Oh, The Pain of The Believer

August 30, 2011 :

Barack’s Betrayals Offer Lessons We Can’t Deny

Danny Schechter
Journalists are not supposed to have political opinions, and yet we all do. Our “biases” are usually disguised, not blatant or overtly partisan, and can be divined in what stories we cover and how we cover them,

Even ‘just the facts, ma'am,’ journos for big Media have to decide which facts to include and which to ignore.

Our outlooks are always shaped by our worldviews, values and experience, not to mention the outlets we work for.

Which brings me to the challenge of seeking truth and recognizing it when you see it.

I have to admit that I was seduced by the idea of Barack Obama. I wanted to believe because I needed to believe, needed to believe it was possible to change the American behemoth, to believe that, as he kept saying, “it could be different this time.” (photo: Celeste Hodges)

The idea of a black President, the idea of a young President, the idea of an articulate President, and the idea of a man married to such a stand up woman from a working class family was hard to resist.

Here’s a guy who seemed really smart, not just because he went to Harvard but because professors there I liked were impressed with him. (I taught at Harvard, and know very well how not so smart many students there can be!)

In the end, it doesn’t mean much, but in that period he lived about a block away from the house I once shared on Dartmouth Street in Somerville.

Was that a degree of separation?

He had also been a community organizer, starting in politics at the grassroots in Chicago. I also worked at Saul Alinsky-style organizing and even knew the iconic organizer personally.

Was that another degree?

He’s invoked the spirit of the civil rights movement but was not part of it. He treated Dr. King as a monument before the new memorial was conceived, embracing him as a symbol of the past, not a guide to the future.

He took an anti-war stance on pragmatic grounds only, preferring Afghanistan to Iraq. He hasn’t extricated us from either battlefield.

His strategy borrowed heavily from the Bush Doctrine. What’s the difference, really, as US troops now intervene worldwide and Guantanamo remains open for business?

There was a lot I didn’t know. I didn’t know the backgrounds of those that groomed him and funded him. His relationship with the centrist DLC was murky as were the details on the services he performed for a shadowy firm, Business International, said to have CIA links.

There were those who warned, but I guess I didn’t want to listen.

Why? I didn’t want to reinforce my own skepticism and sense of despair. I feigned at being hopeful even as I took quite a few critical whacks at his positions in my blog. His deviations from a liberal agenda and his paens to the “free market” were considered necessary for his “electability.”

I was also influenced by the euphoria for him overseas that had become infectious but has since soured.

To be honest, I was so disgusted with eight years of George Bush for all the right reasons that I wanted him gone full stop, as did millions of Americans.

Hillary didn’t appeal to me, not because she’s a woman but because of her slavish affinity for the Israel lobby and middle of the road Democrats. (Yes, Obama, did his mea-culpa to AIPAC too!)

I was denounced as a super sexist by a few for not buying into her centrist Clintonista crusade.

She had gone from a student advocate to part of a ruling family; he went from bottom-up activism to top-down elitism.

When she joined his “team,” you knew they were always in the same league.

When the right bashed him for associating with radical Bill Ayers, who I knew, it made me suspect he might even be cooler than I thought, even as he raced to distance himself. His membership in Reverend Wright’s church hinted at a deeper consciousness until he buckled in the media heat and threw the man that married him under the bus.

And yet, I wanted to believe because I needed to believe, needed to believe it was possible to change the American behemoth, to believe that, as he kept saying, “it could be different this time.”

As the late writer David Foster Wallace put it, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life…there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship… else (what) you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.”

So, in a sense, I became a worshipper like so many, not of the man or the dance he was doing in an infected political environment, but because I convinced myself that I worshipped possibility, that there are times when the unexpected, even the unbelievable occurs. I had seen Mandela go from prison to the presidency of South Africa.

After all, how does a progressive blast a candidate who has Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger singing the uncensored version of “This Land Is Your Land” at his inaugural?

Yet, there was always a nagging question: was he with us or just co-opting us?

Yes We Can?

Slowly, despite the glow and the aura, deeper truths surfaced, realities I had winked away. Its not surprising that his mantra has gone, as the Washington Post reports, from the “fierce urgency of now,” to “Be patient, democracy is big and tough and messy.”

Yes, I knew, I may have been rationalizing a false god, who was only another, if more attractive, politician who says one thing and does another in a political system where power, not personalities prevail.

Like many of his predecessors he would be “captured” by the power structures, by the military men and contractors at the Pentagon and the money men on Wall Street.

He was in office but never really in charge. Clearly, he didn’t have the votes to enact a real change agenda. But that was because his own party was long ago bought and paid for.

He never had a chance, even if as I wanted to believe, he wanted one. He said he wanted to be transformational figure but the system transformed him—and quickly.

Everyone runs “against Washington,” even a Senator, who was part of it.

And so I held my nose and voted, hoping against my wiser instincts. I even made a positive film about the campaign that showed how he used social media and texting to mobilize new voters. When I tried to get a copy to the White House, through an insider there, I found they couldn’t be less interested.

By then, he had gone from playing the “outside game” to opting into the “inside game” built around compromise in the name of “pragmatism," or "getting it done,” in his words. In the end he was a rookie who may have outsmarted himself or just served the interests who put him there.

He couldn’t dump his most passionate and issue-oriented followers fast enough.

While his backers were still hot to trot, he became cooler toward them, and, in effect, repudiated them with few progressive appointments. He put on his flag pin and relished the symbolism of the “office.” He became the master of the uplifting speech disguising a quite different policy agenda.

He spoke for the people but served the power. His wanted the other side to love him too, even as his stabs at “bi-partisanship” proved non-starters.

When you lie down with those “lambs,” (or is it snakes?) you betray not only supporters, but their hopes. FDR was soon spinning in his grave.

I am not surprised that knowledgeable critics of his economic policies not only consider him bull-headed and wrong, but actually corrupt, aligned and complicit, with the banksters who are still ripping us off. No wonder he’s "bundled” more donations from the greedsters and financiers this year than in 2008! No wonder he turned his back on consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren and is trying to kill prosecutions of bank fraud in high places.

Christopher Whalen who writes for Reuters say there will be a cost for his doing nothing: “The path of least resistance politically has been to temporize and talk. But by following the advice of Rubin and Summers, and avoiding tough decisions about banks and solvency, President Obama has only made the crisis more serious and steadily eroded public confidence. In political terms, Obama is morphing into Herbert Hoover.”

Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse. Watch and weep as today’s rebels become next year’s rationalizers.

It reminds me of when activists were asked to vote for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 with the slogan “Part of the Way with LBJ.” That way ended with an endless escalation of war in Vietnam, and guns trumping butter. Sound familiar?

The search for truth and reality has hit a wall but has to continue. The lessons need to be learned. We have to say we were wrong, when we were, not in our beliefs, but in pinning our hopes on a shrewd, ambitious, and double-faced political performance artist.

While people who still back him dismiss the accusation that’s he’s a hidden socialist, Kenyan, or space alien, all too many suspect he may be a secret Republican. He is who he is, aloof, cautious, and a man in the middle. He’s staying there.

Let’s give David Foster the last word.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconscioussness,…

… It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over…”

Mediachannel’s News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

more Danny Schechter .Login or register to post commentsE-mailPrintShareTwitter Facebook Digg Google Google Buzz StumbleUpon Delicous Newsvine Yahoo .More... .Discuss..171 Comments so farShow All Posted by polycarpeAug 30 2011 - 10:05am.“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconscioussness,…
… It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over…”
Yes.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by raydelcaminoAug 30 2011 - 10:24am.That said, it was very apparent to me in June 2008 when the Obama campaign turned down public financing in order to get unlimited corporate money, that Obama would be beholden to the wealthiest 1%. the content of Obama's subsequent campaign speeches demonstrated that he was no different than Hillary and that he either didn't understand the root of US and global economic problems or he was delivering Wall Street's spin.
Candidate Obama's zealous promotion of an unconditional TARP in September 2008 confirmed that Obama's first term would be Dubya's third term.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by polycarpeAug 30 2011 - 10:37am.I was just commenting on the Wallace quote.
I passed over the rest of the article for the reason I pass over many of the "come-to-Jesus" postings on who Obama really is or how we were betrayed by him.
The reason?
There is no palpable anger.
Look, in my life when I realize I've been betrayed by someone who I trusted, I don't sit down and right 1000-word analyses of my inner psychic struggles and reflections on said behavior.
Here's my essay.
It's called "Betrayal" but don't worry it won't offend anyone who reads it, kay?
No, I get f*cking angry.
And NONE of these writers on said subject ever displays any true anger at what happened to them.
That, unfortunately, is how the exquisite propaganda in this country works.
Not only does it obfuscate reality but it once reality can no longer be hidden, it seeks to mold and shape people's reactions to said reality and make it all palatable.
Exhibit 1,454,543: the above article.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by ChrisIIAug 30 2011 - 11:56am.I agree. Where is the outrage? Exhausted, most probably, by too many vile actions to contemplate. I, for at least one, would never vote for Obama under any circumstances.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by onemorethoughtAug 30 2011 - 12:43pm.I find I get f*cking (extremely) angry also, it being at Obama and his ilk. I don't do anything with the anger... it passes. I never get angry at Republicans; I never feel betrayed by them.
It seems the on-line "progressive" commentaries include analysis these days about where "we" went wrong and also what needs to be done to "fix" it. It seems a bit sisyphusian to me in that we always seem to have "lessons to learn" and "the search for truth must go on," etc, before we can finally arrive.
Pain may be a consistant and patient teacher, but perhaps humanity is not always interested in learning or looking at the truth on any given day. Pushing a stone up a hill over and over is part of life too?
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by bgcdAug 30 2011 - 1:22pm.Agreed. Schecter is one of the comfortable pundits. He is a member of the elite (liberal wing) so he and his family and friends are never going to suffer personally from the consequences of Obama's collusion and collaboration with the big moneyed interests and so these consequences are to him merely academic. His grieving is the grieving of a comfortable spectator, while he goes about his secure affluent existence. Thus he feels no anger.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by bardamuAug 30 2011 - 2:40pm.The importance of this and similar articles is that Schecter and many other more or less similar people *are* indeed members of the "liberal" elite or self-identify with similar ideas, yet are *not* comfortable with what had recently been a comfortable compromise.
Surely any educated and articulate person with the will to do so could have written a more damning criticism of Obama or better enumerated O's abandonment of his nominal base. But this is not the writer's purpose nor the article's topic or importance.
To whatever extent this comfortable elite feels it must disengage itself from Obama's 2012 candidacy, that is an event.
The edifice peels and crumbles in places before it falls.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by bgcdAug 31 2011 - 12:59pm.I hope it falls soon.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by LibWingofLibWingAug 30 2011 - 6:03pm.Right, the real point of this article is to convince us that we will just have to hold our noses and vote for him.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by adpprofAug 30 2011 - 9:54pm.not me. and I think our numbers are growing.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by True PatriotAug 31 2011 - 7:30am.by adpprof:
"not me. and I think our numbers are growing."
Agreed. And Liberals are smarter--that should count for something, right? LOL
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by wantrealdemocracySep 1 2011 - 12:06am."We will vote for him again, because there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse" says Danny Schechter. Is the man brain dead? We have been betrayed and lied to and we will vote for more of the same? The alternative is worse? No. The other corporate party is JUST THE SAME. The evil of the terrible two is equal.
We MUST NOT VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN. We must not vote for the Republican either. I hope you are not brain dead. Is this crap all you want and deserve? Ready for austerity? You'll do just fine being jobless, hungry and homeless? And your kids too? Is this all you deserve and hope for?
The wealth of our nation has been stolen from the workers who made it. We must stop serving the rich and wishing we could be like them. NOT ME! I don't want to be a greedy selfish bastard who has too much and only wants more. Decent human beings want a community of people of honor who are willing to care for each other and share the bounty of the earth. Stand up and have some pride. Don't accept what the rich offer you if you just be quiet. Get out and get mad and LOUD. We don't have to take it any more.
And we shouldn't.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by gardenernorcalAug 30 2011 - 10:09am."Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse."
There's always more than one candidate in the presidential race. I think his performance has demonstrated one thing: That the alternative can't be any worse. Consider next years vote as installing a temp worker to take over the duties of someone that failed to perform. GW had 8 years and look how that worked out. Eventually if neither party can provide us with someone of integrety and determined to invest in the American Society in general and not just Wall St., maybe then a third party will stand a chance of being heard above the high priced "marketing" cackle.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by raydelcaminoAug 30 2011 - 10:18am.Americans who vote for Dims and repugs often accuse those of us who vote for third party candidates of "wasting our vote".
I contend that Americans who vote for candidates who work against them (while ignoring third party candidates who will work for them) are wasting their votes.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Truthseeker58Aug 30 2011 - 6:50pm.You said it right, Raydelcamino!!
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Michael FAug 30 2011 - 10:46am."Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse. Watch and weep as today’s rebels become next year’s rationalizers."
Until I read that paragraph, I could feel some sympathy for Schechter and his cohorts. Yes, ridiculous as it was, maybe some really believed Saddam was going to spray poison gas across the length and breadth of America with his Mig-19. And yes, ludicrous as it was, maybe some really believed we had to militarily engage the Taliban to prevent their freedom-hating talibanic hordes from sweeping over us from coast to coast. Even as no student in our schools should ever be given a grade less than an A for anything.
But to reward such mendacity and perfidy with the promise of yet another vote?
To believe that there could be worse than Obama bespeaks a credulity beyond understanding...and beyond empathy.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by LohmannAug 30 2011 - 1:27pm.I totally agree.
To have an ardent true believer like Mr. Schechter honestly share the pain of how the scales were removed from his eyes was an absorbing, even cleansing read. I always delight when a zealot, of any stripe, finally opens his/her eyes. I was with him the whole way.
And then I read that phrase: "...will vote for him again..." And I almost retched with disgust at the enormity of his political blind spot. What kind of activist believes in Margaret Thatcher's TINA?
It's because of people like this that America has been perpetually doomed to always elect the lesser of two evils. Schechter is so enmeshed in the battered spouse syndrome that it seems cognitively impossible for him to consider that there are alternatives to voting for someone you just spent a thousand words denouncing. Doesn't it make sense that a vote for the lesser of two evils still steers the ship of state towards evil? If so, then why express shock and dismay when the ship of state lands on the shores of Hell? And then, what's the response? To vote for the captain to lead the landing party? What kind of sense does that make?
It boggles my mind that people who repudiate fascism would still vote for Mussolini instead of Hitler only because of a perception that MLK doesn't have a chance...
Danny Schechter -- you're one of the people responsible for the state the country is in. Though your eyes were temporarily opened and you feel the pangs of regret for being carried along on a wave of hope based on bullshit, you admit you'll shut them tight when electing this known charlatan again, no matter how much worse the alternative is (as if there were only two choices...). If, as William Gaddis asserts, stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance, then you, sir, are stupid.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Franciszek2Aug 30 2011 - 4:31pm.Schechter is an "ardent true believer .... responsible for the state the country is in... and also stupid"
.
I have to disagree. I've met real ardent true believers ... and they don't sound anything like Schechter. In fact, a true believer would probably be disgusted by Schechter's article here. A true believer does not let the notion that Obama is a paid employee of wall street enter their brain. A true believer would find the idea that Obama is a conservative trojan horse to be incomprehensible (I know because I told a real TB exactly that.) Furthermore, Schechter says he was skeptical of candidate Obama and only voted for him reluctantly. If true, then that statement alone essentially disqualifies him from being a TB. A true believer cannot also be a skeptic, or reluctant.
.
A true believer gets red in the face and white in the knuckle when confronted with even the most basic and obvious criticisms of Dear Leader. Schechter is a different animal altogether. A resigned cynic maybe?
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by LohmannAug 30 2011 - 4:52pm.Thank you for the clarification, with examples. I defer to your assessment.
That said, I don't know which is worse: a zealot who, blinded by their faith, is incognizant of the ramifications of their actions; or someone aware of the truth of the situation, yet who willfully decides to continue being complicit in perpetuating an evil status quo because they're too intellectually lazy (or dishonest) to discover (or even consider) alternatives.
In some ways you can't fault someone who doesn't know better, so I tend to think the latter is worse, since they're knowingly committing a folly that has social consequences... (Eg: a premeditated crime is worse than one committed accidentally.)
I do know, though, that Schechter's attitude sickens me even more than it angers me.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Franciszek2Aug 31 2011 - 10:13am.I actually think his assessment of Obama was pretty good. As was his prediction that many progressives will succumb to the false logic of lesser-evilim. I think it remains an open question whether or not Schechter himself can be counted among that group, but I did not see anything in the article that appeared to be an explicit, implict, or underhanded, backdoor endorsement-by-omission of Obama.
.
I'd say Schechter's view is closer to someone like Chris Hedges than John Nichols or Katrina van Demshill.
.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by tovangar2Aug 30 2011 - 2:27pm."To believe that there could be worse than Obama bespeaks a credulity beyond understanding...and beyond empathy."
Thank you for that Michael.
I told my kids in 2008 that if Obama wasn't assassinated before the election it would prove he was one of them. He wasn't & he is.
If he had been any kind of "credible threat" he never would have made it to election day, but would have joined MLK, Malcolm X, JFK & RFK in martyrdom. The system doesn't allow alternative voices that become too effective. I'm not gonna vote for Ron Paul, but I hope he has great security (although the MSM has been pretty effective so far in disappearing him - that may save his life).
I don't know who I'm gonna vote for as a write in, if I vote. If we have voting machines here I won't vote cuz it's pointless.
Is Kucinich running again? Or is he too compromised to bother with? They'd just kill him if he got close anyway.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by jlknapp505Aug 30 2011 - 11:19am.I didn't vote for Obama, because I didn't see any evidence that he would discover a principle where he would stand and not compromise. I still haven't seen that principle. But I cannot vote for anyone aligned with the Republicans; I haven't forgotten that they were willing to take the nation to the brink of default in order to make political points off Obama.
It's time to start the (bloodless) revolution: don't vote for any candidate because he's affiliated with a party. Vote solely because the candidate has a philosophy, and is willing to buck the establishment in pursuit of it, a philosophy that you like. Definitely no TEA Party, either. Independents, hopefully? The party system has dragged the nation very close to ruin.
Taxation for individuals and corporations must be reformed from top to bottom; no favored status for those who contribute the most to candidates (call it bribery, because it is; they only bribe those who will vote their agenda), no special loopholes/exemptions from investment income and such. Tax everything imported to the point that it's more expensive than what's domestically produced. No taxes, no access to the American market. Simple. Make imports something that happens because of better quality, not lower prices. Tax corporations in this country at the international average so that they aren't encouraged to move offshore, a rate of about 18-20%. The taxes on imports, call it a gross-receipts tax so that there are fewer loopholes, will make up for that. No more fleet MPG average; start taxing motor fuels. Add an immediate $.25 tax this year, add another next year, another quarter the year after, and in four years you'd have added only $1, less than went to speculators when the last gas runup happened. Meantime, the idea of constant higher prices would discourage fuel use and encourage economy, encourage electric cars and provide incentive to invest in battery research, and provide income to the government.
If I can come up with these ideas, why can't anyone in DC? Maybe Obama is getting his advisors and secretaries from the wrong place, Wall St. Bankers and traders have a mentality where they feel entitled to your money and don't worry overmuch about whether they return value for that money, as exemplified by adding monthly fees to users to make up for losing the exorbitant overdraft fees. The foxes are in control of the henhouse; or perhaps the inmates are now running the asylum.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by tovangar2Aug 30 2011 - 2:07pm."But I cannot vote for anyone aligned with the Republicans; I haven't forgotten that they were willing to take the nation to the brink of default in order to make political points off Obama."
That was a Dem/Repug charade to panic the public into accepting the Debt Deal/Super Committee. Obama was totally in on that. He co-planned that. He could have invoked the 14th Amendment, but didn't. He had already told the bond holders he wouldn't default. Even the default date was phony. They said it was 2 Aug just so Congress could go on vacation on time. Please wake up. It's not the clowns that are the problem, it's the whole damned circus.
Please do not cooperate with this corrupt system. The people's will to resist is the most powerful tool we have. We are many, they are few.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by dwyerj1Aug 30 2011 - 2:14pm.F*** "stand a chance"! People must stop allowing themselves to fall for the most illogical of fallacies! The "fatal alternative" is no excuse for voting against one's conscience. Do not vote for a candidate you _know_ is a charlatan and an evil person (even in sheep's clothing). Vote your conscience. Vote with a write-in for your mother-in-law. But never vote for a liar, a perfidious, treacherous, weak-spined Judas.
Do not vote for that fatal alternative. Write in someone whom you admire. But utterly refuse to put your vote into backing someone you know is wrong.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by JMALHAug 31 2011 - 4:24am.Agree! Most probably there will not be anyone on the ballot for president who is even 1% worthy of the office. Write in someone you admire!
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by bogi666Aug 31 2011 - 10:18am.The requisites for being nominated for the presidency does not require integrity or dignity. It requires being a socio-psychopath.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by peacemakerAug 30 2011 - 10:13am.Betrayal we can believe in.
The author describes the hopes many or most of us had when we held our noses and voted for The Tom in 2008. But now, the same group has been kicked in the balls by The Tom. There is no illusion of hope left. Not even a crumb.
So, who is the "Default Write-In Candidate?" (DWIC)
Mr. Nader has stated that he doesn't want to run again, and I can't blame him. But there is no way in hell that I will ever vote for the uniparty again. Let's choose someone and agree to vote for him/her in 2012. It may not matter much whether the chosen DWIC wants the job or is even still alive. My write-in DWIC vote simply says, "I'm mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore."
Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bill Moyer, Amy Goodman, Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, Marisa Tomei, . . . Doonesbury, . . .
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by pjd412Aug 30 2011 - 10:28am.We need a forceful-populist-progressive in the model of Huey Long, Nestor Kirchner or even Hugo Chavez. The existing US politician who fits this model the best is Alan Grayson, but he is already running to re-take his Florida congressional seat in 2012.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by RVingRetireeAug 30 2011 - 1:05pm.Part of the Right's strategy is to mimic Germany, 1932, working for bad economic conditions their people can harness to get a fake rightist "populist" into office with expanded powers to deal with the crisis. Think "Enabling Act" ...
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by awesomeAug 30 2011 - 10:20am.Republican Pres., three steps backward, Democratic Pres., two steps backbard, so I guess we save a step. What a farce.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by AtomskAug 30 2011 - 4:25pm.Not quite. To murder you metaphor, imagine that the Democrat side stands behind the Republican side - they can go back more steps than the Republicans because no one is standing behind their backs pretending to want to slow the backwards walk :-)
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Greg RAug 30 2011 - 10:20am." Obama is morphing into Herbert Hoover." Hoover was actually a more dynamic leader than Obama when Hoover was Obama's age. However, when Hoover was president his ideology constrained him in ways which left him impotent. Obama, in his middle-of-the-roadness, has forged his own impotence.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by iowapinkoAug 30 2011 - 10:20am.As I read Schechter's description of his infatuation with the Obaaamabrand tm, I realize that if true salvation is to arise in human form, it will manifest as a force that is the polar opposite of Obaaamatm.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by readytotransformAug 30 2011 - 11:24am.Hi there iowapinko!
I would say we need to realize that no one is coming to 'save' us. Never has happened. That is a fairy tail/belief of major proportions. In fact, until that assumption is rooted out of mass consciousness, i don't think much is going to change on this planet.
That is what i see as being the polar opposite of Obamaism - not waiting for someone to resuce us.
Hope you are well,
rita
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by DemonstormAug 30 2011 - 11:52am.That is the way I see it, as well. Our government has changed from FDR's time from a quasi-democracy into a full-blown Plutocracy today. NO president can change the Beast. NO president has the power to overcome the moneyed corporatocracy that rules Amereicha and Washington. Both chambers of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the White House, and every single agency and sub-agency and sub-sub-sub-sub agency is beholden to the moneyed interests. PERIOD. That kind of system cannot be defeated by a single man, even if he is President of the U.S.
Time to stop putting so much adoration and worship and awe and "hope" into the office of the President every 4 years. It is a 100% bought and paid for position, regardless of which man or woman steps into those shoes. Only a corporate whore can be pre-vetted for even a chance to be on the ticket in the first place, for starters, but even if a rogue slipped through somehow, he/she would soon find themselves on their knees before the corporate overlords that run everything in this country, gagging and reaching for tissues, or outright assassinated if they didn't play ball.
Any hope and true change will need to come from we the people, not in the polling booths.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by tovangar2Aug 30 2011 - 2:41pm.Vote with your feet, Vote with your streets
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by BeForKidsAug 30 2011 - 5:46pm.Demonstorm, you left out the Fourth Estate, which has become the Fifth Column.
Until we the people get that, there will be no change.
In the 1960s the rallying cry was "Don't trust anyone over 30". Now it needs to be "Don't trust millionaires". We used to have "news anchors". Now we have "news personalities". And they are all millionaires.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by iowapinkoAug 30 2011 - 6:17pm.Hi Rita,
Good to see you around, seems like its been a while...
Yes, I agree completely, that's why I used the term "a force" instead of a person. Our salvation will arise from our transformation/activation as a community I guess I didn't express my thoughts very well, sorry.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by readytotransformAug 30 2011 - 11:15pm.I actually haven't been around as much, and yes, there was a 'while'... ;-)
It is good to 'see' you again as well!
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Stephen V. RileyAug 30 2011 - 10:27am.So let's get ready for the surge of ever so smart CD posters who knew Obama was a phony from the very beginning,
The most powerful message pissed off democrats can send to America is to vote the socialist ticket in 2012.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by pjd412Aug 30 2011 - 10:36am.Unfortunately, Pennsylvania's, and many other state's corrupt and arduous ballot-access rules are such that getting a SP-USA candidate on the ballot is very difficult. With the exception of when Nader ran on their ticket, even the PA Greens have never succeeded in getting a statewide candidate on the ballot.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by AmerangloAug 30 2011 - 10:55am.In reddest Oklahoma there's not a chance in hell of getting a 3rd party on the ballot:
From Wiki
"Oklahoma: A party is defined either as a group that polled 10% for the office at the top of the ticket in the last election (i.e., president or governor), or that submits a petition signed by voters equal to 5% of the last vote cast for the office at the top of the ticket. An independent presidential candidate, or the presidential candidate of an unqualified party, may get on the ballot with a petition of 3% of the last presidential vote. Oklahoma is the only state in the nation in which an independent presidential candidate, or the presidential candidate of a new or previously unqualified party, needs support from more than 2% of the last vote cast to get on the ballot"
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by tovangar2Aug 30 2011 - 1:54pm.Does OK allow write-ins?
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by actualleftistAug 30 2011 - 2:33pm.I'm a PA Green and THAT IS NOT TRUE.
The Greens have had MANY statewide candidates on the ballot, from president to PA Attorney General - I think I've voted for Marakay Rogers ON THE BALLOT for the latter at least twice. What state do you live in? If it's PA you must not have been here long...
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by cicero_confusedAug 30 2011 - 4:16pm.my guess is that the reference was only to presidential elections
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by cicero_confusedAug 30 2011 - 10:44am.I guess I would be one of those "smart" posters you are referring to.
In reality it didn't take any smarts to figure out Obama was a fake. All one had to do was to observe who was the highest recipient of campaign contributions from Wall Street among Democratic primary contenders. I looked it up and saw that Obama was that person (and Hillary was a close second).
I voted happily for him so that he would be president, then go on to predictably disappoint millions and millions of people, and later give me ammunition, when I debate mainstream liberals, for making the case that voting Democrat is a waste of time, and that we better get busy creating one or more third parties, and a more vibrant political culture along the way. I see the Obama presidency as an important step to waking up more people, and that is needed for the long term effort of broadening our politics. The two-party paradigm is suffocating, and outright dangerous to the health of the Republic.
I enjoyed the article but found it pathetic that the author commits to voting for Obama again. Truly pathetic, and toxic too. Basically he is starting the Democratic Party groundwork of insinuating that even though you are totally disappointed with Obama, voting for him again is the right thing to do. Yeah right; good try.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by Franciszek2Aug 31 2011 - 7:55pm.I enjoyed the article too, but I'm not so sure Schechter committed to voting for Obama again. It sounded to me like he was lamenting over the fact that many progressives will undoubtedly turn back to Obama is 2012. I'm not sure that he was saying that he would be one of them, or that he was endorsing lesser-evilism at all.
.
I agree that O's presidency has done a lot to open people's eyes to the completely fraudulent two-party system. I wonder if doubling down on O in 2012 would further help to dispel the illusion. Maybe. But he's going to have to do it without my vote this time.
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by readytotransformAug 30 2011 - 11:22am.Uh oh, would that include..................me. ;-)
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by abvodvarka@yahoo.comAug 30 2011 - 10:22am.Darn, Danny Schechter, I thought you were sharper than this. Forgive me if I say that a couple of months into Obama's campaign it was absolutely clear that he was "corrupt, aligned and complicit". It was common knowledge that Wall street was his biggest campaign donor. You're a man of words, Mr. Schechter, couldn't you hear that he was saying next to nothing in those torrents of touchy-feely oratory? And once he had won the election and was making his appointments and left exactly the same people in the Treasury and Pentagon as engineered the disasters of the Bush regeme, it was absolutely clear that he was a Republican Trojan Horse. Hate to say it but Obama was a transparent fraud from the very beginning. As H.L. Mencken said, "No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American People".
Tony Vodvarka
.Login or register to post comments...Posted by mtdonAug 30 2011 - 10:22am.Obama won the 2008 election by Expanding the number of voters who turned out and actually voted.
Many of these were 1st time voters who actually bought into the PR campaign that Obama Was Different - These same people now know it was BS.
They stayed home in 2010 - and they stayed home during the Wisconsin recall elections.
My guess is there is a good chance they Will Not Vote Again -
Empire Wins Again.
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