Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Power of Habit

Or should I say: "The Audacity of [vague] Hope"?

So many Americans, who otherwise have their heads screwed-on properly, are getting really excited about the career trajectory of Barack Obama.

Who are we talking about again? A Democratic presidential candidate. You remember the Democrats don't you? Elected to end the war in Iraq and punish 8 years of Repug corruption and lawlessness, and who have instead voted funds to prolong the war, and aid and abet in bush II's corruption and lawlessness.

Barack Obama, whose "electrifying" speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was actually a bunch of meaningless pap, and the guy who made Joe Lieberman his "mentor" in the Senate, is neck-and-neck with the epitome of what's wrong with the system, Hillary Clinton, ... and people are getting excited???

Stop wasting your time.

Really, check out "The Obama Illusion" from Z Magazine, ... and then cough-up some dough to support Znet/Zcommunications.org

Never mind that Obama’s speech scaled new heights of cringing, pseudo-patriotic nausea-inducement by making disturbing “hope” parallels between: “the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs,” “the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta,” and the “hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him.” The lieutenant referred to in his speech was Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose government’s imperial right to “patrol” great rivers on the other side of the world during the 1960s Obama took as axiomatic. The “skinny kid” referred to a young Obama, grooming himself for a Harvard education while attending an elite private school and living with his white grandparents in sunny Hawaii. The connection with singing slaves? A shared belief in what Obama called “God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation—a belief that there are better days ahead.” Yes, the brutalized black slaves of racist antebellum America were looking forward to the glorious white-imperialist rape of Southeast Asia when their faith in “better days” would find glorious realization in the napalming of Vietnamese children, the images of which shocked Martin Luther King, Jr. into denouncing the Vietnam war in strident and forceful terms.

4 comments:

Kuri said...

I agree with what you're saying - this guy says nothing. Unfortunately, I think PR pap is precisely what USians are looking for: something neatly packaged, vague and optimistic. So much of society and communications is oriented this way anyway. They won't buy policy; they want a story.

On my more pessimistic days, I think that Canadians are probably the same and it's only our Parliamentary system that keeps it in check.

thwap said...

While it might be what they're trained to look for and expect, Obama's conformance to the system isn't going to gratify anyone who voted for him "hoping" for "change."

Too true. People want a "story," ... and a simplistic story at that.

I think Canada's system of the executive in the legislature, rather than the separation of powers, has done something to produce a better calibre of leadership overall, but i think more is owed to the challenges to complacency of Quebec nationalism, and the gift of historic chance that made social democracy so enduring here. Both of those viewpoints challenge the hegemony of mindless, triumphant capitalism that the US system represents.

If profit maximization is your god, your politics can't help but be shallow, corrupt, and inhuman.

JimBobby said...

Whooee! I reckon if anybody wants to get elected over in Merka, they gotta appeal to teh voters. Merkans don't like eggheads. They like good ol' boys. They like war heroes. They like preachers. They like people who reflect themselves -- uninformed, poorly educated, apathetic, glib, etc.

I ain't sayin' Obama's any brainiac or the second coming of JFK. I agree it's a tweedle dee and tweedle dumbass race anymore. Noboby oughta have any great expectations.

That said, it is essential that the Dems win. A Republican victory will validate everything Bush did.

I still have doubts that the Merkans would elect a black man OR a woman. It's lookin' better fer Obama wrt the nomination. Can he get elected president? Can Hillary?

Patriotic pap gets votes. Even if Obama was the smartest feller in the entire history of mankind, he'd still need to dumb it down and wave the flag if he wanted to be elected by Merkan voters.

That's politics, I s'pose.

JB

thwap said...

To that extent, this election season is interesting. There's this irrational barrier that needs to be crossed.

It's a shame that it has to be between two first-timers.

But then, it's a shame that Canada had to go through our first female PM with Kim Campbell.