Welcome to WWL, a place for Liberal Politics, Op/Eds, Information, Rants and Just Plain Fun.
Join in the Project to enlighten Humanity and create a more Humane, Sane and Just Society for America ~ and for the World!
I consider this a Radical Gumbo, with many varied ingredients making more than the sum of its parts. We are no-holds barred, passionate and not overly PC here. Yes, Liberals can have Fangs. Jump in and be part of the cutting edge!
(Well, heck, this is where the spirited debate lies, so up top it goes! - promoted by Diane G)
I have mined this vein before. This is the most current iteration on the theme of "O, Obama...": What the fuck did you expect, really?" I wrote it as a comment on Taibbi's blog, on a post attached to very good vid I couldn't figure our how to c&p. It is the best summary of my position and reasoning on the matter that I've done so far, I think. I'd be interested in your opinion:
I have to wonder how some people still seem stupefied by of the Obamanable Snowjob-man. It is not a simple matter, but neither is it impenetrable.
The situation was this: For the last 30 years, the Busheviki, and before them, Clinton, and the Raygunauts, had created such a mess with their predatory, exploitative, manipulations ad schemes that even white people were beginning to hate them. White people, as you know, still comprise about 70% of the USer population. This is a vital bloc, if you are trying to maintain the penumbra of legitimacy without, or prior to, resorting to the expedient of jackboots.
So, the word went around that the GOP was basically gonna throw the election. The senior partners in the Party of Property more or less conceded the contest to the junior members, who eagerly threw into the fray members of two "minority" groups which had long lobbied the body politic to elect one of their number President: People of Color and women.
Regardless of which "novelty" candidate the Dems chose, they were always about 5-to-3 favorites to win, because the country was thoroughly sick of the whole depraved ensemble that had played havoc with the economy and the Constitution, and had committed war across the globe for 30 years. The GOP chose McCain, who was as close as they had to being the Chimperor, only 20 years older, sicker, meaner, dumber, and thicker between the ears. The tip-off, of course, was Palin. Never had anyone so amazingly unqualified for the job EVER been selected by a major party for a slot on the national ticket. She was (and is) a blindingly unself-conscious grifter, a parvenu of the firsts water. Ignorant, parochial, ill-educated, unread, unmannered: her selection sent the clearest POSSIBLE signal of capitulation.
And that's what they got. In place of more and older and meaner Busheviki, they got the one person who was already pre-positioned to become a ready receptacle for and symbol of all the inchoate feelings of fear and insecurity and disappointment and foreboding and desperation that had been building through the long period of oligarchic re-indenturing, through "easy credit," of the (always already predominantly white) middle class. And they licked their chops, and stood back and just waited.
And who they got was/is a "fatherless" child, a striver who was compelled by his situation to find his identity in close to absolute conformity to the norms of CorpoRat Murka, a man driven by needs for approval, admiration, belonging. A man who, although I do not know if he's ever read it, must certainly live in the condition described by WEB DuBois as
"double consciousness," a person for whom virtually every move is a compromise. A living, breathing, paradigm case of it: someone who knows that, whomsoever they see in the mirror in the morning, when they leave the house, they are always already someone "other" in the eyes of the (powerful) majority of the people with whom they must interact and from whom he is visibly distinct.
Obama's seems to be an intelligent, a reflective guy. I get the sense he knows he has been offered as a scape-goat, someone to take the fall for all the abuses heaped on the people for the last 30 or 40 years by an increasingly dictatorial, Imperial Government. It seemed to me he almost as much as admitted it the other day at the jobs "summit."
A similar fate would have befallen HRC, too. Not, perhaps, at the same level of vitriol, because a white female gets preferential treatment from the mob far more easily than a black (even by half) male. As a polity, we are far more inclined to pile on any black than on any white person. Think Tiger Woods vs Mark Sanford or John Ensign.
So, from the perspective of the folks who Own the place, Obama was far the preferable candidate. I knew this when Rupert Murdoch endorsed Obama against McCain--his motives were, of course, purely economic: he knew Obama would be GREAT for his business, compared to McCain; and besides the fix was in by that time.
So here is my quandary: How is that folks with better than average sophistication and subtlety ever imagined that a person who found himself (in this case) raised to an almost unimaginable pinnacle of celebrity, and power, and (access to) wealth, who strove to make a 'good impression,' who then won the approval and attention for which he strove so mightily, from those whom he strove to please, and was so richly rewarded, would somehow turn and nip at--far less seize and savage--the hands which had curried, and cosseted and carried him to the absolute peak of acceptability and approval.
Now granted, they dropped him there, like a cur at a crossroad...
But he was never gonna bite 'em.
Anyhoo, that's how I see it, how it feels and seems, and appears and interprets from here.
