Barack Obama's Deceptive Left Impression

As I thought I was saying...

"In John Carpenter\'s campy science-fiction/horror movie \'They Live,\' America is ruled by aliens disguised as members of the business and professional elite. The extraterrestrials manipulate the human mass through subtle, subliminal forms of thought control encoded in media content that both advances and hides the colonizers\' international (in fact intergalactic) agenda of economic exploitation. They speak in hushed tones to one another through small radios installed in Rolex watches that symbolize their exalted class status while providing a safe conduit for intra-alien communication. In an underground complex whose existence is kept secret from the hated human herd, the colonizers speak openly and idealistically of their real objectives to large audiences of fellow aliens and a minority of co-opted human collaborators. They are resisted by a dedicated human cadre that has discovered how to manufacture special sunglasses that decode the numbing messages of the mass media and reveal the hidden alien identity of the infiltrators"

Hopefully my forthcoming book on the Obama phenomenon will work like the sunglasses in Carpenter\'s flick.

Joey - that\'s an amazing font to see on ZNet. I used to be slam-dunk certain I could do the tactical voting/nose-holding thing to block McCain (I live in a contested state), but I\'m no no longer sure I could pull that off. Even I have been taken aback by how coldly and quickly and hard Obama has been ready to kick the progressive base in the face (and in other bodily regions).

The FISA vote made me vomit a little longer than I usually have to after Obama pulls one of his rightward moves.  I will tell you from personal experience (I  was in Chicago civil rights and policy community to some extent 1999-2005) that Obama and his insiders and pals have sheer and unmitigated contempt for the Left.  It\'s very Chicago machine and very Harvard and very University of Chicago and very bourgeois... all at once.

 I hate (yes, sadly) these elitist metropoltian corporate-neoliberal folks (give me an open right wing Republican anyday over these slippery/squishy bastards any day) and they come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors. There\'s a key part of the Obama cadre that knows  completely what he is all about and it is what they are all about.  His bourgeois narcissism and coordinator class know it all authoritarianism is their bourgeois narcissism and authoritarianism. 

They aren\'t deluded at all.  They\'re the corporate aliens from the John Carpenter movie "They Live".... just like their hero the BaRockstar..     

Here\'s something I wrote about that movie in 1999:

In John Carpenter\'s campy science-

For me the most insightful, and useful, part of your commentary Paul is this:

‘Still, I do not entirely blame many progressive Obamanists for becoming excessively invested in "their" corporate candidate. Obama likes to complain that voters see him as a blank sheet on to which they project their own particular world view and aspirations. But he knows very well that he and his corporate image and marketing consultants have done their best to sell Obama as a man for all moral and ideological seasons (as well they "should" given the ideology-blurring logic of the American "winner-take-all" "two party" and candidate-centered elections system). And Obama knows very well that his campaign has responded to widespread progressive sentiments and anger (fed by eight incredibly reactionary and plutocratic years under George W. Bush) by working to create the false impression among certain targeted audiences that he is a progressive, populist, and peace-oriented opponent of Empire and Inequality, Inc.”’

And particularly to the point and useful: ‘as well they "should" given the ideology-blurring logic of the American "winner-take-all" "two party" and candidate-centered elections system...’ which clearly identifies for me what must become our top long term priority progressive goal, otherwise it will be forever thus without end.

As to voting for Obama in particular or not, I find myself much like you by this point. I will not know until I cast my ballot here in Virginia, IF I cast a ballot at all, who I will vote for. Fending off the election of McCain is beginning to seem not enough reason to vote for Obama, even as to who will make supreme court nominees, typically the last and assertedly best, last gasp, argument not to allow the election of McCain.

Whichever of the two is elected, it will make only marginal differences in the whole cloth of the supreme court whoever new is appointed. The court has become the supreme champion of the elites, if in fact not the very apex of the pyramid, whose only role seems to be to stave off revolution by us common folk.

For me the saddest part in all this is the waste I have come to feel regarding any sense of justice and pride I had been feeling at the possible election of an African American as president.

If he chooses John Edwards as his vice presidential nominee, I might be given pause. We’ll see.

/s/ Joey

  A  nice summary of the obvious contradictions between Obama\'s primary campaign rehtoric and his now presidential campaign rhetoric. Thanks for linking to the excellent Reed article, as I had not yet read it.

Obama cleverly courted the \'left\' of Democratic party to outflank the "centrist" Clinton pt deux and now apparently believes he must switch gears to court the Southern & Midwestern swing states (and even more importantly, placate the corporate purse-holders). In so doing, Obama leaves himself wide open to attacks of "flip-flopping" from the consumate posturer/flip-flopper McCain. Of course, Obama was never really a progressive candidate to begin with, only mildly so even compared to Clinton.

Given the efficacy of the Rove teams\' attacks on Kerry in exactly the areas where Bush was the weakest (draft-doding in the champagne squadron while Kerry was participating in that particular war of agression), and the total ineptitude of Democratic campaigning generally I cannot help but wonder if the "new" Obama is again shooting himself in the foot by prematurely abandoning his leftward rhetoric.

Here is a brilliant and deeply knowledgeable intervention on Obamaism from Adolph Reed, Jr: "Where Obamaism Seems to Be Going," Black Agenda Report (July 16, 2008)

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=697&Itemid=1

Ann you really dropped the ball here.  Read the article\'s last paragraph on why the book. 

You\'re wrong about everyone who pays attention getting it. I\'ve got five people on my block who "pay attention" 9read all the Obama stories in the press and so on)  and don\'t get it.

Obama is friendly to is about more than global capital.It;s about all of Dr. King\'s "triple evils that are interrealered" (racism. classism, and imeprialism) and more.   

You\'re  still just a bit too fond of  Obama, as is suggested in your line about "community empowerment." 

The book is a study of much more than just this election and candidate: it uses the Obama phenomeon to examine the deep historical nature and future of U.S. political culture, the nature of the Democratic Party and the American party and elections system in the 20th and 21st centuries, the problems of class, race, and empire, and the framework of what a progressive agenda might look like for real...I could go on. This is very important.

The book is not meant to "discourage" his supporters and finds some real saving grace in the Obama phenomenon once it is udnerstood for what it really is and not for what so many wish it was.  I tell nobody to vote for Mad Bomber McCain.  I cautiously recomend voting to block McCain in contested states (no longer sure I can personally act on that advice after the FISA vote but it\'s early).  I talk about how to surf the Obama wave and  push it in progressive directions

The notion that learning the reality of something is inerently to become discouraged in a negative or reactionary way is...well, a frightening idea to advance.  Always start with the truth if you don\'t wishe your practice to be crippled out of the box by delusion.  

I don\'t think he\'s going to lose and certainly not  because of me. 

The media love has not stopped...my God you should have seen the difference between how Tom Brokaw trteated the McCain surrogate and how he treated the Obama surrogate on "Meet Tim Russert" (i mean "Meet the Press") last Sunday. - just one example of things that are being surveyed and quanitified as we write here. 

You haven\'t read the book (to be released in August) and therefore have only the slightest idea as to its full argument, structure, narrative, sources, endorsements, conclusions/prescriptions and so forth. Your preemptive dismissal smacks of the sort of anti-intellectualism that is so deeply reinforced by the culture of the Web, where we think it is sufficient to say  " a blogger says this" and "a blogger says that."  Snap judgments like yours here are endemic in the virtual world of the Web.

The Internet is reinforcing a false sense of knowing all when one really knows little (television does this too) and is advancing absurdly rapid judgements like your unfortunate advance dismissal!. 

A blogger who\'s profession involves listening to focus groups says that everything important is said after the "but". You\'re right about Obama, but everybody who pays attention knows that by now. He is being pecked to death from the left and the right, treated less fairly than McCain by the media, and may lose. You\'re right that he\'s friendly to global capital, but he\'s smart, cool-headed, knowledgeable, diplomatic, listens well, and supports community empowerment. He\'s better in every way than McCain. Why write a book to discourage his supporters?

I don\'t know why progressives are surprised by Obama\'s Right turn. This is cookie-cutter Democratic politics: Talk the progressive talk a year before the election, then when all the labor union and other endorsements are swept up, then turn right with "reassessments" and in the case of the telecom cave-in, offer insincere regrets that "compromise was necessary." Now Obama is veering rignt with talk of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

It\'s the same old, some old political strategy. Nothing new here. As Nader has been quoted, the progressive community has yet to learn how to play poker. One suggestion is to withold endorsements, contingent on sustained policy postions and actions. The progressive community, at large, is still politically naive.

There\'s nothing deceptive about Obama\'s politics taken in the historical context. We should all know he\'s another Clinton. Talk peace; drop bombs. How can we learn this lesson to good effect as a political block? The Democrats of late may drop fewer bombs than Republicans, thus we are down to the proverbial lesser of two evils.

Surely, the progressive community could do better. The lack of solidarity itself should scream out at us. Why are both Nader and McKinney running for president on progressive platforms? Do the two know each other exist? The progressive community is not even on the same planet, and thus grasping at illusions that the Democratic Party will suddenly find institutional integrity seems to be a popular, but painful, pastime.

We can do better than live through Democratic Party "Groundhog Day."

I\'d like to thank Paul Street for this.

This is an important reminder to we the people that hope and change do NOT come from the candidates.  Change comes from those of us who will not sit quietly by while business as usual is conducted in our name.  Hope comes from believing that we CAN influence policy.  I like Obama\'s rhetoric.  It\'s firing people up.  But to pin him as saviour, thinking voting him into office will make our world a better place is folly.  To believe the Democrats will lead us into a new era fo equity and morality is desperate thinking.  The politicians as a whole do not want change.  it is WE THE PEOPLE who must make the difference by standing up, united and demanding truth and accountability.  It is US who will bring about these changes, not the parties, and not the candidates.