From our archives:
Articles you should have read the first time around, but missed—
“Hope-and-Change,” A Hoax

Hopey Changey poster. The slickest snake oil salesman in generations. A terrific pick by the ruling circles.

By Michael Rectenwald and Lori Price
[Originally: 27 May 2010, but still applicable]

In our encounters on various social networking sites and political blogs, we consistently encounter the faithful remnants of the “hope-and-change” believers. To combat the onslaught of evidence and opinion that leads one to the conclusion that Obama is a fraud at best and represents a hoax at worst, they point to lists of his accomplishments and the ways he has delivered on his campaign promises. Such lists, we believe, are generally misrepresentations and fail to rise to the level of credibility. They are misleading because they represent minor deeds that might very well have been accomplished otherwise. We have characterized them as delivering on promises to “sharpen the pencils in the White House –mission accomplished.” There are some notable changes, but are they commensurate with Obama’s euphemistic campaign rhetoric? We think not. We believe that Obama’s rhetoric was a complete fabrication aimed at diverting real energy for change into a cul de sac of Democratic apologetics. It was, in short, a hoax.

By “hoax” we mean that it represents a corporate takeover of the dissent that bubbled up in the country against the Bush administration, including his economic but mostly his imperialist agenda in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presenting Obama as a candidate of amorphous “hope-and-change,” the corporate sponsors of Obama intended to divert this dissent into acceptable (Democratic) channels. Some if not most of it had, indeed, arisen from Democratic channels, but the meaning of this dissent far exceeded anything that the Democratic Party represented either in its stated platform, or its actual practices, especially the consistent and over-riding support of the wars. The corporate and military backers of Obama bet on Obama’s oratorical skill and civil-rights-sounding rhetoric to effect a prestidigitation of incredible proportions. The intention of the magic was to fool tens of millions of voters, small-scale individual contributors, and campaigners into believing that Obama was the genuine article, that he represented change from the very policies and practices that had made Bush so virulently despised and vehemently opposed. These policies include first and foremost the war.

While Obama maintained that Al Qaeda was best fought in Afghanistan, he nevertheless left a distinct impression that his intention was to end all of the wars as soon as possible, and to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on “day one.” Troops have indeed been moved around, repositioned outside of predefined “combat zones.” But Obama missed his own deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq, and the message of Obama was anti-Bush doctrine, anti-war escalation, and anti-pre-emptive intervention. Nonetheless, after taking office, Obama proceeded to keep most of the Bush military team, including General David Petraeus and Bush’s last Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. During Obama’s first full year in office, a record number of civilians were killed in Afghanistan. The number of troops killed in Afghanistan in the first three months in 2010 doubled that of the same period a year before.

Obama has embraced the Bush “surge” policy, adopted from the Iraqi “surge” and implemented in Afghanistan. The effect has not been the victory supposedly desired (a premise we utterly reject—the intention is not to “win” but to maintain occupation), but rather continued embattlement in territories continually under siege. Again, as in Iraq under Bush, the enemy in Afghanistan has changed under Obama. The troops admittedly fight the Taliban and not al-Qaeda, as promised. Furthermore, evidence points to the fact that we are actually funding the enemy that we are supposed to be fighting: The US is funding the Taliban militants via contractors. The bounty being offered by the Taliban for NATO troops killed  is, in other words, being paid from the U.S. Treasury. Under Obama, the dreaded drone bombings in Pakistan, which kill thousands of civilians, have increased considerably.

Another major area of Obama’s hope-and-change rhetoric has to do with domestic surveillance. Where domestic surveillance is concerned, Obama actually has morphed into a more draconian form of Bush, extending domestic surveillance to the web. The USA PATRIOT Act has been extended under Obama — although he campaigned against its renewal during his presidential campaign — with no new added protections for civil liberties. The Obama Administration is seeking to weaken Miranda rights for terror suspects, venturing deep into territory on which George W. Bush did not tread.

In the area of treatment of “enemy combatants,” which Obama renamed “unprivileged enemy belligerents,” Obama has also maintained and extended the Bush policies. In May of 2010, the Obama Administration secured a legal victory from the D.C. Circuit Court. The Court ruled, “Foreign nationals held at a U.S. military prison at Bagram airbase outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, do not have a right to challenge in U.S. courts their continued imprisonment.”

In early May 2010, an article in The Sydney Morning Herald revealed, ‘The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region… The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by Barack Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as ‘pattern-of-life’ analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations. The information was used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities were not known, the officials said. Previously the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.’ Such de-facto ‘death squads’ represent a breathtaking expansion of executive power and provide clear evidence that Obama’s oratorical pleadings for ‘change’ were fueled by a desire to garner votes rather than a wish to implement actual change.

On the environment, Obama has been a complete disaster. Need one mention that Obama has utterly failed to respond to the oil gusher crisis in the Gulf of Mexico? More than a month after the disaster began, Obama has still not responded with federal direction of containment and clean-up efforts, leaving such to the very criminal culprits who caused the gusher that spews an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf daily. Just yesterday, the Obama administration once again defended BP’s containment and clean-up efforts, and refused to take charge of the disaster response, a disaster affecting four states directly, major fishing industries, thousands of jobs, and the health of tens of thousands if not the entire U.S. population. The damage to the Florida wetlands and to other coastal areas surrounding the Gulf may be irreversible. This is a U.S. crisis affecting the U.S. continent and its citizens. Obama has utterly and miserably denied this fact and completely failed the U.S. population. His environmentalism is a complete fraud.

An earlier report published on this site pointed to Obama’s support of the financial oligarchy over the people of the United States–of Wall Street over Main Street (“I’m Barack Obama and I approve this bailout.”) We are told now by Obamaphiles that the phrase is now irrelevant. It is called irrelevant because it represents a major breach of campaign promises — the implication of which was that Obama would enact policies that favored the workers over the bankers and brokers on Wall Street and elsewhere in the financial oligarchy. This is nothing like the truth. After more than tripling Bush’s bailouts, Obama has done nothing but chide Wall Streeters verbally, while doing nothing substantial to reform their behavior. He defended the payout of bonuses for executives of the very companies that caused the financial meltdown of 2008. The financial “reform” recently passed has given Wall Street a “sigh of relief” because it is so favorable to them and does nothing to stem the tide of corruption, greed and the potential damage to the economic well-being of the vast majority.

The health care reform was apiece with this sort of reformism –a reformism that actually favors the corporations over the individuals supposedly being protected. Rather than a public option that he campaigned on, the reform amounts to a bailout for the health care and pharmaceutical industries, funneling as it does coerced payments under penalty of fines from millions of the uninsured into corporate coffers. According to the CBO, an estimated four million of the uninsured will pay fines.

Have we missed anything? Most definitely, we could continue to point to Obama’s “out-Bushing” of Bush. We provide a list of stories to support our case.

Now, why and how is the Obama presidency a hoax? The litany of “failures” and “betrayals” is just too long to maintain another narrative. The attempt is a vain endeavor continued only by the most recalcitrant of the Obama orthodoxy. In fact, we believe that a majority has implicitly accepted the fact that the word hoax best describes the Obama presidency. We see this position growing in the cyber sphere. It is the position of the most wizened political observers we know.  But if the serious evidence is not enough, we point to a joke as an illustration.

We refer to Obama’s joke during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner regarding the use of predator drones to attack the boy band, the Jonas Brothers. Jokes always reveal a kernel of truth. Every joke contains a parcel of latent seriousness. This joke reveals the true tenor of Obama’s thinking, or rather an admission of his real function. He is the leader of a military machine that kills without conscience. Unmanned drones represent the evacuation of human presence, cognition, and decision-making from the battlefield itself. Without review or visual recognition of an enemy from a human standpoint in the air or field, unmanned drones nevertheless kill. This is not indiscriminate killing, but it is indirect and undirected to an unconscionable degree. And it is not as accurate as to be able to target and kill particular individuals without “collateral damage,” as Obama seemed to suggest. With this joke, Obama recognized and confessed the truth of his presidency. He is a leader of an imperialist financial and military oligarchy that has no conscience and no objective but profit and gain, no matter the cost in human misery and death. There is no “hope” for “change” under these conditions. The Obama hoax was to suggest that there was.

Let’s no longer refer to the Obama administration as a “failure,” or his failures as “betrayals.” To fail you have to intend to succeed, and Obama never intended to succeed at matching rhetoric and reality. The point was in fact to make rhetoric replace reality and to “hope” that the rhetoric would continue to work as such for about four years. At that point, the corporate oligarchy may continue on the current tack, or it may adopt another tactic. Our feeling is that the country is set-up for reactionary retrenchment, based on the mistaken opposition to the Obama presidency from the right. This will be the subject of a future report.

______________

Michael Rectenwald and Lori Price are principals in Citizens for Legitimate Government (http://www.legitgov.org).

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

By Shamus Cooke, Workers Action

By refusing to clarify anything, by not telling the public who these people are and what they represent to the ordinary working citizen, and by giving them a respectful propaganda platform, the media allow creeps like Paul Ryan to climb the ladder of formal power in the U.S. virtually unchallenged.  If Romney wins in November, this irredeemable bastard will be one heartbeat away from the seat of maximum world power. By the way, do NOT interpret this statement as an endorsement of the Obama ticket, which is similarly repugnant in its own way. Fact is, in 2008 the Democrats could have driven a stake through the heart of the ghoulish GOP, but instead brought them back to life.—Eds

But critical thinkers are immune to scare tactics. It’s no coincidence that the Obama campaign is not running on its own merits, but the lack of merit of its opponents.  Many Obama supporters, such as leftists Bill Fletcher Jr. and Carl Davidson, argue that Obama’s record doesn’t matter, because this election is about defeating the right wing’s “white supremacy and political misogynism.”

For progressive economist and former Labor Secretary under President Clinton Robert Reich, Ryan’s budget represents the nightmare of “social Darwinism”, and therefore Obama must be elected.

This writer will not argue with the above points about the far right, since there obviously exists deep elements of racism and misogynism in its camp. But voting for Obama is no way to fight these evils; quite the contrary.

Voting for the Democrats does not empower working people to fight against right-wing extremism. Instead, working people are forced to give away their power to a political party that is in no way beholden to them, since the Democrats have a corporate agenda divorced from the needs of the vast majority of working people. There is no way to hold Democrats accountable once they’re in office, especially when they’ve all but stopped making campaign promises to working people.

By now it should be clear to most Americans that the Democrats and Republicans are corporate-owned parties, and as such they are free to act as they wish, regardless of the political rhetoric they spew.

For example, in 2008 Obama promised Latinos a more humane immigration policy, and then proceeded to deport people more than Bush Jr. did. Obama likewise promised organized labor the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as a more pro-labor policy. EFCA was then betrayed and Obama presided over the most anti-labor environment since Ronald Reagan.
When he campaigned, he voiced support for single-payer health care. He promised to renegotiate NAFTA. When he was elected, he declared single-payer health care “off the table” and did nothing about NAFTA. When he campaigned, he denounced Bush’s tax cuts for the rich; as president he extended them.

Let’s not forget Obama’s bank bailouts, Afghan “surge,” free trade deals, domestic spying, pro-corporate “race to the top” education program, etc. When the Wisconsin uprising happened Obama did not even visit the state; when the Occupy movement was being repressed nationally, Obama’s silence implied support for the anti-democratic police actions.

The point is that Obama and the Republicans are in general agreement about the trajectory of this country and strive through various social policies to create a difference that is largely fictional.

But is not voting for Obama a bulwark against racism? In reality, ethnic minorities in the U.S. suffer directly as a result of Obama’s foreign policy. By continuing Bush’s wars in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama is re-enforcing racism at home.  Foreign wars for conquest and occupations are fueled by racism, since they lack the inspirational purpose that would otherwise enhance combat morale.

When U.S. troops return home, many bring back the racist beliefs supplied to them as their fighting fuel, which can sometimes result in the kind of massacre that recently occurred at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. The broader population too is subjected to the type of unconscious racism that must result from passive support of foreign wars across the globe, the victims of which want nothing more than U.S. bombs and military bases out of their countries. It’s obvious that if Obama were bombing England — and not Afghanistan — Americans would feel more inclined to protest.

Obama, like Bush, is a war criminal. His drone assassinations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia — and likely others — are in obvious violations of the Geneva Convention.

Former President Jimmy Carter said of Obama’s foreign policy:

“It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles [of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights], our government’s counter-terrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.”

When it comes to the domestic economic policies of the right wing, the Democrats have proved an important ally in implementing the corporate agenda. Obama himself has been instrumental in pushing Congress to implement “entitlement reform” — cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs, opening the political door that Paul Ryan exploited in his anti-entitlement budget proposal.

The only force capable of putting up a true fight against the far right is the power of organized working people, who, by putting faith and resources in the Democratic Party, are squandering their own independence and power.  

Arguing that voting Democrat is a “lesser of two evils” is not an argument at all, but rather a statement about the fundamental political problem that is the two party system.

Liberals, Leftists, and working people in general cannot simply accept the lesser of two evils argument as meaningful, but must actively fight to change the absurdity that is the two party, corporate owned political system. This change cannot happen when labor and liberal groups funnel energy back into team Obama as they overlook the destruction his administration is causing at home and abroad.

The final philosophical barrier against breaking with the Democrats is again put forward by Bill Fletcher Jr. and Carl Davidson, who essentially argue that the failure of the last four years was due to the progressive social movement that failed to “put significant pressure on the Obama administration” through an “independent progressive strategy.”

In short, this means that the “social movement” created by Obama’s 2008 campaign did not maintain its independence and organization adequately to hold Obama accountable.

This is patently nonsense.

For one, the activists who campaigned for Obama did so under his organizational umbrella. There never existed an independent pro-Obama “movement.” More importantly, when average people are inspired enough to become active in politics, they do so with the expectation that “their” candidate will serve “them.” When their candidate betrays them, the natural response is demoralization, not organized protest and sustained action. Any average person who understands what Obama really stands for would not actively campaign for him, and thus will be unable to “hold him accountable” once he’s in office.

Anyone who believes that there exists anything near a social movement to campaign for Obama in 2012 is deluding themselves in embarrassing fashion. Many working people will hold their nose and vote for Obama, but this motivation does not include phone banking, door knocking, or financial contributions. The passion that Obama inspired by his demagoguery in 2008 has been crushed by reality, leaving an election that will be determined by the “big donors” and consequently, the number of TV commercials that can be purchased by the rich.

And because the rank and file of labor and liberal groups will not campaign for Obama in a significant way, he will be even less likely to reward them politically, thus ensuring an even deeper slide into the corporate abyss if he is elected.

Also, average working people are pushed into the camp of the right wing by Obama’s anti-worker policies, since the far right offers “solutions” to the two party system, while labor and community groups only offer more corporate Democrats.

The only thing that the Democratic and Republican parties respect is power, which they also fear. The Wisconsin and Occupy movements inspired people across the country, while striking fear into the heart of the two party system. And while the Democrats did their best to co-opt both movements, the potential for independent political action still exists.

Scaring the two party system to pass pro-working class policies requires mass, independent mobilizations for demands that address the real needs of working people, such as a massive federal jobs program, Medicare For All, saving and expanding Social Security, providing full funding for public education and social services, all to be paid for by taxing the rich and corporations. The Democrats cannot be scared by groups that are donating their time and resources into electing Democrats, while tricking their constituents into believing that Obama is a “pro-worker” candidate.

Ultimately, the only way out of the irrationality of the two party system is for working people to organize independently. In dozens of other countries this task was completed decades ago when labor unions broke with the traditional parties and used their own organizational and financial resources to build their own political party to represent all working people.

This remains the task of the day in the United States. Organized labor is the only social force among working people at this time with the resources capable of building a party able to compete with the two parties of big business. If unions broke with the anti-union Democrats and raised their own pro-worker demands, tens of millions of Americans would happily leave both the Democrat and Republican parties.

The Democrats cannot be reformed; their “progressive caucus” has proven unwilling to inspire working people with bold action, and serves only to give political cover to the corporate soul of the Democratic Party. Working people are overdue for change, and won’t be fooled again by fake promises of hope.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/2012-elections-have-little-do-obamas-record-which-why-we-are-voting-him
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/paul-ryan-social-darwinism_b_1769827.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jimmy-carter-attacks-barack-obama-over-assassinations-and-drone-attacks-7888925.html

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

By Michael Rectenwald, The CLG Newsletter

Where do these criminal charlatans get such audiences?

The parties not only kick each other when they are down, but they also pick each other back up, because each needs its opponent in order to continue the farcical show of difference in order to contain real opposition within their bifurcated fraudulence. The object is to contain all differences within the party system in order to keep real opposition from mounting from without.

The conventional political wisdom holds that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney picked Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan to energize the conservative base. Republican voters remained unsure about Romney’s conservative credentials, both fiscally and socially. Ryan is a Catholic, social conservative and a fiscally draconian “entitlement” cutter of the first degree. He helps Romney draw the clearest “contrast” with Obama administration. Thus, the choice of Ryan provides the basis for a real contest.

But with the endless attacks on Romney’s wealth and wealth-protecting measures — he’s a billionaire who refuses to release more than two tax returns, and who, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, actually paid zero taxes for ten years — Ryan is a truly preposterous choice. Ryan contributes no electoral viability to Romney. Anyone who still wonders whether or not Romney favors the rich will be left with no doubts now. The choice of Ryan provides the “opposition” with a ready caricature – so ready as to be distrusted as prefabricated. This caricature will be brandished to scare independents into the Democratic column and otherwise disaffected Democrats into the voting booth.

But the Ryan choice does help both parties redraw their party lines and re-establish the supposed “stark contrast” that true believers are supposed to take as real. That is, the Ryan choice works to legitimate the electoral system itself, a system that really provides no access to political power for the vast majority, but rather contains their choices within a sham opposition. The parties not only kick each other when they are down, but they also pick each other back up, because each needs its opponent in order to continue the farcical show of difference in order to contain real opposition within their bifurcated fraudulence. The object is to contain all differences within the party system in order to keep real opposition from mounting from without.

The Ryan choice sets up the possibility for “winning” voters to feel that they had a choice, and that they chose the lesser evil. They can now rest assured that less evil things will happen. Meanwhile, they will have voted for the very evil that they believed they were averting. They will breathe a sigh of relief, while Republicans will continue to rail for another four years. At the same time, President Barack Obama will proceed to enact austerity measures that Democrats would rail against if enacted by Romney (and which Romney would have enacted had he been elected). The Democrats will sit silent as Obama cuts Social Security and Medicare (to say nothing of his policies of drone bombing, domestic surveillance, secret renditions, and maintaining a list of American citizens targeted for assassination without so much as charges let alone a trial).

“But what if Romney wins?” cry the Democratic faithful. His policies would be worse! Millions would suffer because you mistook the election for a farce! We must support Obama to avoid that possibility!

That’s exactly the conclusion we are meant to draw.

Rest assured, the ruling elite will not let it happen. On the other hand, the threat had to be posed (as unlikely and unreal as it is). The threat was necessary for the legitimation of Obama’s austerity measures. (“At least it’s not the Ryan Plan!”)

Yet the social spending cuts that Obama has promised, and that the Ryan Plan includes to a greater degree, are inevitable. The cuts are inevitable not because greedy Republicans demand them, or because Obama is a Republican in sheep’s clothing, or because Obama has character flaws, but because along with Republicans, the Democrats voted for every war funding bill, the increased military budget, bailouts to the tune of trillions of dollars, and the tax breaks for the wealthy. We can expect nothing but more service of the corporate, military and imperialist elite by Obama in his second term. His austerity plans will be masked in the rhetoric of FDR-like reform, but they will not be anything of the sort–any more than ACA is actually a progressive reform and not the gratuitous bailout of the insurance industry that it is.

Austerity measures are in store, no matter which party controls the White House, because they are needed by the ruling elite to maintain their position and identity as a class. Obama is simply the better choice for the ruling elite because the majority will sit unsuspecting as he enacts the cuts, while the rightwing provides cover by calling him a socialist.

The Ryan choice is the choice of a ruling elite banking on a second Obama term. Romney and Ryan make Obama appear genial and generous by contrast, and that is exactly the goal.

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D. is Chair and Chief Editorialist of Citizens for Legitimate Government. More of his writings can be found here and here.

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.