It's only two weeks into his Presidency and Barack Obama may just be getting the inkling that he has very few true allies. We know the Republicans have all joined together to gang up on him over the stimulus bill but those crafty Democrats are in fact far more dangerous. They bring new meaning to the word frenemy. They want to derail his entire Presidency in the same way the Republicans did to Bill Clinton.
He has done nothing but capitulate and they still won't let him join their club. This is what institutional racism is. This is the face and deeds of white supremacy. If Obama thought he could coddle it or dance around it, he is in for a rude awakening. He gets no quarter for being half-white because per all the old slave laws, he's still a nigger to them. That sounds harsh, doesn't it? Well the truth must be told and is best served bluntly.
Tom Daschle may have thought it was DC politics as usual. After all, Tim Geithner got confirmed and he also had a tax problem. There was no way PBO could have three appointees with the same issues. It was sloppy vetting and it set Obama up to look like a fool. Unless he personally went through all the paperwork - which I doubt - somebody in his ranks is intentionally messing up. Since the buck stops with the President, it's him who looks bad. Plus PBO knows that his pal has been earning money as a lobbyist - so all the change talk is sounding like BS. However, we know Daschle's support was the clincher for an Obama nomination win....so one could say he had yet another debt to be paid. It has not gone unnoticed that those who stuck their necks out early on and supported PBO have not ended up working for him in his administration though. I smell a familiar stench coming from the Clinton camp, but PBO surely knew what he was getting himself into, right? Did he think he was going to get a day off from people who live to eviscerate their rivals? This isn't a popularity contest (which he won) it's a long slow battle to the death. The last one standing wins.
Even Caroline Kennedy had to withdraw in favor of a fake Democrat who's backed by Clintonistas (i.e PUMAS). If a Kennedy was forced out what hope would anyone else have? I know PBO had a wide range of support from a variety of people, but nobody voted for him at the rate Black voters did. We're talking close to 95%. Since 6 out of 10 Black votes came from Black women those of us not prepared for the fall will be totally screwed. Black people have no power collectively in the Democratic party. Republicans tend to look down on any non-white person unless you are upper class and rich. They want the poor whites as cannon fodder for reliable votes because they can always site their white skin privilege to make themselves feel better. It's a winner take all philosophy. There are no friends, only common interests.
It would be very demoralizing for those that put symbolism above activism and organization to be witness to the "fall" of Obama. Which is just the delusions getting a swift kick of reality. Already the corporate media is standing by with camera crews and microphones ready to record every hiccup - but they intentionally hid the bulk of #43's misdeeds. The question is do Black people have a Plan B? Nope! That's the problem.
Obama will be fine no matter what - I'm not sure the Black collective would recover from such a massive disappointment. Oh, but I can imagine the excuses people would be willing to make. I love action-adventure stories as well as those epic dramas like Lord of the Rings, but this is REAL LIFE. There is no time for magical thinking, wishing on stars and hoping for the best.
There is an end run on Obama's Presidency brewing and he hasn't even been in office for ONE MONTH. You know Pelosi, Reid and others have had their hands all over that stimulus plan and although I like most of the things added to it, it will be a fight to get it passed as is. It should not become a test of the strength of his Presidency though.
He's not going to threaten martial law to get it passed - though maybe he should. His capitulation lies in trying to play fair and be nice to a bunch of bastards that want his head on a platter. They can't stand the fact a Black person is running things but because he's already shown he's willing to do anything to make them feel better about it, they are going to demand it. The question is whether Obama will get gully and draw a line in the sand or give in. Like Dr. Phil says, if past actions are an indication of future actions then we already know what Obama is going to do. He's going to do whatever he has to do to appease the factions.
When more of those that support him get cast aside who aren't prominent, wealthy or connected what will they do? I'm feeling a little bitter right now as I write this because I want to be wrong, but I can't shake the feeling that what I'm writing will come to pass. Of course I would've been horrified to have McLame in office with Nanook from the Tundra, but I wasn't at all looking forward to the return of the Hill & Bill show either. John Edwards would've been taken out easily with news of his very own baby momma drama series, the Hair and the Sexually Restless and that would've left us with no viable candidate. President Biden? Ha!
All that work people put into the Obama campaign seems meaningless if it can be unraveled so easily by politicians influenced by dissent with nefarious intentions. This is going to be an even longer, drawn out fight for those that support real progressive values. Now I'm going back to my theory that the complete decay of this country is imminent. The corruption, the violence, the greed, the apathy, the avarice and the blinders we wear have built up a tidy sum of evil that has to be accounted for. The Devil wants his due and we're going to pay up with interest. This is more than political, it's spiritual warfare and perhaps this is the way things were supposed to play out. Sink or swim. Survive or perish. Pay heed to warnings or suffer the consequences. I could be way off base. Or just a little. Either way, we'll soon find out.
God Bless the Child That's Got Her Own.....
9 comments:
I was reading this and partly agreeing and partly disagreeing, til I got to this part:
Now I'm going back to my theory that the complete decay of this country is imminent. The corruption, the violence, the greed, the apathy, the avarice and the blinders we wear have built up a tidy sum of evil that has to be accounted for. The Devil wants his due and we're going to pay up with interest. This is more than political, it's spiritual warfare and perhaps this is the way things were supposed to play out. Sink or swim. Survive or perish. Pay heed to warnings or suffer the consequences. I could be way off base. Or just a little. Either way, we'll soon find out.
I'm not sure I cognitively understand what you mean here -- but this feels to me like it is ringing true.
Maybe it's because I am reading a novel about the atomic bomb that chillingly describes the political and physical horrors of the U.S. bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, by Lydia Millett, not done with it yet). Maybe because reading this book is just another in the many many things that show over and over and over me how much entirely needless horror and suffering this entity has done and continues to promote, as if it feeds off of pain and horror, as if it is for its own pleasure somehow. Maybe also because for the first time in my life I can't entirely distance myself from "the government" because I so strongly supported the candidate who is now President.
In order to become President, Barack Obama had to make and promote a story that is partly based in deception. It is the story of this country as basically "good." It is a lie. It was and is necessary given his goals. It is a lie.
Now coming back to your statement: Now I'm going back to my theory that the complete decay of this country is imminent. -- maybe it's that the explicit showing of the existing decay is imminent. To my senses, this thing is dead and yet is and has been animated. Existing and yet not accountable to anything but its own lies. This is what it is, from the start, at the core. Dress it up, spray perfume around it, create and program beings who are so accustomed to this kind of ugly that they believe it is normal and even a product of "human nature."
I don't know how the current political situation fits with this. I don't know if this comment is even connected to what you are writing about. I tend to get mis-cued and think things are about one thing when they are about something else. I apologize if that's the case here.
Michelle: I don't have this all figured out either. I'm stuck somewhere between the Obama brand being all political hogwash and feeling like there was some spiritual aspect that touched those of us who support(ed) his candidacy. I refuse to accept it was all about manipulation but if things go from really bad to even worse then it won't matter for those that are negatively impacted.
I do know historically every super power falls so I figured with #43 that was it and things would accelerate (deteriorate) from there. So I opposed all the other candidates who were running because I saw them as tools of destruction. So Obama running has thrown me - and everyone - off. Is this progress or more of the same?
The problem is that most Black people have are offering no critical critique...though some being openly hostile. Some are hostile for issues of importance to them and others because of animus. I'm stuck in the middle. Also looking at the rise of Black politicians since Civil Rights and they've been overwhelmingly male, have not supported Black women, are usually embroiled in incompetent or outright criminal acts and have usually taken money/prestige/access over helping the masses.
Kwame Kilpatrick is a prime example. Stating that white politicians do dirt is an invalid argument for their malfeasance. Then there's the part that we the citizens play in allowing those in our gov't to wreck havoc on the rest of the world so we can keep our toys and live the fallacy of the American Dream. I'll also say some of us are more responsible than others but we do have to accept the entire oppressive destructive history of this country.
This is going to play itself out regardless but if this is a situation akin to Noah's Arc I don't want to be left behind when the flood hits.
While your assessments have merit, I still say its very early to really critique what is going on.
The Reps are calling themselves the Loyal Opposition. I think in the end, they will be shooting themselves in the foot. People will remember this very early part of the Obama's presidency and re evaluate their support of the opposition party.
The Republicans are treading on a thin line and one bad move will really kill them in the next midterm election
Hello there, Faith!
I'm glad that you can see where all of this is headed. The masses of our people will be devastated when the various factions of "them" pull down the Obama-ssiah.
You said, "Like Dr. Phil says, if past actions are an indication of future actions then we already know what Obama is going to do. He's going to do whatever he has to do to appease the factions."
The problem is that these various factions CANNOT be appeased. They don't want to be appeased. What they want is to make sure that whatever efforts the Obama-ssiah makes fail, and he gets ALL of the blame, while they position themselves to reign...err, rule...err, govern...once he's been politically destroyed.
But this illustrates another problem with most Black folks' concept of politics. We don't understand that the "ruler" is only as strong as his infrastructure (aka "posse"). In Chicago terms, his political "machine."
Does Pres. Obama actually have a loyal, faithful, strong posse of his own? Or is he somebody who was loaned the use of other people's posses? We know the answer to this.
It looks like he didn't understand that these various "retainers" are only loyal to the people who actually own and created them. They are loyal to the individuals who loaned them to him. NOT to him. He didn't create any of these people.
This is one of the unspoken consequences of Pres. Obama being a crossover candidate who did NOT come from any sort of organized Black movement or infrastructure. Black voters simply hopped on the Obama-ssiah bandwagon after they saw that Whites in Iowa were willing to vote for him.
Pres. Obama did NOT come from us. Not that our infrastructure or organizations are particularly solid, but Pres. Obama has NOTHING but thin air under his feet. He doesn't even have an old-school Chicago political "machine" to watch his back.
It is quite apparent to me that he doesn't have anybody who is actually watching his back. That's his own fault for being naive.
Machiavelli warned about the dangers of a prince being dependent upon mercenaries. Especially foreign ones. They have a habit of abruptly abandoning the prince (at the worst possible moment) in favor of the highest bidder, and/or their previous employers.
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
I don't have this all figured out either. I'm stuck somewhere between the Obama brand being all political hogwash and feeling like there was some spiritual aspect that touched those of us who support(ed) his candidacy.
I suspect it's both. Or maybe more accurately, that this does not fit into those categories, but instead is in a third category that is not opposite either of those things but not one or the other, either.
I feel that the spiritual aspect is unmistakable. I got interested in the election during the primaries (when usually I don't care). It was just after Iowa and what happened is, I felt what I called a "shift in the fabric" of something. I was not really attending to the political details at all at that point. It was like a shift in what was all around me at a level I would (for lack of a better word, and it is not exact) call spiritual.
My problem, though, was that I had some deep mis-cues during that whole thing. I don't regret my spiritual or other responses. They probably were for the best. But still, I can see at this point that I took in information based on some hard-core biases I have about how reality works, biases that are more or less hard-wired into me, limits of my own perception.
Example: There was a point when I read then-candidate Obama talking about his experience of speaking truth. I posted it on JJP, actually. It was part of a longer interview and he said something along the lines of that he is able to feel the power in speaking truth when he does so.
Because of how my perception operates, I go to a default where if someone says they can perceive and experience the power of speaking truth, then in my perception this meant that they are primarily accountable to it. How else to experience this power than accountability to what it wants?
So I thought that comment was saying that he was/is accountable to truth. Now, I know from many many angles that actual accountability to grounded truth is not really present in this cultural context, but my bias is so strong that I read it like that anyway.
But later, after I began to question how I had been understanding the situation and after I found a resource (pdf link here) that showed me in no uncertain terms that President Obama is not accountable to truth but rather is making and promoting a story, I went back to that comment and looked at it again.
And this time I think I get it better. He knows that there is power in truth. Yes. But he understands and uses that power as a resource to meet his actual primary goals. (Even writing this makes me dizzy. How could such a thing be? But I think it is.)
All along during the primaries and then the GE, I kept thinking and saying that this person is the best face or best self of the collective he seeks to lead. I think I was correct about that.
It's a double-edged thing, though. One edge is the best self part. The other edge is the real limits of the collective. Its best self is still not accountable to truth (but instead feels its power and uses it for other goals), still communicating by making up stories, still deceptive because this thing is at its core deceptive and anything that was not in line with its core dynamics would be rejected all over the place -- not elected president.
I'll also say some of us are more responsible than others but we do have to accept the entire oppressive destructive history of this country.
It looks to me at this point that not truly accepting this reality and what it means seems like one of the hard limits of the collective, and so as something President Obama is not going to challenge. His story casts the collective as an essentially "good person."
It is a different kind of story than, say, Bush-style ugliness, but it still has boundaries that can't be crossed even if we need to cross them to get to reality. One example of these boundaries is laid out in the "race speech" IMO. When I returned to the situation with Reverend Wright after re-understanding what I was seeing, I saw that the Reverend had said things that contradicted the core of the Obama "Story of Us" and that the response to re-assert the "Story of Us" was pretty intense. I wrote about that here.
This is going to play itself out regardless but if this is a situation akin to Noah's Arc I don't want to be left behind when the flood hits.
What does this mean in terms of your actual practice and lived choices? This is hard for me to see; I don't have "being one of the survivors" as a goal for my own self.
What does this mean in practice for someone who wants to be on that metaphorical boat? Are there either/or choices you feel like you have to make? What are the choices?
All: My head hurts trying to twist meaning out of this because there is a part of me that wants the "happy ending" despite all the obstacles that have prevented themselves. I thought his speech tonight was a retread of things he's already said and he failed to get the message out. I've noticed how his Republican "friends" are acting like sharks who've sensed blood in the water. He also stated Nancy Pelosi wasn't the architect of the stimulus pkg - ha! I'm hearing no real push back from the familiar circles so I'm just going to have to fend for myself. My state really needs help though and some of the things proposed but not finalized will kick in a few weeks after it's passed. I'm not expecting an immediate change, just the ability to tread water for a while longer. Personally, I've decided to stop kicking rocks and scowling and make a bigger effort towards getting my future intact. I may not like being stuck on the Noah's boat, but I will not be one of those swept away either.
Hello, Faith!
You said, "Personally, I've decided to stop kicking rocks and scowling and make a bigger effort towards getting my future intact. I may not like being stuck on the Noah's boat, but I will not be one of those swept away either."
I'm glad to hear this, too. It's the most prudent posture. It's the reason why I only pay minimum attention to the political chatter these days. I'm more preoccupied with securing a seat on Noah's Ark.
I hope and pray that they're wrong, but several thinkers that I have confidence in are predicting that the economy will go completely belly-up by this summer.
People, Get Ready!
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
Faith,
You have a great writing voice.
I don't know if I agree w/ your assertions re the Dems and their ill intentions.
But I will say, that Pres Obama has his hands full.
Especially as I watch these Sunday morning shows.
~m.
Khadija: Obama has been telling people it's going to get worse before it gets better but I think a lot of people typically like to think that means "for other people but not me".
M. Dot: Welcome and thanks for stopping by. You know I find the Twitterverse conversations so engaging - and entertaining. The public forum is vital. I can't wait to see what the next big microblogging application will be. Kwippy uses instant messaging but that still relies on you providing a list of people whereas with Twitter it's almost exclusively people I don't know.
And as for your assessment about the Dems I use the Inauguration as a prime example Dianne Feinstein was in charge and she was hamming it up for the cameras for certain, but FAILED on the planning. I cannot tell you how many people with tickets didn't get in and were stuck and stranded. If people hadn't been well-behaved and patient there would've been a riot-type reaction. Also the same ineptitude was displayed by the DNC during the Nomination. They left people stranded for hours - and I'm talking about people in wheelchairs and the elderly because they didn't plan. I was personally directed to an area on the opposite side of the stadium I was at and misdirected only to end up back where I'd started 2 hours later which was where I was supposed to have been the entire time.
We know the Republicans have shown they put their political interests above individuals but people make the mistake of thinking the Democrats are any different. Otherwise no one would allow for funding such as Head Start to be cut from this package. There is an intentional plan for creating a permanent underclass of underpaid workers, some of whom will turn to crime for those "elites" to remain so. They do NOT want a level playing field when it works so well to their advantage to step on the necks of others. Obama may have been able to strategize his way in, but he is NOT one of them.
The question not yet answered is whether he will buck trends and go against them or capitulate at the expense of the "masses". There are a core group of people who are always taken care of no matter who's in office but what about the rest of "us"?
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