[lbo-talk] Empty and meretricious

[Shane Mage]

Obama delivered an oration empty of positive content but full of  
meretricious flourishes designed to redeem and justify the whole  
history of American colonialism.  The absolute worst was his  
beginning--that the US is a nation at war.  This just after swearing  
to uphold a constitution that precludes anyone but Congress from  
declaring war.  For Obama, the war criminal Bush has declared a "War  
on Terror" and that is the anticonstitutional declaration which Obama  
upholds.  Obama paid tribute to those who "settled the West" without  
even a gesture of rhetorical balance about those who fought and were  
massacred trying to defend their lands and lives from those who  
"settled the West" and their Custers and  Carsons.  Obama  lauded  
those who fought at "Concord and Normandy and Khesan."  Not a word, of  
course, about the thousands of African-American slaves who threw off  
their chains to fight and die against the revered slavedriving  
Founding Fathers and for the legitimate government of their country.   
Nor, of course, a rhetorical parallel of Normandy and Tokyo or of  
Khesan and Mylai-- even though the soldiers perpetrating those  
genocidal massacres were no different--and perhaps were even the same  
persons--as those who fought at Normandy and Khesan.

Perhaps the most sickening phrase, even more than his fulsome tribute  
to "The Market" and his proclamation that health care is not a right  
but a commodity that should somehow be made "affordable," was Obama's  
embrace of the rightist counterposition of  "People" and  
"Government,"  when it would have been so obvious, so easy, to talk  
about the people tackling problems through "their government and their  
organizations."  It would have been so easy for him to evoke a  
millions-strong antiphony of "Yes We Can!" by announcing noble goals  
like moving to a CO2-free economy,  providing health care to everybody  
in the country on the basis of need, providing good free education to  
every child from pre-school through college, leading the world to a  
united effort against global warming, guaranteeing all working  
Americans the ability to organize democratically in the trade union of  
their choice, even "beating swords into plowshares."  It would have  
been easy--but it would have been "wrong" (ie, Left).  Obama, today at  
least, would rather be Right.

Shane Mage


> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos