Here we
go again. With utter predictability, Obama is rerunning the con game that got
him elected in the first place, cruelly playing on people's hopes and thirst
for progressive change in America. The same fraudulent political feints, empty
promises, heartfelt-sounding attempts to mislead.
Obama's
“State of the Union” would have been a great speech, if it had been delivered by
someone running against Obama. As it is, it takes breathtaking
gall for Obama to deliver it. Some examples:
“And
tonight, I’m asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal
prosecutors and leading state attorney general to expand our investigations
into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the
housing crisis. (Applause.) This new unit will hold accountable those who
broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era
of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”
Tonight?
You’ve had three years to do that. This is a problem that predated your
election, pal. Obama has protected the banks for the last three years. Even
megacrook Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide infamy got a pass. What about all those
junk mortgages packaged as AAA investment grade, with the connivance of the
(pseudo-)rating agencies? Obama’s been yammering about “assistance to
homeowners” for years now, with next to no action. He’s already set up several
phony “assistance” programs for show, to issue press releases. Come to think of
this, his entire speech read like one long press release.
And there’s
picayune stuff like this:
“Some of
this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix
that. Send me a bill that bans insider
trading by members of Congress; I will sign it tomorrow. (Applause.)”
Sure,
that’s a good idea. But insider trading by Congressmen is hardly the main
problem. Obama in 2008 opted out of the Federal funding system for candidates
so he could raise unlimited funds- he proceeded to raise hundreds of millions.
This time he’s aiming for even more. The focus on Congress exempting itself
from insider trading laws is a minor bit of corruption. The real problem is
that money rules the U.S. Not that Obama could change that even if he wanted
to. This is a bit of rhetorical flimflam, yet another attempt to con people
into thinking he’s on their side and against the “fat cats.” Obama’s regime has
been staffed with agents of the top financier class, like Geithner, Orszag,
Summers. Obama himself is Exhibit A in the case of how money controls politics.
[For more on Obama’s utter complicity with high finance, see "Obama Signals Green Light for Stock Fraud," TheStreet.com, Gary Weiss, 9/13/11.]
The
speech sounded like it should have been his inaugural address. In fact, some of
his tropes, like invoking his grandfather, date back to his 2004 Convention speech
that launched him into the big leagues. Every couple of years he rummages
through his closet and hauls out his tired old anecdotes and stories.
Of
course, with Obama, his words are always misleading whenever he's in his “inspirational”
mode. You have to admit, for a Chicago Daley-machine political hack, he's quite
the orator when he needs to be to rope in gullible voters. After all, what is
the purpose of rhetoric? To convince. In Obama's case, it is to convince saps
to vote for him; indeed, to invest in him their desperate hopes for change in
this oppressive system that is slowly eating them alive, economically and
spiritually.
This is
a particularly pernicious con job, as those hopes are thus neutralized by the
system by having that energy poured into a catch basin that renders them
politically impotent. Worse, the resulting disillusionment hasn't led to rage,
but to resignation and feelings of hopelessness. This is what happens when
people's minds are trapped in the psychic box prepared by the oligarchic
system, a box that prevents them from thinking of challenging the entire setup,
the two-party dictatorship that fronts for big corporate rule.
I was on
to Obama when he launched himself onto the national political stage with his
2004 peroration at the Democratic Party Convention, a speech that filled me
with disgust. I knew even then his words were phony. And I'd seen the same sham
“liberal uplift” act before, with Mario Cuomo, who also never fooled me.
Cuomo
was a Democratic New York State Governor, an alleged “liberal,” but besides silken rhetoric, the sole
evidence of Cuomo's “liberalism” was his opposition to the death penalty, a
much less “courageous” stance in NY State than Cuomo, his shills, and sections
of the media made it out to be.
In
practice Cuomo had a nasty record; his environmental record, for one thing, was
awful. The sole lasting mark he made on the state was building more prisons. So
I suppose he was “liberal” in the vein of “liberal” Republican Governor Nelson
“Butcher Of Attica” Rockefeller. Ah, for
the days when there was common ground between the two oligarchic parties!
Obama is
actually a lot more sinister than he seems. He has spent three years serving
the interests of high finance while increasing the repressiveness of the system
and setting up a system of global assassination. All the while he covers his tracks with
bullshit pretending he's trying to resist the evil designs of Republicans, when
in fact he aids and abets them, seeking only slight modifications in the GOP's
demands. Both parties in fact are bas[“Reform is code for CUT. Social Security
has already been gradually whittled down in recent years, a fact never
mentioned by the propaganda system-pardon, “the media.” [Recent example: the
GOP wants to cut the maximum duration of unemployment insurance from 99 weeks
to only 59. The Dems counteroffer? Cut it to 79! Wow, sure is great having the
Dems “fighting for” the working class! With “friends” like these...]
How many
times do progressives and assorted do-good interest groups need to be betrayed
before decisively breaking with the Democratic Party? Like a wife-batterer or
an abusive boyfriend swearing his enduring love, the Democratic Party leads on
and exploits progressives and anyone who yearns for a more humane United States
(really an oxymoron for an Empire, as Empires as innately anti-human). Various
progressives consider themselves lucky to get a meeting with White House or
Congressional aides. Mere “access,” a few times a year, is their payoff for
slavishly delivering their votes to the Dems. If only they had a tenth of the
militancy of the GOP's reactionary “base”! GOP party leaders prostrate
themselves trying to appease the radical right. Of course, it helps to elect
true believers. Where are the leftwing versions of the Tea Party House members?
One
thing I should take note of- the speech was very militaristic. Obama devoted
paragraphs at both the beginning and ending of the speech to militaristic
chest-thumping, extolling the systematic extermination of Al-Qaeda targets and
so forth. He couldn’t seem to get enough of the tough talk, in fact.
taboo-truths.blogspot.com
jasonzenith.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment