and cynically misinformed citizenry) have waged a culture war which pits narrow-minded bigotry against universal suffrage. Their culture of LIFE is expressive of nothing more than a fear of DEATH. They convey unbridled glee to implement Christian sharian law which sets man’s quest for liberty and self-determination back by about 5,000 years.
Republicans are the past. They are relics of a brief but potent era of get-rich-quick ponzi schemes and naked neo-liberalism which fueled men to zealously reach for personal fortune over the common wealth. (It don’t matter if he’s heavy he ain’t my brother.)
And yet, what is the common wisdom of The New Democrats under President Obama?
Treat the traitorous, un-repentant opposition like human beings. Hear their concerns. Address their beefs. Incorporate their ideas. Assuage their feelings.
Just like they did at Nuremburg. Oh, no, wait, at Nuremburg they hung the bastards.
But in America? Bush takes up bridge and Cheney chillingly continues his manically genocidal rhetoric as though he’s won a post-Super Bowl trip to Disneyland.
And what have we ended up with? After a landslide Democratic election which handed the Dems solid majorities and a president with a mandate for change – what does the Stimulus bill look like?
It looks like the Republicans are still in charge. It’s deja trickle-down all over again.
The Stimulus package should cost two-trillion dollars and none of it should be tax cuts. To compromise away the principle to invest in the working class in favor of über welfare for the rich in order to get three votes so an appearance of “bipartisan” stimulus can be achieved is pathetic. The pundits and pros will place their bets on how much this total political capitulation to complete idiots calms the panic of an American family broke, broken and completely overwhelmed with hand-to-mouth reality while politicians play their games which result in nothing more than politics as usual.
And when the economy gets worse and the proposed million or two new jobs created can’t keep pace with the four or five million new jobs lost what then? How much more into hock can the political class, at the behest of the elites who run this frigging world, carry us against our will and without our resistance?
What President Obama should do instead of playing Joe Cool and trying to be everybody’s best friend is declare a national economic emergency, suspend the government, and use the extra-Constitutional unitary-executive-war-powers accrued to the Office of the President by the last war criminal in the seat of power, and by fiat, shell out a trillion smackers to the states, completely earmarked and properly accounted for specific works projects at the local level. Then take another trillion or so and retool the industrial base of the country for the 22nd Century.
In return for this largesse of the American People to itself – as charity begins at home – Corporations who benefit, must yield some of their sovereignty to regulation, oversight and social responsibility. In addition, because we love our children and grandchildren so, we will forgive ourselves the debt we’ve rung up which is directly attributable to our loss of diligence in preserving our Republic. We were lax. Perhaps we were too trusting. Maybe there is a gap between our ideal of brotherly love versus the reality of “there’s a sucker born every minute.” We delegated too much power to our representatives without proper oversight and accountability. We allowed our political system to be dominated by special interest money and watched the cost of campaigns skyrocket and media company profits balloon because, in spite of the truth, the airwaves are not public domain but private property and corporations decide the news, the views and the conclusions. For a myriad of reasons the American People lost control of its own system of government for, of and by us. We’ve been grifted by shysters, barkers and Machiavellian hobgoblins who create desolation for sport and call it “freedom.” As Hardy said to Laurel – “this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” And now we’ve got to get out.
What the American People must force their political representatives to do is declare a one time American Jubilee to wipe the public debt-slate clean and begin anew with an aim toward building a society based upon humanitarian principles instead of bureaucratic loopholes.
We elected Barack Obama for one reason. We trusted him to do what is right. We believe him a man of virtue in a world of corruption. We elected him because as the world goes to hell in a hand-basket the last person we need at the political helm is another of Satan’s spawn like we’ve had the last decade.
Unless Obama does something radical he will fail. It is not possible to re-float the Titanic. And it shouldn’t be tried. Judging from the evidence so far, the world is run by a conglomeration of war lords and banksters. Crooks and hitmen. Business executives and Blackwater bodyguards.
It is a very rare man or woman who can wrestle with the devil and not get burnt. And playing patty-cake with Republicans is not building a new era of bipartisanship but a new era of amnesia as we forget the war crimes, crimes against humanity, economic barbarism, orgies of injustice, cruelty and tragedian hubris which marks the fall of empire as a child’s game of connect.the.dots traces a barnyard animal.
Pouring money onto a fire does not put the fire out, but an understanding to what fuels the fire so as to starve the cause. And what’s fueling our fire is neo-liberalism run amok, hair-on-fire neo-conservatism and a refusal to bring the banking class to heel. It’s not a question of nationalizing banks it’s a question of whether banks have privatized the nation. Are we the USA Inc.? If it’s one thing we know is a corporation is not a democracy. It’s not a matter of re-floating institutions to continue their economic crimes against suckers born every minute, but of re-instituting a banking and monetary system where currency value is backed by a basket of real commodities, lending is a responsible ratio of reserve assets and usury is considered a necessary evil to cover costs and not a road to dynastic riches.
What should be clear to everyone by now is a lot of people have ideas but no one has the solution to the global nightmare facing us at the moment. Globalism is revealed as nothing but house-of-cards corporatism (as opposed to a shiny-happy global village of satisfied workers, contented consumers and utopian market self-regulation which knows people better than people and anticipates their happiness before they’re even aware they have a need) but the globalists can’t smell the stench of corrupt decay for all the perfumery of Marie Antoinette capitalism which has morphed into existence over the last few generations.
I hate to say it like this but America is at the moment of one of those Hollywood movies where the car has skidded off the road and hangs precariously on a bridge overlooking a raging river. A literal life and death balancing act. Can we coordinate our escape together before we plunge to our deaths? Can we cooperate long enough to synchronize our movements? Or do we kiss our collective ass goodbye?
Frankly, with Republicans in the car?
So far the quest for bipartisanship has been an exercise in infantilism. Instead of taking responsibility for the debacle wrought by their policies Republicans act as if they were born yesterday on third base with a silver spoon in their mouth and Reaganomics in their soul with absolutely no recollection of their complicity in catastrophe on a Biblical scale.
While America voted for change, what we get from the so-called Stimulus package, diluted and compromised to death, is some spare change. The serious change is going to the usual suspects – hundreds and hundreds more billions than they’ve already gotten – while the People get a photo-op of shiny happy politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth.
Obama is no chump. But so far change is but a gleam in the eye.
