This is to give A&E residence to a spectacular article with an original PI entry at http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=38455
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“Anyone Out There”? Reflections on the Obama Ascendancy and Progressive Surrender
November 10, 2008 By Paul Street

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19414

excerpt:

If there is anyone out there who still questions the power of our democracy, this is you answer.

- Barack Obama on the night of his election to the United States presidency

CHANGES "FROM" OBAMA?

Recently a Canadian radio station asked me (and Bill Fletcher and Alexander Cockburn) the following questions: "what changes do you expect from an Obama presidency?"

The change I care about won't come "from" and Obama (or any other) United States presidency. It won't come from the top down. And it's not about the crystal ball.

My book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?p... that Obama is strongly beholden to and identified with leading centers of concentrated economic and political power - large corporations and Wall Street, the Pentagon, and the foreign policy establishment. He never would have gotten to where he is today by rocking these dominant institutional boats.

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama," Ryan Lizza noted last July in The New Yorker, "is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them" (Lizza 2008)

As Edward S. Herman and David Peterson observe in an important recent Monthly Review article, "Obama has placated establishment circles on virtually every front imaginable, the candidate of ‘change we can believe in' has visited interest group after interest group to promise them that they needn't fear any change in the way they're familiar with doing business" (Herman and Peterson 2008).

It's not for nothing that Obama got $33 million from the finance, real estate and insurance industries (Center for Responsive Politics 2008)or that received remarkably favorable treatment from the monopoly media (Street 2008, pp.59-72).

Obama says that the U.S. owes the world no apology for any of its recent foreign policies (see Street 2008a for details and sources). He has repeatedly and absurdly claimed that "we" invaded Iraq with the "best of intentions" (democracy promotion and the like) and in order to help it (Street 2008, pp. 146-155, sub-titled "Obama, Iraq, and the Doctrine of Good Intentions"). He is a strong proponent of U.S. global military supremacy, arguing (in the Council of Foreign Relations' journal Foreign Affairs last year) that "The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew" and adding that "we must not rule out using military force" in pursuit of "our vital interests."

<snipped>

The first article is dated Monday and this article is dated Wednesday.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=879&Itemid=1
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by Paul Street

Barack Obama and his followers continue to revise the history of his ascendance, pretending his campaign was rooted among the "outsiders." The public line is a fiction, as even the most rudimentary research reveals. In fact, Obama's own words document his intense courtship of the rich and powerful. Unfortunately, "few if any of" Obama's staunchest supporters "have bothered to read a single solitary word of Obama's blatantly imperial, nationalist, and militarist foreign policy speeches and writings," says the author. "And my sense is they never will."



Barack Obama: The Empire's New Clothes
by Paul Street

"Obama is an act of system-legitimizing brilliance."

"This is bigger than life itself. When I was coming up, I always thought they put in who they wanted to put in. I didn't think my vote mattered. But I don't think that anymore."

The speaker of these words is Deddrick Battle, a black janitor who grew up in St. Louis's notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing projects during the 1950s and 1960s.

Battle was speaking about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. He was quoted on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times in a story about the pride many African Americans are naturally feeling in Obama's candidacy. The story contained numerous examples of American blacks who have been encouraged by the Obama phenomenon to think for the first time that "politics is for them, too" [1].

But, as The New York Times' editors certainly know, "they" still "put in who they want to put in" to no small extent. The predominantly white U.S. business and political establishment still makes sure that nobody who questions dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines can make a serious ("viable") run for higher office - the presidency, above all. It does this by denying adequate campaign funding (absolutely essential to success in an age of super-expensive, media-driven campaigns) and favorable media treatment (without which a successful campaign is unimaginable at the current stage of corporate media consolidation and power) to candidates who step beyond the narrow boundaries of elite opinion. Thanks to these critical electoral filters and to the legally mandated U.S. winner-take-all "two party" system [2], a candidate who even remotely questions corporate and imperial power is not permitted to make a strong bid for the presidency.

Barack Obama is no exception to the rule. Anyone who thinks he could have risen to power without prior and ongoing ruling class approval is living in a dream world.

An Early and ‘Quieter Audition' with the ‘Moneyed Establishment.'

Conventional wisdom holds that Obama entered national politics with his instantly famous keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. But, as Ken Silverstein noted in Harper's in the fall of 2006, "If the speech was his debut to the wider American public, he had already undergone an equally successful but much quieter audition with Democratic Party leaders and fund-raisers, without whose support he would surely never have been chosen for such a prominent role at the convention."

<snipped>

I am increasingly becoming ill at ease with an Obama presidency. I will admit; I wanted to believe in the miracle. I wanted so see the same stars of home that every one else saw in him. I wanted to see the Emperors new clothes, but saw only a naked man parading about with yet another large raft of lies.

While all my peers and friends went out on election night and got them selves drunk, I remained in, unable to be moved by the lie, unable to deceive myself as others seem to do with ease. As a part of Democracy for America, the task before me is now even more insurmountable than it was before; nothing has change, save for the people who dance in delusions.

I have always had doubts. The writing was on the wall for all to see when Obama kicked progressives in the teeth to support the FISA bill. But the very next day, they were out walking the streets for him, rationalizing away his vote, his decision, and his reasoning. His entire campaign, though build on hope, was frequently interrupted by shameless displays of beltway cronyism. His appearance before APAC, his admonishment of the Bush Impeachment effort, his platform to escalate the war in Afghanistan, saber rattling against Iran, and last his support for the Bernaki bailout.

And the betrayals keep coming, now that he has secured the nomination. With great skill and talent, he has assembled an “economic recovery team” that is as bad as any thing McCain could produce. The only saving grace about the CEO he has drawn to him, is that they are registered Democrats.

And even as the media tells me every day how Obama is hitting the ground running, refusing to make the same mistakes as Clinton did when he assembled his transition team, the apparent fact that Obama mealy took Clinton’s old list of crony capitalists and blew the dust off hardly seems like hitting the ground running, any more than it seems like not making Clinton’s mistakes. When it comes to the ailing economy, Obama seems only interested in stockpiling gasoline instead of water.

And meanwhile, the Bush demonstration has gone on a last minute treasury raid, stealing sums so vast to make the cost of the Iraq war seem quaint in comparison. And Obama is strangely silent, even assuring the nation that Bush is still “our president.” What? He is “our president?”

But if all this is not depressing enough, the notion of four more years of futile battles trying to hold things together until hope could be found, of screaming into the void of the masses, is not what sends me to despair, but the fact that the handful of activist are already returning to their slumber. Even my own organization, DFA, treats the selection of the Obama cabinet like a game (look here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/activities/115 ), listing corporate cronies and elitist Democratic insiders as if they were just punch lines.

Liberal or conservative, left or right? These terms no longer hold meaning in America. Now it is only us – and them, Democrats and Republicans, blue or red. Chose your side and obey, or parish for daring to think for your self. Dare not accuse the emperor of being naked.

Just as many have predicted, the worst have happened. The centrists have retained power while the people return to their sleeping chambers. They will sleep contently, secure in the knowledge of their false democracy.

I wonder how the doom shall form in the next four years. Will Obama ever arouse the anger of those who voted for him, of those who believed in him? The insults up until this point are but a taste of things to come. But if they have not noticed by now, it is because they refuse to notice. The young voters will not question Obama, just as I did not question Clinton when I was in their place a decade ago.

I have already celebrated victory, only to watch the enemy be invited into the city by the victors. I have already spent my youth blindly defending broken promises. I have already spent my naiveté, rationalizing away the betrayals. I have already spent my youth waiting for the change to begin. I have already been deceived once; I will not allow my self to be deceived again.

But as before, I am alone again, in the land of reality. But at least this time, my eyes are open.

And I see doom before us.

The media has spun Obama’s victory as an affirmation of America’s conservative values. Even a glancing look at the actual election numbers, with Obama being the exception, reveal that liberals won by decisive margins, while centrist Democrats did not fare nearly as well. There are now even more strong liberals in Congress than ever before, but though part of the minority party, is still a minority caucus. Obama shall surly embrace the punditocracy’s reasoning of a neo-conservative America. He will rush to the right in order to plicate the skeptical conservative voter. He will abstain from persecuting their heroes or changing their ideals. Bush will leave the Whitehouse with a solute from Obama, and plenty of plutocratic accolades. Not a single charge will be filed, not a single accusation will be made, and not a single crime will be investigated.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Bill Clinton did exactly the same thing. He governed from the right, thinking it would build bridges with the opposition, and make America hole again. He did the honorable thing and presented the neo-conservative agenda like a neutral partner, interested in hearing all ideas. The result was NAFTA. Jobs fled the nation like the promised sucking sound, and the Unions, the backbone of the Democratic base, was broken – by its own defender.

Two years later, Clintion’s democrats lost control of congress. For as Clintion threw fig leaf after fig leaf, the Republicans never paused for a moment to plot his destruction. They were more than eager to take advantage of Clinton’s two years worth of shortcomings, as well as the rage and apathy of Clinton’s own base. And the rot in the Democratic Party began.

This dead flesh was never cut away, but has in fact been re-animated by Obama. The voter may indeed rise up – two years from now, and return Republicans to power. And they will return to power stronger than ever, and meaner than ever, making us look with nostalgia the oppressions of past Republican Administrations. Obama’s successor may well make us say, “At least Bush never threw us into concentration camps.”

The economy will also continue to decay. Obama will labor mightily to resurrect the very cancer that has already consumed our economy. And his efforts are already doomed. The mis-management of already scarce resources shall become irreversible, CO2 gas emissions shall grow faster as a result of the carbon markets, and corporations shall profit from the destruction. The very thing that created the problem shall be delivered as an original solution, only to fail again, and again, and again, and again.

And in the mean time, the shadows shall not remain hidden.

Even now, Republicans plot his destruction. They will not assassinate him, for that would make him into a martyr. No, they would much rather take him apart, piece by piece, scandal by scandal. Their can be no peace with this enemy.


Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. Those who refuse to learn from history, chose to be doomed.

Welcome to Soldiers for Reality.

I pull out my tombstone remark to tell you what we have going for us. We have the wiring of the human brain that has a survival mechanism that has a decider meant to chose the correct path. The only job of the decider is to be right.

Everybody is walking around like they are right or maybe in a state of suspension now that the Treasury has been hit for what some are saying will be $5 trillion. But inside of them is still that decider that only has one job and that is to be right.

"Big Lie" is something everyone at PI should know about even if it is from the Wiki entry. The Big Lie says to have one unified message and eliminate the opposing views. Well, when you do that everyone walks around thinking the message of the echo chamber has to be right. The thing is there are too many lies with too much opposition and the Big Lie cannot take opposition.

But take heart that most people know things are bad, bad wrong. In this forum you will find authors that are authorities. It is an aggregation that cannot be beaten by a few little slogans or an army of Knownothings, a dwendling army of Knownothings at that.

But take heart that there are some young people, like Genius that pops in here every once in a while, that are pretty savvy people. They don't have the decades of brainwashing we had and they have a much more vested stake in the future as their piece of it is much larger than ours.

Look at what we have learned in the last few years that we could not have conceived of years ago because the information was hidden from us. Now we have broken systems of agriculture, government, economy, medicine, education, and environment that we cannot ignore. Everything is biting us and extracting flesh and blood.

People have been betrayed by government and now they see it. People have cut off their television as it is just more betrayal of trust. All the lies that fog reality have opposition and the authorities of truth grow stronger.

Some things will have to change, because people will always want to be right even when the systems is designed to mislead them and make them a herd of fools so they might be more easily fleeced.

The voice of intellectualism is growing louder. We have a beacon to break the thoughtherding and we will.

Treason is betrayal of trust. We need to be governed by justice instead of ruled by law.

Thank you for visiting Soldiers for Reality.

I hold on faith that most people will hear this voice sooner or later. I pray that my faith in man is not poorly founded. And yet I continue to fear that it is. For it is the people who must chose to listen, and to sacrifice. Until they do that, their is no hope.

Thanks for you wisdom however.

Better to be a soldier of reality, and to die upon the plains of truth, than to be a slave for for fear, and toil for the lie that makes us afraid.

saging elder

gentle warrior

hell-firing truth

cancer-curing cannabis

Army of the Sacred Grass

Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers--Broken Lady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yJOcp32p9g