‘Yes We Can’. ‘No We Won’t!’: The Obama ‘Dilemma’ for Left-Liberals

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“It was amusing to read that a well-dressed Virginia couple, husband with a tux, blonde wife in a Sari. managed to infiltrate the White House State Dinner, presumably an institution known for the highest of security. Red faced secret service officials muttered something about a security post that did not follow procedures. They hoaxed their way in.

“Oh, how could we be human without human errors? To add insult to injury, Joe Biden had his picture taken with the party crashers. All Smiles. Who knew?

“But a more insidious infiltration may have occurred and is still largely unaccounted for. Could there be an imposter in the oval office? In a scene out of the movie “ALIEN,” Barack Obama’s evil “Mini-Me” seems to have infiltrated the body and brain of the 44th President turning a Yes We Can candidate into the No We Won’t President.” — “Infiltrating” the Oval Office, an “Alien” Obama?, The News Dissector, 27 November, 2009

Imposter in the White House? What is it with a lot of liberal/left thinkers and the idea that somehow Obama started off as one kind of person (the ‘Yes We Can’ bit) and has been ‘turned’ into a ‘No We Won’t’ kinda prez? Where does this come from?

It was clear from the getgo what kind of president Obama would be. It’s like the argument that in the days running up to the March 18, 2003 invasion of Iraq by the barbarians, the whole thing could have been called off, if Saddam had done the ‘right thing’, whatever that was.

You don’t get to send 250,000 soldiers and materiel right up to the borders of Iraq and then send ’em all home again, any more than you get to become president of the United States without being already utterly and totally compromised on anything meaningful.

“It is in our strategic interest, in our national security interest, to make sure that al-Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively in those areas…We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks.

“After eight years — some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done — it is my intention to finish the job,” Obama said. “And I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive.” — Barack Obama, ‘Afghan troops announcement likely Dec. 1’, Washington Post, 24 November, 2009

The only people feeling conned are those who conned themselves into thinking that Obama was something other than a true servant of the Empire. The term ‘house negro’ comes to mind but that’s probably very non-PC these days. Whatever, he fulfilled a purpose, he fllled an ideological void with promise, in very much the same way as a TV commercial offers the fantasy of the faraway place, of being somebody else and last but not least, the fantasy of the skin.

It was a brilliant but extremely short-term ‘solution’ to the crisis of legitimacy the state was going through when it was decided at the highest levels that Obama was to be the ‘chosen one’. Short-term because, well look at what he‘s doing: aside from the rhetoric and the cool family photo ops, he’s Bush in drag. Okay, it was a toss-up between playing the female or race card but she’s right in there anyway and right from the getgo, and followed by all the usual suspects, Brzezinski, damn, the entire Cabal!

I could go about Danny Schecter’s piece, “‘Infiltrating” the Oval Office’ as it contains a very good analysis of what I’d expect the titular head of Empire to be doing, like receiving his corporate and political masters, who want to make sure he’s making the ‘right’ kinds of decisions for them. How could it ever be otherwise? It’s been this way for decades.

Without a really coherent, focused and determined force, independent of the current barbarians running the show, a force that can bring real pressure, not just on the prez but on the entire state machine, there is no way change can be effected and especially in the Oval Office (perhaps we’ve all been watching too many movies about fantasy presidents to recognize when the real fantasy prez comes along?).

Even if, and it’s a big if, Obama really does want to ‘heal the planet’, he has even less chance of effecting real change on just about anything than either you or I do. It’s self-delusion to think otherwise.

What depresses me about ‘Infiltrating” the Oval Office’ is the feeling of being betrayed and let down that pervades it, it shouldn’t be so. But if nothing else, the one positive aspect of the Obama ‘dilemma’ for left/liberals, is that perhaps at long last some very sacred bubbles have been burst? The same goes for the Left’s relationship to the Labour government here in the UK where a lot of bubbles have also been burst. I think it’s time for a real shakeup on the Left about what being Left is really all about?  


Articles by: William Bowles

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