You will recall that a massive infusion of cash into the Obama campaign was attributed to “grass roots” supporters contributing their five, ten and twenty dollars via the Internet.
Everyone bought that explanation without questioning. For that matter, how does one prove or disprove this statement? The reality is you can’t …and no one wants to be the first to dispel the fairy tale that a hope-starved nation was ready to buy … hook, line and sinker. This is exactly how it was that Obama’s presidency evolved … replete with Oprah’s anointing.
African Americans, of course, are ecstatic that “one of their own” could ascend to the highest echelons of power in their country of residence … that has harbored such a dark, and violent history for their race. Imagine, a black man as the supreme leader of a country where others of the same race have been denied so much … and continue to be denied.
The privations and oppression would end with “one of our own” at the top.
This is a script right out of Hollywood … if Hollywood were still capable of producing quality product .
Now, for those of you who have been around for the last fifty or more,or have a good grasp on history ... I want you to think back to the evening newscasts that came out of the U.S. in the days when black Americans, fed up with being third class citizens in a country that is purported to be one of the richest in the world, finally blew … and hit the streets in Watts and other areas to burn and loot in a rage of protestation that left authorities cringing while they witnessed police cars being overturned and burned in the streets. In fact, those “leaders” were beyond any capability to lead during those riots, if indeed, they ever were. An out of control mob, hell bent on destruction and driven by two hundred years of oppression and denial is next to impossible to calm. Paralyzed by abject fear, those charged with upholding law watched helplessly as businesses were first looted and then burned to the ground as kinetic rage joined opportunity.
Fast forward to the human degradation spawned by “Katrina” in New Orleans and environs, and, once again we saw what happens when apathetic leaders were unmasked … ineffective and incapable … evidence again of the fragility of leadership.
The crisis in the United States economy today is the scaled up equivalent of what happened in New Orleans, with implications far more damaging than even the so called experts can ever know. Greed and mismanagement and a complete lack of political will … coupled with the fact that governments have become subservient to organizations they should be controlling through well considered regulations are responsible for what’s happening right now.
Those authorities claiming they did not see the current economic mess that is the United States,are unadulterated liars. This is the nation whose successive administrations have manipulated its people into wars so profiteers could benefit and allowed the real assassins of two of its political powerhouses, the Kennedy brothers, to remain free. And that’s not counting all of the young men and women who went to their untimely deaths in Vietnam and the Middle East … so elitist sleaze like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and their confreres could plunder and profit with impunity.
So it was that the affable and well spoken Barack Obama was manoeuvered into the presidency of a country that likes to bill itself as “the most powerful nation in the world”.
Considering all that continues to roil on Wall Street and the repercussions that continue to emanate outwardly, the working classes, a large percentage of them being African Americans, should have rioted in the streets throughout America as they lost jobs, homes and their humanity. But they haven’t and they won’t … as long as they continue to believe in their president, a brother, who has treated them with respect when he comes before them as their leader and tells them there are better days ahead. No one hears his qualification that it “may take time” to get the country back (or words to that effect) and the implication is they should trust him. Yes, Obama the man, is worthy of respect and deserves some time to make the changes his country needs … but, the fact of the matter is Obama is only flesh and blood like all of us. This goes against the American psyche that their PRESIDENT is some sort of God, but, the reality is he does NOT act alone … and his power is not absolute. Even Hitler and Stalin eventually met their match. Stalin succumbed to his own mortality… as Fidel Castro eventually must.
In Hitler’s case, he was at a point where he should have been taken out by his own countrymen if fate (and poor planning) had not been on his side, but, he too, could not beat the odds forever.
Certainly, this is why John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert were assassinated by others who were out to enunciate that their power was not absolute, nor were they invincible. Their deaths proved they could not, on their own, change those things that money and power do not want changed. Similarly, Barack Obama has not been blessed with divine powers to change the status quo.
Pundits have lately expressed that a second American Revolution is nigh, if not overdue.
Can it be that Barack Obama is the unwitting “Uncle Tom” who is being used to give people a semblance of hope … while he is being used to keep a lid on the potentially explosive powers of unbridled mobs whose breakout could foment total anarchy in the United States?
Wayne Coady
Cole Harbour N.S.
Stumble It!
I have been around through these years of which you speak and remember this revolt of Black America well, which went along with the parallel revolt against the Vietnam War also going on. What they are attempting to do in this current coming collapse of corporate capitalism in the US, as it continues to slide into the Abyss of Decline and Decay, is to put a Black face on ruling class power, in an effort to head off a further revisiting of this history. It is an attempt to "neutralize" the black working class population. An astute move in the short run,no doubt, but unlikely to mean much as the the real impotence of ruling class solutions (constrained by the imperative to maintain capitalism and ruling class power against all odds) become more and more clear, and broader class and social strata become effected, black, brown and white.
Hopefully, for the likes of me, capitalism has finally hit the wall limits of its potential, and that this next revolt of "all" will administer the final coup de grace to the past, and open up new "co-operative" rather than competitive possibilities for the future.
Coyote
So far he is doing everything just right for his white masters, and when they are finished with him, they will toss him out like a dirty dish rag. To bad ...so sad, but it is what it is. Uncle Tome or salve...he is marching to his masters tune.
It is not my intention to piss off the black community ...just wake them up to what is going on. This will not get better for them or the poor whites in America, all they will wake up to one of these days is more poverty, while the masters get richer and richer. Hopefully they will see that voting carries with it no democratic values, just shock and Aha............& a police state in waiting.
I know you leftoids are all excited about the economic situation, because you all think you smell blood. And we all know how much you love blood. But when this crisis is over, the banks, railroads, airlines and oilfields will still be in private hands, and people will not be driving around in state-built Cana-ladas. There will still be non-CBC channels on the dial and there will still be Big Macs, bottled water, stock car races and suburbs. Canadians will still watch American movies and TV and cross the border to shop at Target. There will still be shareholders and non-union shops and shooting ranges. There will still be unilingual Anglophones and evangelical Christians and people who just aren't fans of Hugo Chavez. There will still be private property and a private sector. There will be people who *didn't* think Tommy Douglas was the Greatest Canadian and who *do* think George Stroumboulopoulos should stop slouching and learn to sit up straight in his red chair.
And yes, oh yes, there will still be individualists!
Are outfits like Monsanto and Cargill "individualists?", while forcing thousands of farmers off their family farms so they can turn the lands over to chemical agribusiness
monocropping and enslave people through the control of the world's food production?
Ed Deak.
This is out-and-out socialism.
BTW, when the mess in the States is settled, the good citizens down there won't have a soo to spend, even on a Cana-lada.
Obama isn't Che Guevara, nor did he ever sell himself as such. The American people would never elect a socialist as President, and that frankly speaks volumes in their favour.
I know you leftoids are all excited about the economic situation, because you all think you smell blood. And we all know how much you love blood. But when this crisis is over, the banks, railroads, airlines and oilfields will still be in private hands, and people will not be driving around in state-built Cana-ladas. There will still be non-CBC channels on the dial and there will still be Big Macs, bottled water, stock car races and suburbs. Canadians will still watch American movies and TV and cross the border to shop at Target. There will still be shareholders and non-union shops and shooting ranges. There will still be unilingual Anglophones and evangelical Christians and people who just aren't fans of Hugo Chavez. There will still be private property and a private sector. There will be people who *didn't* think Tommy Douglas was the Greatest Canadian and who *do* think George Stroumboulopoulos should stop slouching and learn to sit up straight in his red chair.
And yes, oh yes, there will still be individualists!
Wishful thinking...
Nope. Neo-comms...
Welllll, first, I would be goddamn careful about saying "never". Never is an awful long time, and any half-wit with half a brain knows that nobody but NOBODY, can see what will and will not happen that far ahead. At least try and sound a little on the rational side my rightist chappie. For your own credibility, here and elsewhere.
But then, when one bases one's analyses on a "belief", rather than a thoughtful, full, and scientific analysis attempt, just about anything seems to be possible, like second comings and virgin births even, ehh?
But then, you are certainly free to dream and let your imagination run wild, I concede. But which is not the same as really knowing the full sweep of the future now, is it?
Coyote
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPuJfbS2qMY
As much as I'm generally not a fan of any Liberal Party, I wish the BC Liberals well. The last thing BC needs is to be run by the unions again under an NDP regime. Unlike the more sedate New Democrats on the prairies, the BC NDP are far-left wackos.
Well, your hero Karl Marx sure seemed to think he could the flow of history all the way to the end. Of course what he didn't forsee is how his acolytes would care more about process and dogma than results, causing them to bicker with each other over the correct interpretation of the Marxist scriptures instead of actually accomplishing anything useful. Even the blandly social democratic NDP has to occasionally slap down its wacko fringe element, be it the Watkins/Laxer Waffle types in the 60's/70's or the more recent challenge from the Robinson/Rebick NPI gang.
As many on the right come from the business world, they tend to be better organizers and negotiators and are more pragmatic and results-driven in how they pursue their goals. So you see, it's not really a fair fight.
monocropping and enslave people through the control of the world's food production? "
Okay Ed, you've identified the problem. How do you fix it? How do you make the small-scale diverse-crop family farm economically viable? What do you replace Monsanto and Cargill with? What role does the state play?