So Obama won, predictably I think. The McCain/Palin ticket was truly the perfect embodiment of everything the world hates about the USA. But that is not the important thing here. What is far more significant is that the McCain/Palin ticket also embodied what so many Americans hate about their own country and that is why Obama won such an overwhelming victory.
The readers of this blog must know by now that I am under absolutely no illusions about the fake “change” which Obama pretends to bring to the USA and the rest of the world. But this election was about far more than reality. It was also about symbols, about hopes, however naive and misguided. The War Party, the Israel Lobby, the military industrial complex and corporate American got together and offered two puppets to the American people. But when a puppeteer offers a choice of puppets he also offers the people not only a choice of puppets, but also a choice of symbols. And while the election of Barak Obama is utterly irrelevant to the future of the puppeteers running the USA, it has, I submit, a huge importance for the American people who at least got to show the rest of the world – and themselves – the puppet, the symbol, they wanted to choose.
Only a person who has lived in the USA can really measure the social magnitude of the election of a Black (ok – half-Black, but dark skinned nonetheless) President. For a country founded on racism and which has a long and utterly appalling history of racism the election of Barak Obama is nothing short of a social earthquake. Simply put – there are still plenty of rednecks in the USA, but most Americans do not want to live in a “Republic of Redneckia”. There is a basic truth which American Blacks now cannot deny: most American Whites are willing to vote for a Black president. Of course, this does not mean that racism in the USA is over, not at all, but we need to remember here a basic historical truth: symbols always fall before the reality which they represent. Even if Obama turns out to be the “Tom” which Colin Powell or Condi Rice proved to be, the victory of Obama is, I think, a huge victory for the American people and, in particular, White Americans who have unequivocally shown the world and themselves that they are not the racists which many cynics believed them to be. Again, the election of Obama is a huge victory for *White* America.
Sadly, I predict that Obama will be a huge disappointment for both White and Black Americans. In fact, I think that he will be a huge disappointment for everybody besides the Israel Lobby. Remember how “liberal” Clinton did nothing about health care, how he bombed the Serbs in violation of the UN Charter, how he put millions of poor Americans into the streets and trashed the already highly dysfunctional American Social Security system, how his entire administration was filled with Zionists from top to bottom? I predict that Obama will be a repeat of Clinton in all these ways.
Still, something has changed in the USA today. I think that my wife put it best. This morning when we woke up she said to me “you know, it will be easier to live among people who rejected McCain“. I agree. By voting for Obama Americans have taken a first step towards rejoining the rest of the planet, the rest of civilized mankind. A vote for McCain would have shown that most Americans think of their country like an ugly trailer park populated by uncivilized, ignorant, frustrated and hostile rednecks.
The almighty lobbies which ruled America yesterday will still rule it today and tomorrow. No argument here. But at least the puppets which they will condescendingly offer to their subjects will not be drooling idiots like Dubya or the two clowns of the Republican ticket.
I would never have voted for Obama. In fact, I would never have voted in such a parody of democracy like a US Presidential election, if only because I am a foreigner (a “legal alien” in US parlance). But if I had to vote I would have given my vote to Nader (or Ron Paul if he had formed a third party – really a *second* one). But I am glad that Obama won.
It will be easier to live among people who rejected McCain and everything he stands for.
The Saker
Let me finish your title:
“, because they stopped showing the famous move of ‘index finger crossing a throat from left to right'”?
You’d better redouble your guards – they are sharpenning the daggers right now behind your eyes.
Why? Read my comment on blog.
Cheers
Correction:
…on blog = … on my blog
@p202: Nonsense. I recommend you give up this silly talk about “Marxists in America”….
Obama is fully committed to the “values” (or lack thereof) of US turbocapitalism and imperialism, and this is why he got the vast majority of corporate money. Wall Street just *loves* the guy. So unless you want to call Wall Street “Marxist” too you might want to reconsider this silly talk about Marxists in the USA.
What is far more likely and, sadly, appropriate, is the notion that the USA is turning into a Fascist country in which benefits are privatized and costs are socialized and in which the government really stands for corporate interests.
Cheers!
Agreed. BO lends a friendlier, more intelligent, and multicultural face to American imperialism. Apart from these symbolic differences, little will change in the conduct of American imperialism until economic misfortune force real change and transformation to occur.
-AA
VS, remember your thought about what would Malcolm X say about Obama? I have been thinking about it quite a lot and I think he would *still* consider this a gigantic move, even though Obama is as white anyone can be. IMHO.
But you are right. Nothing will change.
Saker, I agree with you, and we can say that Obama’s victory has a good and a bad aspect.
The good one: the US people is noticing that the political and economical course that their country is taking is disastrous, and want to avoid it.
The bad one: the US people still didn’t notice how deep the problem is, and think that just by choosing another candidate in the dual party system is enough. In fact, it is an undeniable fact that there is only one party in the US, as Gore Vidal once stated, the “Property Party”, with two factions, one harder (Republican) and another softer (Democrat). Voting for either faction doesn’t bring any real change.
Hugo Chávez, as most Latin American leaders, hopes that Venezuelan-US relations will improve with Obama. He shouldn’t expect much. The Russian president, on the other hand, seems more realistic, and bears no hopes that the US will abandon its plans to build the anti-missile shield in Europe (one of the biggest tensions in US-Russian relations): I guess that is why he told the Congress that he plans to place tactical missiles in Kaliningrad to target the ABM instalations to be built in Poland.
@everybody: I think we all realize that Obama is not about change, he is indeed only about the face of US imperialism. And his face is, for sure, far more pleasant to contemplate that the grotesque faces of Dubya or the two clowns of the GOP ticket. Still, this is no real change.
When I was in college in the USA (in the late 80s early 90s) I used to spend many hours with my fellow students (most of them foreigners) discussing how change would eventually come to the USA and we all agreed that the US system itself was too powerful, too sophisticated, too flexible and, in the end, too violent to allow for any change from within. If totalitarianism is control of the souls, then the US system is the ultimate totalitarian system, far more advanced and capable than, say, the very crude kind of totalitarianism of the Soviets. So change in the USA will *have* to come from the outside.
What is happening in Latin America with leaders such as Chavez, Morales and others (pretty much everybody besides the Fascists in Colombia) is a first sign that if the US Empire is still alive, the Monroe Doctrine is dead.
Then there is the Middle-East where I strongly believe that the Shia will defeat not only the USA, but eventually even Israel.
Russia is clearly back, and powerfully so, even much more than most Americans realized and Russia is literally bubbling with anti-Imperial sentiment. Most former Soviet republics have “seen the writing on the wall” and are acting in response to it.
China is keeping a very low key, conciliatory tone towards the USA, but I am sure that they all remember how CLITON bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade or how CLITON sent his aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait and I am sure that they have no illusions about what a Democrat in the White House means.
So outside the USA a perfect storm is gathering at a moment when ALL the US instruments of power (soft and hard) are weaker then every before in the history of the United States. This storm will be a combination of military defeats and economic collapse. And that storm will, eventually, bring about real change in the USA.
But for the time being – God help us all!
“This storm will be a combination of military defeats and economic collapse. And that storm will, eventually, bring about real change in the USA.
But for the time being – God help us all!”
I can agree to this. The US empire will end, and probably will be forced to end by external pressures. But something I can’t avoid wondering is: how will it end? Spontaneously and peacefully, as the Soviet Empire? Or will it try to keep its mighty by all means and costs, even by using nuclear weapons against, say, China and/or Russia, with all the predictable consequences?
Nonsense. I recommend you give up this silly talk about “Marxists in America”….
That’s the point, Saker – who the hell is this Mr Obama?
Wall Street just *loves* the guy.
What if he is loved by the US haters’ Soroses?
is the notion that the USA is turning into a Fascist country
Well, well,… Political correctness is 100% fascist in nature. The USA is “not turning into”, the USA is the Fascist country right NOW. Perhaps not in its most grievous state, but with fascist foundation beyond doubts.
I tell you one more thing I put it down on _moderated_ Worldwide War Pigs today but the blogger sleeps there in Australia yet. :)
What if neconservatives seeing the failure of their efforts through Republicans went back to their places of origin (they were born from Democrats) and decided to spread their world (and/or Jewish) agenda with the help of Democrats – hence the American-Jewish people around Mr Obama?
What if the three events 1) 9/11, 2) financial crisis, 3) Obama’s election were only a prelude to something bigger? Were the social engineering events on gigantic scale to asses the possibility to destroy America, the only powerful country in this world, able to stop their looney lans over world domination?
Didn’t they do it?
1) 9/11 – creation of “police state”
2) globalism – destruction of the middle class
3) “finacial crisis” – fear induced in American hearts so they opted for Obama
4) Obama’s election – unique in its class manipulation of a nation thru means of money and media wchich were fully controlled by neocons.
Saker, if the points are true in parts only, your “pleasent face of Mr Obama” dissolves revealing the image of Hell, what you have expressed in your last comment here, if I understood it rightly.
Cheers to all.
@everybody:
I just listened to Obama and McCain congratulating each other, as tradition says they should. They both were courteous and generous. Both the crowds could not have been more different.
The Democrats listening to Obama congratulating and praising McCain were mostly quiet, with a few ripples of applause here and there.
But when McCain just mentioned Obama the Republicans began to boo, jeer, scream and yell. Even when McCain tried to tell them to shut up – they could not stop. These guys are about one thing, and one thing only: HATE.
McCain voters truly are every bit as ugly, crude, stupid, ignorant, bigoted and hateful as they appear to be.
Thank God their hideous worldview did not prevail.
@p202: who the hell is this Mr Obama?
Think of him as “capitalism with a human face” :-)
What if he is loved by the US haters’ Soroses?
Capitalists don’t love countries, they love one thing only: $$$$$
And I do not belive the economic crisis and the election of Obama is part of some master plan. I disagree with your assumption, so I also disagree with your conclusion.
@carlo: how will it end? Spontaneously and peacefully, as the Soviet Empire? Or will it try to keep its mighty by all means and costs, even by using nuclear weapons against, say, China and/or Russia, with all the predictable consequences?
Dunno. I really don’t. But I do not put *anything* besides the Neocons, and make no mistake, the Neocons are STILL in power.
But if they (either the US or Israel) use nukes, it will probably be in Iran, not Russia or China.
God help us all anyway…
And I do not belive the economic crisis and the election of Obama is part of some master plan.
You cann’t. Financial crisis appeared not to be financial meltdown but appeared at right time.
Taking into consideration what you said earlier on Mr Obama and the election I wonder who changed the views of the events – me or you?
BTW. Elections in the USA are always part of bigger plans. No one puts his money for the sake of “election gaming”. American are serious were the money starts. And this time the sums were gigantic, weren’t they?
Correction:
you cann’t = you don’t have to
Wall Street loves BO, not because of his economic or social policies, but because the ethnopoly on Wall Street hates white America.
@anonymous: right. all them niggers and kikes are out to get us, White Christians…
seriously,
take your meds, wear your tinfoil hat and chill dude – capitalists don’t care about race, all they care about is $$$
THE WORLD APPLAUDS OBAMA’S VICTORY by Eric Margolis
“But they have handed a poisoned chalice to president-elect Obama. Three foreign wars – Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia – national bankruptcy, an enraged Russia, the entire Muslim world seething with hatred for the US, a wave of Islamophobia at home, growing anti-Americanism in Latin America, India developing nuclear weapons that will one day threaten the USA, and on and on.
Obama will have to deal with all these problems and a fast-emerging China while trying to fend off the powerful special interests in Washington that have already been putting the squeeze on him: the military-industrial-petroleum complex, big pharma, the Israel and farm lobbies, bankrupt auto makers, the finance industry, old folks, and black groups clamoring for more federal funds.
Once Obama has to face all these demons, I fear many of his supporters will be disappointed as their savior turns into a typical Washington politician who has to juggle all sorts of competing demands while the nation is plunged into financial crisis. A good start would be by bringing criminal charges against the fraudsters, mountebanks and crooks who created the current financial panic and shutting down the Guantanamo Devil’s Island.”
http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/the-world-applauds-obamas-victory.aspx
Now for some reality check. After the initial honeymoon period is done, I want to see what all would ‘change’. Seriously I don’t think anything will change. Obama did not say he would change anything. Even if he wanted to the enormity of the problems are such that, they cant be changed in one decade. We, and I mean the ‘World’, are at a major intersection. There is so much flux and a multitude of changes are taking place at multiple levels. There is only so much a person can do, even if he is the POTUS.
Take for example the financial mess that is currently hitting the roof. It will not or rather cannot get solved in a month or a year. You cannot negate the effects of decades of economic policies overnite. Even if tough measures are taken, the results wont be in until at least 6-10 yrs. In this age of instant gratification, we expect our problems to be solved in a day.. not 6-10 yrs time frame. And even that *might* not be possible.
The US has long stopped being the ‘manufacturing power’ it was back during the WWII and subsequent years. It is now dependant mainly on imports for even minute needs. Will that change now? No way. People want goods for cheap, and they wont be coming from the US for sure. And the Auto industry is entirely ruled by the Japanese makers. Remember Japan buys US T-bonds so that US can function day-to-day. How dd you think Japan will react if US restricts its market for the Japanese makers? It ain’t gonna happen. US trade deficit is of gigantic propositions.
It’s now a chicken and egg problem. US needs China, Japan etc to buy it’s T-Bonds for US to spend, and China, Japan etc need to export goods to the US in order for them to buy the bonds. This status quo will continue into the foreseeable future. The industry is too big for any person to change it without consequenses.
Similarly the External Affairs. US will remain an Empire. The only candidate who acknowledged this and wanted to shut them down was never really in the race. The rest dont matter. If you look at the speech Obama gave at the AIPAC or see his Veep or look up his choice for the Chief of Staff, the Israel – Palestinian issue will not be solved. And so the Arabs will not like it. Forget the Middle East, now Obama wants to go into Waziristan. NO ONE goes in there. It’s a quagmire par none. In fact that area was never ruled in the last maybe 2000 years. And it wont be ruled now. They are the past masters of the guerilla warfare and that’s how they will fight. Pak is at a tipping point and something gotta give.
And this is only the beginning. The point I wanted to make was that, don’t get your ‘hopes’ up. nothing will probably ‘change’.
I agree with you that nothing will change, people are shocked at the moment and have high expectations from him, he’s only a human being not the second coming for goodness sake.
I was pissed off again.
Very much pissed off.
Rahm Emanuel getting chief of staff position by Obama one day after winning the election (hell, a few hours) reminds me of what he did after winning the democratic nomination.
Remember what he did?
He went to AIPAC, where he became a hardcore Israel supporter.
@American Goy: I agree. The nomination of Emanuel is nothing short of a slap in the face of every single American who voted for Obama because of a naive hope that wars will start. That Emanuel is also probably the worst foam-at-his-mouth rabid Ziocon in Congress (with Joe Lieberman) also proves who is “running” Obama.
The “hope for change” lasted just a couple of hours. Now reality bites, with a vengeance.
I hope that the folks who voted for Obama can live with themselves now…
As Gorbachev stated some months ago, “Every U.S. president has to have a war”. If Obama really wants to change his country, he should be the first US president since WWII not to involve his country in a war. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will happen.