Last night I almost wrote an extremely similar piece to what Chris Hedges published yesterday for this blog. Like Hedges I voted for America's most honest and effective citizen, Ralph Nader, for president in 2008 (in my case for the fourth consecutive election; following the Clinton betrayals on everything from NAFTA to logging to Iraq to Jocelyn Elders I wrote Nader in back in '96). I took a deep breath and realized that it'd take hours, and punted.Very fortunately Hedges beat me to the punch, so I just linked to the excellent piece above.It begins like this, then gets better:"Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered. "
The Democrats in general and Obama in particular have transparently been corporate sell-outs since the 1980s at least... provided you pay a modicum of attention and don't throw all your memories of what they do down an Orwellian memory hole. The only two campaign promises Obama has kept have been to ramp up the unconstitutional AfPak war and to give a trillion dollars to his criminal bankster buddies. These were the concrete things he told you he was going to do, and as he is a bought handmaiden of power I believed him. That's why I wouldn't vote for him. America's pseudo-liberals have their panties in a twist because he actually kept these promises.
As for the empty "Change" and "Hope" slogans, the snips and snails and rainbow fucking puppy dog tails ... this was Madison Avenue at its worst; I was hoping any non-tard 12 year old would notice that these aren't even full thoughts let alone action plans. These are just Rorshach keywords that likely tested well in focus groups; you can fill them with whatever you'd like them to mean, which is the same as filling them with no meaning at all.
"Exxon-Mobil: Change!"
"Enron - Hope!"
"Benito Mussolini - Change!"
"Alka-Seltzer - Hope!"
Obama is a walking corporate sell-out and America's pathetic "liberals" did a lot of his marketing for free. Heck, many even ponied up little donations to pile on the Goldman Sachs money, in the vain hope that your $10 would buy you similar access. Did you save the receipt? Are people finally going to wise up and vote for non-major party candidates next time 'round? Am I going to to see people at marches for a change, like before the liberals lined up behind John "Surge" Kerry to kill the anti-war movement five long fucking years ago?
Sigghhhh...
For months now I've been trying to gird myself for a painful post on Obama-as-not-an-African-American, which will eventually be forthcoming.
Hey folks. Sorry I missed doing this post last week. Between the holidays, continued reverberations from the move and other projects things really caught up with me. Hope your Xmas was great and have a happy and safe new year!
