Commentary By Ron Beasley
It took me a while to end my holiday hiatus because I really didn't know what to say. I realized over the holidays that I was a fool to believe that when Obama talked about change during the campaign he really meant it. There are a lot of rich and powerful people that like things just the way they are and see anything but superficial change as the enemy. And powerful they are - if Obama had not made arrangements with them he would never have been elected. I suspect it was the same with Bill Clinton. Bush started the "bankster bailout and Obama chose "banksters" as his economic team and continued the policy. Obama always did talk tough on Afghanistan because he knew he had to - like the "banksters" the military industrial complex is powerful. Obama talked about health care reform but knew his masters were the medical industrial complex.
Dave wrote about the wasted decade the other day. As much as I would like to blame the Bush/Cheney cabal for all of this I can't - for most Americans it's three wasted decades as Dave explains below. When Ronald Reagan was elected the sociopathic oligarchs - aka fascists - took control of the country and main street suffered while Wall Street thrived.
Change is not possible because the oligarchs control the politicians and the media - the D's and the R's are irrelevant. The only optimistic development I see is yes, the "teabagger" movement. It may have been created by the oligarchs to attack Obama but in many cases they are upset about the same things we progressives are.
- Their jobs going overseas - "free trade"
- The Wall Street/bankster bailout
There may be an element of bigotry and for the most part the teabaggers are under informed and don't really understand what socialism and fascism mean but in the end it's the two bullets above that have them upset. This is an energy that we can harness. Go to the next teabagger event in your area and carry a sign that says "jail for the banksters" or "bring out jobs back from China". Work with the Ron Paul supporters to end out foreign misadventures.
Chomsky made a similar observation re: "tea-bag" groups in a talk he gave to the Commonwealth Club in October. Here's a link to the transcript at the ABC (the A is for Australian).
ReplyDeleteSlavoj Zizek also makes a similar, but more chilling I think, point on p.73 of his latest book "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce" if you substitute tea-bag for Taliban, christian for Islamo and Western for Muslim:
"What phenomena such as the rise of the Taliban demonstrate is that Walter Benjamin's old thesis that "every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution" not only still holds true today, but is perhaps even more pertinent than ever. Liberals like to point out similarities between Left and Right "extremisms": Hitler's terror and death camps initiated by Bolshevik terror and the Gulags; the Leninist form of the party is kept alive in al-Qaeda- yes, but what does all this mean? It can also be read as an indication of how fascism literally replaces (takes the place of) Leftist revolution: its rise is the Left's failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, a dissatisfaction, which the Left was not able to mobilize. And does the same not hold for so called "Islamo-Fascism"? Is the rise of radical Islamism not exactly correlative to the disappearance of the secular Left in Muslim countries?
Good post, Ron. My reaction to the election was "the Reagan Revolution is over." And as the threat of a global financial meltdown pointed to a need for financial regulatory reform even more pressing than the need for changes in health care, I thought changes would be as inevitable as the birth of a baby ending a pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteAll those expectations have proved wrong. What looked like a pregnancy turns out to have been a malignant tumor. And as for the Reagan Revolution being over, it seems instead just past another milestone with its talons tearing deeper into the national economic flesh.
Chomsky has lost none of his fire but voices like his (as well as yours, mine and geoff's) are getting fainter. Digby rarely posts videos, but she put up one the other day that I had already caught via vial email from a source usually swimming in Fox Kool-ade. Very polished.
Now with the announced retirements of Dorgan and Dodd, and yesterday's display of frustration by Schwarzenegger I'm having flashbacks of 1996. It's too soon to know where it will end, but something is under way that may take several years to play out and will put down a mark that will be remembered for years to come.
Every politician needs a nickname. I've finally decided on one for Mr. Obama: "Big Mac".
ReplyDelete"As an American, i should be well-trained in this game; i�ve eaten enough Big Mac�s to know that they look nothing like the advertising picture used to entice me. Lukewarm, grey �meat�. Ah yes, move over Big Dog, Big Mac is running the show now."
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/01/07/judgment-and-the-burnt-weeny-terror-plot/