George Orwell said it best: “The object of power is power.”
Surprised that Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans are hoping Obama fails? That they are hoping America fails? That they will throw every roadblock in his way? It’s not surprising if you remember that the object of power is power.
US politics is not about a system of governance. It is about acquiring and retaining power, and the Republicans are making that more obvious than any other time in recent memory.
The entire quote from Orwell’s 1984 is worth remembering:
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Elections are about assigning power. The biggest difference between the parties in the last election was how they asked for power. The Republicans said, “We’ll do all these good things for you if only you will give us your power!” Their promises were a tool to get what they really wanted, the power. That’s why campaign promises are so rarely kept; they’ve outlived their usefulness.
But Obama said, “Lend me your power so that together, we can do all these good things.” For the Republicans, power is the end. For Obama, power is the tool to help the country move forward.
People criticize Obama’s lack of experience. Having someone come out of nowhere and rise like a meteor was the ONLY way someone not motivated by power could have been elected President. Our entire political system rewards those who sell out to the power brokers. Idealistic, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” types are crushed early in their careers. Lack of experience is not Obama’s weakness; it’s his strength. He didn’t spend enough time on the political scene to have been forced to sell out.
For him, the object of power is how you can use it to change things.