[R-G] Time to Take the Gloves off with Obama

[Richard Menec]

<<If you're for justice and jobs, GM should be forced as part of the
bankruptcy deal to rebuild the rail trolley systems they destroyed in
conspiracy with Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone
Tire and Mac Truck in the 1940s and '50s.>>

<<The car will not be a part of our future -- peak oil we see to that. So 
why
try to prop up the car infrastructure and its related oil-dependent
industries?>>

<http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=460&Itemid=1>

Time to Take the Gloves off with Obama

by Jan Lundberg and Jeff Garritsen

18 June 2009

The clock is ticking, and we are not building life boats. As the
population's options close and a harder ecological and socioeconomic fall is
assured more each day, Barack Obama is leading the thumb twiddlers, albeit
with eloquence and charm. What passes for policy debate today seldom reckons
with the life and death issues of climate extinction, petrocollapse, and the
social chaos ahead. Obama is dealing with a heck of a lot, granted. This
alone is supposed to quiet the people quite a bit, and despite the
Depression, ecocide and unending war, it has worked rather well. With his
likability and intelligence - after the "Führer Bushler" -- Obama is thus
the perfect man for our times if you're basically clinging to the status
quo.

Take health care (more accurately, medical care). It is certainly a burning
issue, what with increasing suffering across the board both physiologically
and financially. One in six dollars goes to the attempt to buy health
through treatments. But throwing a trillion dollars at disease and pain will
do nothing that lasts if we still live in a toxic environment and if diet
remains one of processed foods grown in depleted soils.

This illustrates that Obama and the rest of the politicians, medical
industry and the corporate world are operating within a hopeless cultural
straight-jacket. This milieu is enforced through every speech, commercial,
and policy. So, whether we are willing to cut Obama generous slack or not,
he is unable to be effective as the general crisis grows.

It is in areas where Obama can be effective that popular agitation can and
must take place. So far, this is constrained by the fact that Obama has a
nice smile and is the first black man to take office as President and
Commander In Chief. I say "Wow!" too. But is the Obama we hope exists really
the man behind the curtain? Without much critical thinking, while Der
Bushler is still in our memory, Obama gets a free pass -- aided by the
nation's reluctance to hit the streets en masse as happens in Iran, France,
Mexico and elsewhere.

The consensus among "progressives" seems to be "Obama's a nice guy, and he
gets it, but he's not allowed to do much."

However, he has made many a presidential decision for the worse on many
issues. Even as president-elect he urged the White House to cut loose the
$700 billion bail-out for the financial sector. This was a blank check, we
all found out, but it was an "honest gesture" of faith in the capitalist
system -- synonymous with the good ol' Red, White and Blue. There is the
true problem.

As people romanticize the U.S. and "Mr. President" there can be no
meaningful change. So the Commander In Chief must do as his masters dictate
and as he pleases: to keep the profitable war machine well oiled, and keep
Detroit cranking out death machines in the name of jobs. One consequence of
a "middle" position is serious disappointment: One of our contributing
editors, after reading a draft of this essay, pointed out, "There is a name
for letting all the war criminals/bank embezzlers/torturers go without
prosecution. It is called collusion."

The disappointments keep adding up. With today's news on the Obama
administration's letting down gay federal couples for health care, a whole
constituency has been alienated.

Like all politicians, there are two sides to Barack Obama. He knows that
driving cars is a lifestyle to question, as he said last December. But in
his slick style this passes for action, while his pen-strokes squander the
nation's waning ability to convert industrial capacity to humane tools of
sustainability. The longer this is delayed, in hopes of resumed car sales on
the former scale, the less chance there is of any smoothness to a post-peak
oil transition.

The "American People" have ceased to be productive. Rather, they have been
turned into consumers whose buying power has floated an economy of tacky
expansion. As we have seen, this came from "funny money" from ballooning
debt and fleeting "home equity." These mechanisms have nothing to do with
forging a community with self-reliance. But that is our task.

Obama may agree with that, on some emotional level, but he cannot buck the
corporate elite. The same old financial establishment surrounds him, Israel
lobby to boot. He can have a hip First Lady who plants a "Victory Garden,"
but unless action across the board deals with food security and the need to
get off fossil fuels now, Obama serves to stall action for survival as he
defends the status quo of exploitation both human and of nature.

When success is defined as one's using the least possible amount of
energy -- as hoped for by Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett -- our
culture is based on the false security of materialism and destruction for
profit. What Obama has by now figured out is, we have a Waste Economy. Why
anyone wants to see the inequitable Waste Economy resume growth is exactly
why anyone sells out future generations for short-term comfort.

Obama's Mistakes/Crimes

Mountain-top removal for coal mining is implicit in "clean coal" and the use
of the electric grid. Obama fully knows this, but has gone along with making
much of Appalachia a national sacrifice zone. As with nuclear, coal is for
unneeded power that has to date been unquestioned.

Obama is schizoid and hypocritical on the subject of raising healthy,
educated children when he says turning off the TV is necessary, yet he feels
he must bomb Afghani and Pakistani children in "collateral damage."

The banksters and financial fraudsters, along with the non-federal private
Federal Reserve, are Obama's most powerful constituency. Ironically, as they
help bring down the financial system and the economy, they are the unwitting
heroes of collapse. But betrayal is betrayal: "What in gods' name are you
doing listening to Geithner and Summers?"

The real contest is between the corporado elite and the common people. The
corporados know their end is in sight, so they're trying to take all they
can before money becomes paper "rubbish," as Dmitry Orlov predicts.

Is an honest mistake being made? Actually, history is a guide. In 1931
President Hoover bailed out the banks in an attempt to unfreeze the credit
markets. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

Mr. President: "What in the hell do you think you will accomplish by sending
troops to Afghanistan? Don't you know empires go to Afghanistan to die?!"

If you're for justice and jobs, GM should be forced as part of the
bankruptcy deal to rebuild the rail trolley systems they destroyed in
conspiracy with Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone
Tire and Mac Truck in the 1940s and '50s.

The car will not be a part of our future -- peak oil we see to that. So why
try to prop up the car infrastructure and its related oil-dependent
industries?

Economic expansion without cheap energy and a compromised ecosystem is a
dead end.

What is Obama's vision for this country? Where's the change?

If we take off our rose colored glasses we see Obama is the perfect defender
of the system, so he cannot be our friend. He is basically a kinder and
gentler George Bush. And would Hillary Clinton really have been a less
progressive president than Obama? I think we've found out: we bought the
same model, just a different color and gender.

As Obama-worship peters out and the leftover campaign signs finally come
down, we have to push the government to do the right thing - to the extent
possible. Yet, as Thomas Jefferson spelled out, the power is not vested in
Obama, but in ourselves. Da Prez Man has himself, as a former community
organizer, admitted same.

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