Is Obama "an Orwellian character" who "make[s] people think that war is peace."

[Karmadillo]

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22461#13040

<edit>

Is Barack Obama a progressive? John Wilson says "yes," I say "no." But how much does the question really matter at the end of the day? Obama wasn't selected to head the United Way or the White Sox. He's chief executive of the American Empire. He is a politician above all - one who was selected to sit atop and, I think, to re-brand what the left-liberal political scientist Sheldon Wolin rightly calls "Democracy, Incorporated."

Every four years millions of American voters are induced to put their political hats on, to hope a bit, and then to go back to sleep. To hope that a savior or at least a more effective manager can be installed in the White House to raise wages, roll back war and militarism, provide universal and adequate health care, rebuild infrastructure, fix the environmental crisis, reduce inequality, and generally make life more livable.

The savior can be named Jack or Bobby or Teddy or Gene or George or Jimmy or Bill or Hillary or John or Adlai or Barack. It doesn't matter. Under the rules of what Wolin calls "corporate-managed democracy," officially "electable" candidates who want a serious shot at lasting power subordinate themselves to what Ed Herman and David Peterson call "the unelected dictatorship of money," which "vets the nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties, reducing the options available to U.S. citizens to two candidates, neither of whom can change the foreign or domestic priorities of the imperial regime."

The Obama presidency so far is a chilling object lesson in the reach, power, and bipartisan nature of that "unelected dictatorship." Obama is following what David Rothkopf, a former Clinton official, calls "the violin model: you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right." In other words, you gain and hold the presidency with populace-pleasing progressive-sounding rhetoric but you govern, you make policy, in service to existing dominant institutions.

So, you lecture Wall Street on the immorality of their bonuses. You visit Elkhart , Indiana to show solidarity with downtrodden working people. And then you give yet more of the public treasury and commons away to the Privileged Few, justifying the handouts as a noble expression of your "sensible," "realistic," and "pragmatic" commitment to rising above ideological divisions to "get things done" for the American people.

Funny how our "pragmatist"-in chief keep getting things done for the rich and powerful. The mind and soul go numb as yet one more populist-, progressive-, and peaceful- sounding campaign promise gets drowned in the icy waters of corporate and military rule. Its been a strange time for many of Obama's progressive fans, what with their "peace" president's blatant escalation of civilian-slaughtering war in South Asia, his indefinite continuation of the Iraq occupation, his increase of the Pentagon budget, his advance dismissal of a peace dividend, his advance approval for an Israel attack on Iran, his refusal to move in any serious way against Israel's occupation of Palestine, his apparent commitment to building a provocative missile shield in Eastern Europe, his embrace of NATO expansion, his ambivalent and tepid response to the right-wing coup in Honduras, his embrace of the War on Drugs in Columbia and Mexico and his continuation of numerous key aspects of George W. Bush's counter-terrorism program. "Obama," Jeremy Scahill notes, "is a brilliant supporter of empire who has figured out a way to trick people into believing they're supporting radical change." The president is "an Orwellian character" who "make<s> people think that war is peace."

more...

[msongs]

1. corporate and military welfare state is NOT progressive lol nt

[Curtland1015]

2. Finally, someone smarter than us has the character and guts to point this out.

Rise up against the monster Obama, who has tricked everyone into thinking we're not fighting any wars by... er... never pretending we weren't.

Wait, what the f**k is this asshole's point again?