|
I'd like to think that things will get better now. I'm even willing to be okay with the appointment of Rahm Emanuel- as somebody else said, maybe Obama is bringing the DLC into his camp and not the other way around. And of course, now that McCain's conceded, we don't have to worry about Roe v. Wade getting overturned. (:thumbsup:)
But then I think about how the election was stolen from Gore in 2000, and possibly from Kerry in 2004. And I wonder why the powers that be- the Washington insiders, the billionaire CEO's, the power players whose names you will never find in the news- didn't try to do the same thing this time. Sure, there were a few die-hard Republicans putting up posters telling Democrats to vote on the 5th, and one guy who showed up at a polling place telling all the Democrats that they were supposed to vote somewhere else. But those were just local nuts; I don't think they were getting orders from anyone on a national level. And besides, they were probably just religious nuts who were worried about evil queers and abortion, not pro-globalization capitalists who only care about the almighty dollar.
I've been thinking a lot about this Atlantic article from 1992 that someone posted on DU a year or so ago called Jihad vs. McWorld. Obama's major enemies, and the crazy folks who tried to trick Democrats into not voting for him, mostly fall into the Jihad category: They care about defending the religious biases of their own groups. The people in the McWorld category, the corporate string-pullers, have done relatively little to oppose Obama. They are capitalists, and have traditionally sided with Republicans, because Republicans want less democratic oversight of the markets. for a long time, reducing oversight and regulation was good for the capitalists but bad for most people.
But now, with the economy falling apart under Bush, it's beginning to appear that unregulated capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. That is to say, the powerful people on top cannot go on indefinitely wreaking havoc on the general population and raking in all the benefits for themselves. In the end, they, too, will suffer from economic collapse. And that's what we're seeing now: They're being hurt by their own greedy policies. And McCain would continue the greedy economic policies of George Bush. So I think the big capitalists decided, "Hey, let's not put up a big fight this time. Let's let Obama win, because this shit that we've been doing since the Reagan revolution isn't really working anymore. We don't give a shit about the common people, but we do need some regulation just to keep us afloat." That's why I think that we didn't see more serious attempts to rig the election this time.
So I'm very relieved that Obama won. I don't think he'll change the economic system as radically as it needs to be changed, but he will institute enough reforms to keep capitalism afloat. I don't like capitalism; I'm hesitant to don any labels for my politics but I do sympathize with many socialists. However, I recognize that even the most superficial reforms will make a difference for thousands of people- the Obama presidency will make a difference for thousands of people. And on the most human level, that's a beautiful thing.
But we can't get passive and think that the battle's over. It's not. Look how the McCain campaign was able to attack him as a Muslim and a Socialist- two things which there are nothing wrong with being. Obama had to emphasize that he was neither of those things just to get the majority to vote for him. So here's the next thing we have to do: We, the people whose opinions are too "radical" to be accepted by mainstream politicians, must be activists on a very local level. And maybe, if we do enough work in our own communities, we can change what "mainstream" is. Maybe, one of these Presidential Elections, we'll actually reach the point where calling your opponent a socialist would only make him more popular. (Seriously. Why Socialism. By Albert Fucking Einstein. READ IT.)
So I do have a lot of hope that we can change popular opinion, make it more progressive. But then, we've got the capitalist string-pullers again. The politics of the many can easily be swayed, but the politics of the powerful few cannot. They know what they want and they have the money, resources, and killers-for-hire to get it. I keep thinking about that meeting that Obama went to today where the CIA revealed all the state secrets to him. And I keep thinking that they're probably making it pretty clear to him that if he tries anything funny he'll wind up like JFK. Yeah, I think the CIA had Kennedy killed because he was going to de-escalate the Vietnam conflict and end the embargo on Cuba. (Just two days before the assassination, he offered a peace agreement to Fidel Castro. Look it up. It's part of this whole big interesting story about Kennedy, Castro, and a reporter named Lisa Howard who wound up "committing suicide".)
In my heart, I do believe that Barack Obama is a good, progressive person. But I also think that he's not going to do anything particularly progressive, because he needs to keep the majority on his side, and not get the murderous capitalist bosses pissed off at him. The majority we can deal with. We can make them more sympathetic to progressivism, I think. But the people on top are going to make sure that Obama doesn't make any radical changes, and they want, I think, to pacify the American people with the illusion of change while in fact instituting just enough reform to keep their economic machine working. They have power over presidents and are willing to kill to get what they want, and I don't know how we can get around that. It seems like a trap.
But if you, infamous cynic, if even you are full of joy and hope, then surely there must be good reason for me, an incurably idealist college student, to feel the same way, right? So I guess it comes down to this, the five-word sentence I never dreamed I would say: Give me some optimism, Rabrrrrrr.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
