Crossposted from Docudharma.
What a world!
How does one even begin to comment?
Not to diminish the achievement of President Elect Obama, it does seem in some ways a dirty joke on African American aspirations that we would finally elect an African American just at THE moment in history when the country is about to tank, and tank hard. Welcome to the presidency African America. Here’s the big, reeking pile of dung we’ve turned the country into for you. Good fuckin’ luck with that!
A part of me suspects that McCain chose Palin for his running mate in a deliberate act of electoral suicide. I think at some point he may have just decided that he didn’t really want the job after all. Maybe if it had been back in the good old days of the cold war – but NOW? It’s not like Bush and them left anything to steal.
With the stranglehold corporate America and the military industrial complex has on our government, McCain had to really work hard to lose this one. For all that has happened in the Bush years, and even with Palin on board, the thoroughly repudiated and utterly disgraced (one would think) republicans only lost this election by just under 7%.
By all rights, assuming a semi-literate and marginally aware electorate, and in light of what all’s been done to them in the name of ‘hey, fuck you – I got mine!’ they should have been lucky to get 7% of the vote. In my view, that speaks to the power of propaganda and cultural programming – but whatever explains it, it’s through the looking glass territory for sure.
So now it’s up to Obama. Is he up to it? Yes, I think he is – if anyone is. It is not outside the realm of possibility, however, that the problems we now face, and have too long ignored, are now too great for any solutions we might contrive. And there are things about Obama that have long been worrisome.
Obama said he wasn’t against all wars, just dumb ones. What’s so smart about Afghanistan? It may be arguable whether or not it was EVER a good idea, but after seven long years it has certainly become just another very bad one.
But now we’re escalating it? Sending in twenty thousand more troops? With Obama’s blessing?
Why is this sane? Why does this make any sense at all? Why is this not totally fucked up?
It Has to Stop!
My fear is that the Pentagon (military industrial complex) is still firmly in charge of our national policy. And the Pentagon (IMO) is little more than an unbelievably heavily armed looney bin. These are not the people we need to be in charge.
The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It's time to stop the mission creep.
We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.
Thomas A. Schweich in the Washington Post
Our Constitution is at risk. No kidding.
So now while Israel blows the shit out of Gaza, Obama is ‘monitoring the situation’. Not condemning the violence, not calling for restraint or peace, but monitoring the situation.
I’m saddened.
Militarism is madness. Obama’s as much as Bush’s.
I read recently in Newsweek that Obama would be judged by whether or not he could save capitalism. It is so wrongheaded, in my view, to try to patch up an exhausted and broken system instead of using that energy and time to reinvent the system – IOWs to create a system that will adequately serve us in a post-capitalist world. She is broken, worn out, face it. Capitalism is done for. Wasn’t such a hot deal for most of us anyway. All the energy and treasure thrown thoughtlessly into keeping those plates spinning for the corporate piggies is wasted in the end and the problems we face merely kicked a little further down the road.
Let’s get real, quit wasting money on made up wars and greedy corporate bastards, turn to science, hard work and responsible legislation to salvage what we can of the biosphere and develop intelligent ways to tred lightly upon the earth while caring properly for the entire population of the planet. Let’s start acting like responsible adult members of an intelligent species.
While I obviously reserve the right to be critical, I have supported Barack Obama, and still do – just not across the board. I can’t imagine what it must be like at that level to face the power of Corporate America and the military industrial complex – but I’m thinking it can’t be easy. I’m thinking he needs us behind him pushing hard left all the way.
However strongly we support Obama, we do him no favors when we spare him our criticism. Only by kicking his ass when he’s wrong can we ever hope to help steer him right. That’s not because of who he is – but because of who he’s up against...who we’re up against.
The era of the war profiteers and the warmongers has to be over.
President Elect Obama, I call on you to condemn the violence in the Middle East.
Peace.
P.S. Please sign the petition to investigate and prosecute the war criminals in the Bush Administration if you haven't already. Just click on the button below.