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A Man-Child in A Promised Land

Paul Street: "Reading between the lines of the Goldberg-Obama dialogue last week, I was struck not for the first or the last time by the great irony of Obama’s ex-presidency: his high-popularity has been driven largely by the awfulness of Trump, who Obama helped create and usher into power, Weimar-like. With all due respect for the dismal awfulness of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, sexism, and the James Comey intervention, Obama’s depressingly conservative and neoliberal presidency (more on this below) was no small part of how and why the Democrats were unable to turn out their party’s progressive base in sufficient numbers to block Trump’s terrible ascendency. Obama helped render transparently inauthentic the Democrats’ progressive pretense, feeding a mass alienation and demobilization Trump was able to exploit in disastrous ways.
"How perverse Obama’s image is burnished by the monster he did a lot to hatch.
"It’s working for him. Along with the undeserved acclaim, Obama has climbed high into the nation’s obscenely opulent oligarchy – delayed reward for his eight years of presidential service to the rich and powerful. A Promised Land is no small part of the big Obama cash-in. The book contracts for his and his wife’s White House memoir the Obamas $65 million.
"After greasing the skids for Trump’s victory, Obama tried to sell the despicable fiend to the nation. The day after the 2016 election, Obama went out into the White House Rose Garden to spout his standard bipartisan and conflict-avoidant drivel about how we’re all 'America[n s] First' and should trust the winner to 'want what’s best for the country.'
"It was a revolting, man-childish performance followed by four years of mostly keeping his mouth shout about a maniacal fascist president who blamed Obama for every national and global malady under the sun.
"Along the way, Obama went off to Martha’s Vineyard and Netflix, to become fantastically rich, the delayed payoff for his eight-plus years of serving concentrated wealth and power.
"Obama has always been a conservative and right-wing wolf wrapped in deceptive, faux-progressive sheep’s clothing. In his arrogant conversation with Obama, Goldberg said this: 'A colleague of mine says that in some ways you’re a never-Trump conservative.' Obama replied without protest, adding this: 'I understand that. There’s this sense of probity, honesty, responsibility, of homespun values, that I admire. That’s the Kansas side of me.'
"Kansas? Please. That’s the Columbia University, Harvard Law, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin, military-industrial-complex, Council on Foreign Relations side of Obama.
"What’s the matter with Obama isn’t Kansas, it’s his allegiance to the ruling class, now rewarded with ascendency into the upper reaches of the oligarchy (part-ownership of an NBA franchise beckons to the sports nut Obama).
"Thanks so much, Barack Obama.
"Thanks for blowing up the struggle for Black equality. Thanks for blowing up Single Payer. Thanks for blowing up serious global climate control efforts in Copenhagen. Thanks for blowing up the Employee Free Choice Act. Thanks for blowing up Bernie Sanders, twice. Thanks for Hillary Clinton. Thanks for Pete, Amy, and Sleepy Joe. Thanks for blowing up Occupy. Thanks for blowing up boys and girls in Bola Boluk. Thanks for blowing up Libya. Thanks for blowing up millions of immigrants’ struggles to escape misery and poverty in Mexico and Central America. Thanks for pioneering kids in cages. Thanks for helping blow up democracy in Honduras. Thanks for murdering Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son. Thanks for whitewashing American capitalism and imperialism. Thanks for blowing up whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Thanks for helping Israel murder Palestinians and for keeping U.S. dollars and hardware going to the vicious reactionary state of Saudi Arabia.
Thanks for blowing up efforts to prosecute torture. Thanks for helping advance fascism in Ukraine. Thanks for helping generate, elect, and appease the fascist Donald Trump, a president so awful that tens of millions of Americans are now all too understandably grateful to be presidentially assaulted by the right-wing corporate Democrat Joe 'Nothing Will Fundamentally Change' Biden.
"Thanks for all that and so much more, Obama."

[counterpunch.org]

skado 9 Nov 25
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5 comments

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0

What's really depressing is the tendency of progressives to turn on anyone who they find not sufficiently progressive for them; on anyone who realizes that politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal; on anyone who will not die on the hill that they've chosen, but who will settle for the good instead of what the self-anointed progressives have declared is the best; on anyone who tries to govern for the whole country, not just the coasts; on anyone who concedes that capitalism is what drives our economy; on anyone who compromises with their deadly enemies, the Republican party and the rest of the Democratic party.

I'm not surprised when Trump still blames President Obama for anything that goes wrong in the country. I'm surprised when people blame Obama for Trump.

What’s “good” for some may be deadly for others. I trust that democracy allows for every voice to be heard, without the need to demonize any.

@skado Which is exactly what I'm protesting; the demonization of the center by progressives. One can criticize policy without making personal attacks and accusations, like the above article.

@Paul4747
I agree with you. The facts are adequate. No need to make it personal. But “progressives” (whoever they are) are no worse than any other faction at it. And not all of any faction are guilty.

4

I feel there is a loathing in politics for the poor. Their issues are raised only before the ballots are certified. They are an inconvenience and the part of their constituants who they can't or won't serve because it goes against paying their debt to all their donors. They give lip service, if that to Black Lives Matter or any issue that impedes them doing what they always do. One payer health care is radical and their mantra is most Americans don't want it or socialism, yet they benefit from socialized medicine.

I have not heard a politician that really was connected to the plight of poor and marginalized people in our country. I have hope that those justice Democrats doubled their numbers and will send my 1 or 5 dollars to.them anywhere. I hope the rise of working people taking office grows exponentially as it seems the only hope.

I wouldn't say the Voting Rights ACT was lip service. That was raised because of a nation saying they had a greater respect for civil rights born from struggles modern to them. Eventually public sentiment for long talked about hopes become dominant and, then, it becomes political. Joe Biden believes in everyone having healthcare but distributed through memberships in Unions and, in his world, every worker will prefer in a Union. Until then an insurance Index for the public will serve their need. America is not about serving the poor. I believe it was Hoover who said "The business of America is business" and that would be more accurate. This is the reason Unions work within the American model better than government run programs.

@rainmanjr Obama had a supermajority in both parts of congress when he took office and yet he didn't even try to pass card check for the unions in his administration. So he was nothing but li[ service, if that, towards the unions. You really think Biden will be any better on helping all Americans who want or need unions being able to get and join one? And even if he did, what good will it do as most of the jobs either become automated or shipped overseas? Unions will not the end all answer for what is wrong with our economy.

2

The article says everything and more about why I hate Obama as much as Trump, if not more. Because at least Trump does less pretending about who he is and what he is about. I am so disgusted with Dem loyalists who still hold him in canonization. I am unable to have a civil conversation with them as they ignorantly defend him.

3

I find it silly and kinda pitiful this tendency to place blame for the troubles in the world on anyone we find imperfect. Its a stupid exercise of the disappointed self-righteous twerp.

3

Some of the most ardent defenders of neo-liberalism and the american status quo have been black. Obama is just chief among them.

And yet when you point out to someone who defends these sellouts that blacks like Obama are Uncle Toms who are totally out of touch with average income blacks, they refuse to see the truth in any of that and accuse you of being racist.

@TomMcGiverin The vast majority of blacks do not feel that Obama is an Uncle Tom and, in all good conscience, I have to go with their assessment of the man. I think he was slightly left of center but ineffective largely because of McConnell's Senate. So what he could order into existence was largely about community programs. He did that well and My Brother's Keeper is a great example.

@rainmanjr Well said.

@rainmanjr Believe what you want and I'll concede that I am white, but the fact that most blacks feel Obama is not an Uncle Tom means little by itself. For that matter, most blacks still feel OJ was innocent and yet the evidence says otherwise. Almost all whites agree OJ was guilty of murder, for example. Race loyalty is not proof of innocence or virtue by itself, and race loyalty is what most blacks are basing their opinions on in both of these cases, whether you accept that or not.

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