by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The mantra du jour is that Obama hasn't undone 'Bush'. Ergo --Obama is just as evil as is Bush, or Bush Sr, or Ronald Reagan. Not so and not possible! The false analogy misses the point, a strategy designed to deflect attention from the endemic corruption of the right wing party --the GOP; It is a false analogy that might have been tested in a focus group on K-Street. It has certainly caught on as have many another 'successful' mantra, slogan, or buzzword. And it's just as worthless! One of my recent critics had clearly caught the 'but Obama is just as bad as Bush' virus and posted the following comment:
I used to really enjoy your blog when W was in the White house - most of your commentary was spot on (except for the part about Bush being an idiot - I don't give damn who his father is, the USAF does NOT let morons fly jet fighter planes)Flying an airplane is not evidence of political genius. I have known lots of pilots and would not trust one of them to run the nation, supervise a federal budget or negotiate a peace with a nuclear power. The idea that Bush was smart enough to be prez because he could fly a plane is idiotic.
A 'Democrat' is in the White House! But WHAT has changed? Are we out of Iraq? Is the government no longer owned by the Axis of K-Street and the M.I.C.? Did anyone suspect that the mere election of someone whose campaign was financed by the ruling elite of just one percent of the nation would suddenly decide, upon his election, to release their choke hold?
Where can I can find that press release to that effect.
Yes, they're criminals, but O has continued virtually every criminal republican policy instituted by W. And anyone failing to hold the current president accountable, is no better than the GOP slime who enabled Bush to get away with murder.At last, I am sick and tired of trying to explain to people that Democrats are just another wing of a single right wing party --the capitalist party aka the fat cat party! It's the only party in the U.S. that wins elections. The system is so skewed that their bets are covered whomever wins the election. Get a clue, folk!
Both parties are financed by the same capitalists, a ruling one percent of the total population, a group --in fact --created and enriched by right wing GOP policies --not Democratic policies. While both parties line up for monies from the same source, Democrats get less. It is but a sop!
Many whine about O. But where is the revolution? Who is going to do anything about it? Who is going to put up or shut up?
NO ONE!
Many have missed the REAMS of cold hard stats that prove that of the two, the GOP is endemically evil while the Dems reduced to sloppy seconds, merely tolerated for appearances. Who is going to do anything about that?
NO ONE!
Wealth and power are concentrated in America, a trend begun, in earnest, with the end of the Civil War. Labor lost its most important battle in 1910 in Los Angeles. It lost a FINAL battle under Ronald Reagan --a Republican whose administration must bear the responsibility for the most recent trend of income and wealth disparities. That record is available to anyone willing to search the archives of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department-B.E.A. But --who is going to do anything about that?
NO ONE!
A 'progressive history' is obviously neglected in public school curricula. So-called modern 'progressives' in name only come up with a whiny: "...but Obama hasn't changed anything!" My response to them is: well, what the fuck have you done lately?
In the early days of the 20th Century, real progressives were willing to fight for what they believed in and many suffered head cracks and broken bodies because of it. Modern progressives will whine about Obama but none --I daresay --are wiling to pay the price required to effect a real change. And no one in the 'Obama is just as bad' camp has a plan, a strategy, a frickin' clue! No one wants to get his/her head cracked, or shot to death as was the case at Kent State in the 60s. I'm not happy with Obama but wasting time and energy blasting Obama while the 'real killers' maintain power over every aspect of our lives is just plain stupid. I have no respect for and would never go into battle with any S.O.B. who is not smart enough to know who the real enemy is!
Bloggers may be forgiven their impatience when no one seems to pay attention, when the MSM gets thousands of 'gross rating points' with a single airing of just 30 seconds on prime time and every blogger I know (myself included) gets but a fraction of that over a period of eight years or more. That's how long it took to be rid of Bush and --still --the message has not gotten through. Fact is, we failed! Bush served out his term and has not yet been tried for 911, Abu Ghraib, or war crimes and crimes against humanity throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan. I wonder, how much good has blogging done but for the 'feel good' factor among bloggers and those who read them.
Who created this situation? Democrats??? No --the concentration of media in the hands of just four or five major corporations is the result of Ronald Reagan policies and I can prove it. And Ronald Reagan --last time I checked --was not a Democrat at the time he was Prez. Reagan was, in fact, a Democrat but only before his official corruption. The concentration of wealth among a ruling elite of just one percent began with Ronald Reagan and his policies. I have proven this with the government's own stats time and again over the last ten years or more. Yet another article may be read by a few, perhaps hundreds or even a thousand. Fox will reach that many in a less than a minute and that many again in another minute. In the course of one hour, the Fox audience of millions will have 'turned over' many times. Each turn-over is called a 'cume'; it's measurable.
Of my 'critic', I ask: what do you want to hear? What do you want me to write or say? What makes you feel better about yourself? What makes you feel better about living in the fall of empire --a fall that is directly the result of right wing policies! Not Democratic ones.
It is symptomatic that only two Democratic candidates espoused anything resembling a 'progressive' platform: Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. That's because Democrats must raise even more money than GOP incumbents if they wish to unseat them --monies that come from the same well-heeled sources. Such monies finding their way into a Democratic coffer are a hedged bet. It is not really intended to win him/her the seat! Think of it as insurance.
Neither Gravel or Kucinich had a chance of becoming President and I took heat --liberal (progressive) heat --because I dared say so. I was misunderstood. I was not criticizing either Gravel or Kucinich but the evil, corrupt system that kept either man out of the White House. I was, rather, pointing up the inequities, the built-in institutionalized unfairness. I was damning a skewed and phony hologram of right wing creation!
Raising the kind of money it takes to win the Presidency requires a sell-out, a Faustian bargain, the sale of souls to the Axis of K-street and the MIC, a sacrifice to Moloch. So --sure --Obama is compromised. It goes without saying! That he 'won' is evidence of it. That's what we've come to; that's what our nation has become: a periodic auction of the offices of government! But it is not Obama's fault. It is an endemic evil that must be addressed and changed and carping about Obama 'ain't' making it. Carping about Obama utterly misses the point! I suggest 'progressives' read Shakespeare and, by doing, prove to conservatives that a progressive education is money well spent:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."Does anyone really think that these BIG BUCKS come from the grassroots? Haven't the American people figured out by now that the ruling elite of just one percent --created by the policies of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr primarily --is not going to fund a progressive like Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich --both smart, honest men? Personal attacks on Obama are, therefore, stupid and counter-productive and help ensure that the system that kept kept Kucinich and/or Gravel out of contention will maintain the crooked status quo. And if either Kucinich or Gravel had won, what would they have done, what could they have done that Obama has not? What miracles might have occurred that would have undone an accretion of bureaucratic infrastructure spanning some 50 years or more?
Of my critic, I asked: would it make you feel better if I said the Axis of K-Street/MIC no longer existed? Would it make you feel better about yourself if I scolded Obama for having been bought by the same cabal that bought Bush JR? Would it make you feel better if I raised some other strawman, some other distraction while the real crooks finish off the rape of Iraq, Afghanistan or --for that matter --the rape of the American people by robber barons and an elite of just 1 percent of the total population?
Would it make you feel better about yourself if I lied and wrote --in the spirit of equal time --that the MIC was created by Obama? It was not!
Would it make you feel better if I lied and said that Obama was as stupid as Bush JR? He is not! And I won't say that he is!
Would it make you feel better about yourself if I lied and stated that it was really Democrats or Obama who plotted with Dick Cheney to carve up the oil fields of Iraq?
Would you feel better about living in the last days of American empire if I wrote that Obama had sat in on GOP planning sessions in which he conspired with them to transfer wealth to just one percent of the U.S. population? Clue: he didn't! And I will not lie and say he did! So --just get off this 'Obama is just as bad' shit!
I don't buy it!
But Ronald Reagan may have and if he didn't his evil minions did, the same evil minions who sold out to the Axis of K-street/MIC, the modern Moloch, the system! His tax cut of 1982 enriched only the upper quintile and everyone else lost ground. It was a payoff to Reagan's base, later Bush's base. The same guys. Am I supposed to lie about that in the interest of 'equal time'? Am I supposed to say that The Democrats were just as bad as Reagan in spite of the fact that the trend that was thus begun reversed in the Clinton administration and, clearly, as a result of Clinton's democratic policies?
Did it ever occur to Clinton's progressive critics, that it was the GOP who ramrodded his impeachment; it was the GOP who told every lie and pulled off every dirty trick to get him OUT of the White House? Would the GOP have bothered to do that had he failed? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton were really no different than the crooks of the GOP? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton had really been doing their bidding? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton had been a GOP plant as is often said of Obama because he's black? And why have so many said that Clinton was 'America's first black President?' I am convinced that it was floated up by a GOP consulting firm whose focus group results discovered that closet bigots thought it funny! I say that based upon my experiences 'inside' GOP consulting firms. I learned how the sonsobitches think!
I used to think goppers were stupid! Lately, whenever I heard the 'dems are just as bad' argument that I begin to understand how the GOP always manages to outsmart the progressives. Hence my advice to progressives: quit being stupid! Learn to identify catch phrases and slogans --memes --that most certainly originate in GOP right wing think tanks and focus groups! Unless you do, you will ensure the election of another GOP, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but soon and you will regret it for the rest of your sorry fucking lives!
If I could reverse the GOP trend of wealth upward, I would happily procure blow jobs for Clinton! I frankly don't gave a damn and have no interest in what he does with his wang on his own time. It was another distraction that kept 'progressives' and 'Dems' occupied while GOP power brokers plotted to steal Iraqi oil as soon as they could get 'their man' in the White House. Now --I know a thing or two about the oil business. There is not a Democrat to be found in the executive offices of any of them. If you think you know one, please send me his email address or phone number. I would like to know why he has turned down all the offers he must have gotten for his very soul! Everyone else has sold out long ago!
There are no articles to be written about 'lessers' of two evils and I am not inspired to write one. Obama is neither the creator of the frickin' disaster he inherited nor --sadly, realistically --will he be the savior that undoes it all. That's just the way it is. So --I ask my critic --does it make you feel better about yourself and the Kafkaesque situation in which you have found yourself awakened as a cockroach to take it out on a blogger who has not made a goddamned dime on this blog nor taken a goddamned dime from the MIC/K-STREET axis? No one owns me! And if you had brain, you would focus your misplaced frustration on 1) someone who gives a shit what you think; and 2) some one who could do something about it from inside the DC bureaucracy. Clearly --if I were in a position to wave a wand, I would have done so years ago and spared myself the grief.
What makes you feel better about yourself?
Perhaps, I should write some crap about how Obama is just as stupid as Bush Jr! Forget it! If that's what makes you feel better, you're outta luck cause I will not sacrifice an ounce of intellectual integrity to assuage a fragile, progressive ego.
In the meantime, it would help if the American people would could break out of their matrix. Just turn off the stupid TV! READ! Throw a rock through Big Bro's telescreen! Just say NO! Turn off FOX! Turn off CNN! Stop repeating the stale, stock phrases that pass for analysis! Wake the fuck up! De-hynotize yourself! Get a brain!
And then --when the empire falls, you will have at least learned the source of your demise. Or --to paraphrase Gen Patton to his troops --when your grand children ask you what you did during the fall of the 'great' American Empire, you won't have to say 'Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana!"
Right about now --a lot of Obama detractors are just shoveling shit and totally missing the point!
See: For the GOP If You're Not in the Top One Percent You Can Drop Dead!
Bill 0'Reilly's 19th Nervous Break Down Rapped (What an Idiot!!)
But Ronald Reagan may have and if he didn't his evil minions did, the same evil minions who sold out to the Axis of K-street/MIC, the modern Moloch, the system! His tax cut of 1982 enriched only the upper quintile and everyone else lost ground. It was a payoff to Reagan's base, later Bush's base. The same guys. Am I supposed to lie about that in the interest of 'equal time'? Am I supposed to say that The Democrats were just as bad as Reagan in spite of the fact that the trend that was thus begun reversed in the Clinton administration and, clearly, as a result of Clinton's democratic policies?
Did it ever occur to Clinton's progressive critics, that it was the GOP who ramrodded his impeachment; it was the GOP who told every lie and pulled off every dirty trick to get him OUT of the White House? Would the GOP have bothered to do that had he failed? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton were really no different than the crooks of the GOP? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton had really been doing their bidding? Would the GOP have bothered if Clinton had been a GOP plant as is often said of Obama because he's black? And why have so many said that Clinton was 'America's first black President?' I am convinced that it was floated up by a GOP consulting firm whose focus group results discovered that closet bigots thought it funny! I say that based upon my experiences 'inside' GOP consulting firms. I learned how the sonsobitches think!
I used to think goppers were stupid! Lately, whenever I heard the 'dems are just as bad' argument that I begin to understand how the GOP always manages to outsmart the progressives. Hence my advice to progressives: quit being stupid! Learn to identify catch phrases and slogans --memes --that most certainly originate in GOP right wing think tanks and focus groups! Unless you do, you will ensure the election of another GOP, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but soon and you will regret it for the rest of your sorry fucking lives!
If I could reverse the GOP trend of wealth upward, I would happily procure blow jobs for Clinton! I frankly don't gave a damn and have no interest in what he does with his wang on his own time. It was another distraction that kept 'progressives' and 'Dems' occupied while GOP power brokers plotted to steal Iraqi oil as soon as they could get 'their man' in the White House. Now --I know a thing or two about the oil business. There is not a Democrat to be found in the executive offices of any of them. If you think you know one, please send me his email address or phone number. I would like to know why he has turned down all the offers he must have gotten for his very soul! Everyone else has sold out long ago!
There are no articles to be written about 'lessers' of two evils and I am not inspired to write one. Obama is neither the creator of the frickin' disaster he inherited nor --sadly, realistically --will he be the savior that undoes it all. That's just the way it is. So --I ask my critic --does it make you feel better about yourself and the Kafkaesque situation in which you have found yourself awakened as a cockroach to take it out on a blogger who has not made a goddamned dime on this blog nor taken a goddamned dime from the MIC/K-STREET axis? No one owns me! And if you had brain, you would focus your misplaced frustration on 1) someone who gives a shit what you think; and 2) some one who could do something about it from inside the DC bureaucracy. Clearly --if I were in a position to wave a wand, I would have done so years ago and spared myself the grief.
What makes you feel better about yourself?
Perhaps, I should write some crap about how Obama is just as stupid as Bush Jr! Forget it! If that's what makes you feel better, you're outta luck cause I will not sacrifice an ounce of intellectual integrity to assuage a fragile, progressive ego.
In the meantime, it would help if the American people would could break out of their matrix. Just turn off the stupid TV! READ! Throw a rock through Big Bro's telescreen! Just say NO! Turn off FOX! Turn off CNN! Stop repeating the stale, stock phrases that pass for analysis! Wake the fuck up! De-hynotize yourself! Get a brain!
And then --when the empire falls, you will have at least learned the source of your demise. Or --to paraphrase Gen Patton to his troops --when your grand children ask you what you did during the fall of the 'great' American Empire, you won't have to say 'Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana!"
Right about now --a lot of Obama detractors are just shoveling shit and totally missing the point!
See: For the GOP If You're Not in the Top One Percent You Can Drop Dead!
Bill 0'Reilly's 19th Nervous Break Down Rapped (What an Idiot!!)
Why I moderate comments
- SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
- Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!
- A Spiritual Mind Movie
- How the US Became a Vassal State of China
- Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
- The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
- Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
- Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
[w/LINKS] - Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
- How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
5 comments:
'Obama is compromised.' - LH
As was Clinton and his arrangement to push NAFTA through, and all the other 'neo-liberal' imperial agenda's...neither of these candidates would have made the primaries had they not fit the current accepted mold. Our dilemma is complex, but as so many of your articles have shown, not impossible to figure out many of the cause's and effects, if one takes the time to assimilate enough factual data and apply some common sense interpretations, assessments and conclusions.
Len...I also agree that the gop is the epicenter and originator of our continued failure...they care nothing for this nation, their fellow citizens or it appears for life in general, they are greedy, corrupt and decadent souls. Their deceit and cynicism knows no boundaries, and their appeal, real or not...over the past few decades has wrecked this nation to the core.
Many (certainly not all) of the clueless Dems are inspired by some sense of compassion, and that they are instilling some form of constitutional equity and justice...The clueless Republicans in their current form, aka teabaggers, etc. etal...are inspired by hate, deceit and dominance, they are nothing more then bullies & bigots looking for a platform...ready fodder for the current GOP strategies of dirty tricks. I do not count out a small percentage of the tea-party being genuine in their belief's or grievance, but many have continued to vote against their best interests for decades, and continue to be manipulated by the standards of the right wing / GOP. They have been perfect tools for the GOP trade.
It is also the differences of personality types that inhabit these two political groups...which is yet another angle that has been discussed at this site. I can imagine your frustration as your insights fall on deaf ears, who has the patience to listen to those with the inability to embrace facts.
benmerc
benmerc, the point I had hoped to make is this: criticisms of Obama and Clinton miss the point. The Axis of MIC/K-street [Molooch] benefits when 'progressives' miss the point. It just helps them out.
Focusing all this rhetoric upon whatever 'Dem' is in the White is utterly misplaced and counter-productive. It totally misses the target.
It boils down to a simple decision matrix:
1) I will take any Democrat over ANY gopper anytime.
2) I will OPPOSE any gopper for any office any time.
But --IF I had the choice of smashing the 'Axis of K-street/MIC' which, in fact, finances both wings, I would choose to do so.
IF the K-street/MIC were smashed, real alternatives may present themselves but, as long as candidates must raise millions just to achieve 'name ID', the K-street/MIC axis is assured that either of only TWO candidates will be kiss ups. That doesn't mean the the K-street Moloch will not have a preference --but the odds are always with the 'house'.
But --until that Axis is smashed, I have NO CHOICE but to make the BEST CHOICE that is given.
At last --given the paradigm that is NOT OF DEM making but imposed upon the nation, the individual is REDUCED to making a faustian compromise with Moloch if he/she should vote at all; and if he or she withholds a vote, MOLOCH is likewise assured of victory.
In both instances MOLOCH wins; in both instances, people lose! The only free choice left is revolution.
Americans have not yet figured this all out.
Len...I think you got your point across, it is well taken. I also think we are at a precipice, only time will tell how it all shakes out.
benmerc
I like to phrase it thus - Democrats are unduly influenced by big money; the GOP is a wholly owned subsidiary thereof. There is a difference. That difference, moreover, is magnified, evident in effectiveness of policy creation, by the fact that the GOP largely marches in lockstep. Due to the relatively weak domestic policy powers of the exec branch, true power lies with the president's party. Presidents are not Caesars except in foreign policy. And if you own one political party outright, you only have to buy off a small fraction of the other to effect legislation.
BTW, St. Ronnie was just as much a figurehead as Bush Sr. and Jr. Donald Regan, James Baker, and Dick "Dick" Cheney, OTOH, not so much. In fact, the GOP presidency has resembled the Japanese Shogunate since Ford (See Don Rumsfeld). The Dem presidents have at least actually done some presidenting.
Thirty-five years ago I fought for public financing of all campaigns. I was met mostly with yawns and "Good God! Know how much that'll cost? More taxes!! Nooo!" Now that mass media, who would pay for their spectrum with pro bono air time, are firmly entrenched as a mega-corporate de facto monopoly, that fight is lost, probably forever, along with our republic.
you're right, cavjam, both parties are controlled by big money and every pres is just a 'figure head'; the platforms, agenda, policy et al are derived IN ORDER TO facilitate the goals of what some call the MIC, others call the 'ruling elite and other call the cabal of fat cats and capitalists.
I wish someone would come up with a term that everyone could agree on. It would help us cut to the chase and that is: WE, THE PEOPLE, NO LONGER COUNT.
There is a pattern, however, to GOP policy specifically that is NOT true of Democratic regimes and that is this: as a DIRECT RESULT of GOP tax cuts just one percent of the U.S. population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined.
OF COURSE, this was by design and sold with various trojan horses and GOP bullshit. Trickle down theory, in fact, caused wealth to FLOW UP --not down. It is SIGNIFICANT that this trend reversed, not merely slowed but REVERSED, under Clinton. Check CB and Bureau of Labor Stats. The trend upward to his 'base' resumed under the American Caligula --GEORGE W. BUSH.
The parallels to Rome have over the last eight years or so become extraordinary. Like Rome, income and wealth disparities are obscene.
Like Rome, unemployment is high and widespread.
Like Rome, the U.S. produces little these days but death and destruction --it's chief export.
Like Rome, the 'leisure class' is worthless and growing more STUPID daily.
Like Rome, the U.S. attacks and invades other countries in order to loot natural resources growing scarce in the U.S.
In the case of Rome, it was GOLD that was most often sought because Rome was broke; in the case of the U.S. it is OIL. Like Rome, the U.S. thinks of itself as civilized surrounded by 'barbarians'.
U.S. relations which Mexico have never been genuinely cozy. As recently as 1910, when a revolution broke out in Mexico, there were fears it would spread, that a new 'liberal' regime would join forces with U.S. progressives, reclaim Texas, AZ, NM, and CA. Wow --what IF that had happened?
Recall that at the time the U.S. labor movement was very active and RADICAL. The L.A. Times building was dynamited and burned down, I believe, in the same year that Mexican radicals had fought a battle in Juarez in which shots were fired toward El Paso. In the same year, Mexican revolutionaries occupied the town of Mexicali just across the border from San Diego.
The Mexican Constitution that resulted is still the law in Mexico and, significantly, CIVIL LIBERTIES are put UP FRONT, at the top! In the U.S. CIVIL LIBERTIES were an afterthought to become the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, the so-called 'Bill of Rights'.
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