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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - April 19, 2010
The Democrat's Mea Culpas
By John A. Murphy
Countercurrents.org
"They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with
so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger?
Will it be the next week, or the next year? Shall we gather
strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire
the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our
backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our
enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not
weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God
of nature hath placed in our power."
-Patrick Henry: delivered to the Virginia Convention in 1775
The number of articles written by contrite Obama supporters
that have appeared over the last year is almost uncount-
able. Forgiveness, however, requires not only that penitents
renounce their sins but that they make a sincere resolve
not to sin in the same way again. Democrats will never make
such a resolve. Regardless of the number of whining articles
by "progressive" Democrats, Rahm Emanuel Obama's political
twin, who called liberal activists "retarded" [1], knows
very well that Democrats, especially the self-styled
"progressives" will never vote for anyone other than a
Democrat. Regardless of Obama's atrocities, the Democrats
will line up behind him in 2012[2].
There can be no absolution for the Obaminable Democrats;
they can be no more forgiven for supporting Obama than
they can be forgiven for supporting John Kerry or William
Clinton. Clinton, you will recall, was the president who
killed a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children
with bombs and sanctions while domestically destroying the
women's movement with "welfare reform" and American jobs
with "free trade agreements.
These are the people who followed the inane philosophy of
ABB ("Anyone is Better than Bush")! Imagine believing that
Kerry would be better than Bush even though he promised that
he would out-Bush Bush by sending 40,000 more troops to
Iraq and declaring that, if he had been in charge, he would
have burned Falluja to the ground[3]. A few days later Bush
granted his wish killing mostly women and children! Even
the ever hawkish William Safire (d.2009) columnist for the
New York Times, was positively gloating after the September,
2004 Kerry-Bush presidential debate: "As the Democratic
Whoopee Brigade hailed Senator John Kerry?s edge in debat-
ing technique, nobody noticed his foreign policy sea
change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the
newest neoconservative announced doctrines more hawkish
than President George W. Bush."[4]
Meantime, during this ABB farce, Michael Moore and Bill
Maher assumed the typical Democrat position: kneeling and
begging. No, they were not begging for the scraps from the
corporate table, the traditional Democrat plea. This time
they even more grievously disgraced themselves by begging
the antiwar candidate, Ralph Nader, not to interfere with
John Kerry's plans to slaughter, more efficiently and
effectively, the people in Iraq while continuing to out-
source American jobs with so-called "free trade" agree-
ments. These are the very same kind of bottom feeder who
would have begged the Liberty Party to stop its opposition
to slavery and let the lesser of two proslavery parties
make things a little better for the slaves. These latter-
day court jesters demonstrated that they lack even the dim
flicker of sentience needed to qualify them as imbeciles.
The Democrats are beyond redemption; they are to be
condemned not forgiven. Their priority was to elect Kerry,
not oppose the war.
The Democrats did not get a chance to whine about a Kerry
presidency as they do about the Obama presidency. They did
not even get a chance to continue maligning Ralph Nader
for Kerry's defeat. Now, since Barack Obama, the mocha
messiah of the Democrats, has assumed the imperial mantle
of George Bush, that dreadful sound can be heard once
again rising up from the Democrats. Oh, the mind numbing
din of whining Democrats!
Whether they thought Obama would end the wars instead of
escalating them or stop the torture instead of outsourcing
it to Jordan and Saudi Arabia or prosecute the torturers
instead of giving them a pass or encourage the Congress to
pass single-payer healthcare instead of cutting backroom
deals with big Pharma and providing corporate welfare for
the insurance companies or bail out homeowners instead of
bankers, Democrats from Dave Lindorff to David Swanson can
be heard wailing about the betrayal of Barack Obama who
now gives every indication that he is more monstrous than
George Bush.
To be sure, Bush was a war criminal who invaded Iraq to
fulfill the mission of the Project for New American Century
(PNAC) which was to secure a US-Israeli hegemony in the
Middle East. That strategy was identical to the Democratic
Party's think tank the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).
[5] Bush also invaded Afghanistan to secure a land area
for a liquid natural gas pipeline. Obama plans to continue
the occupation of Iraq, has escalated the war on
Afghanistan (reinforcing the lies of the Bush administ-
ration) and rained down three times as many unmanned drones
on Pakistan in one year than Bush did in his last three.
Obama has also opened military hostilities against Yemen,
Somalia and the Philippines. Obama recently proclaimed that
he has the right to murder American citizens on the mere
suspicion that they might be terrorists. This leaves us all
vulnerable to murder at Obama's whim. Those of us on the
"watch list" must now say an extra prayer each night that
our spouses and children are not slaughtered when Obama's
drone hits home. No wonder the Teabaggers are afraid of
government and Obama in particular!
It must not be overlooked that Obama also plans to use
Colombian insurgents to commit "false positive" border
incidents blaming Venezuela as a pretext for a retaliatory
attack, supported, of course, by Washington as a way to
target and perhaps remove Hugo Chavez. He continues
destabilization tactics for regime change in Iran and may,
preemptively without cause, attack that nation's nuclear
facilities. He supports the worst of Israeli war crimes
and oppression against Palestinians and keeps alive the
long dead "terrorist organization" called Al Qaeda in order
to suppress civil liberties at home, maintain the pretense
of a flourishing economy through defense spending and
ultimately secure corporate money for his reelection.
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DEMOCRAT TALKING HEADS
To be fair, not all the Democrats are whining. Listening
to "liberal" talk radio the Democratic Party talking heads
can be heard spinning every one of Obama's atrocities into
an inspired strategy of golden fabric. According to the
Democratic Party's counterparts of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck and Sean Hannity, Obama is a "master chess player"
and all of his monstrous brutalities merely appear to be
brutal. When the mist clears however, according to "big
Ed" Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Bill Press and the other skull
splitting defenders of Barack Obama AKA "Barry the Bomber",
we will see that a brighter day has dawned; that the
atrocities committed against all the nations Obama is
devastating and the American working people he is crushing
are simply pawn sacrifices made by the master gamesman
and in the end we will all be thankful to "Barry the
Beneficent".
In case anyone is wondering about the "change" promised
by Obama, fear not. Democrat talking head Rachel Maddow
explained to us earlier this week that Obama's nuclear
summit was the promised change! As it turned out, "change
did not mean that everybody suddenly had a job or that
the banking crisis was suddenly fixed or that our wars
magically ended. But change, in part, has meant a return
to diplomacy" [6]. Of course Israel, the greatest threat
to world peace next to the United States, refused to
participate and Iran was not even invited. Like all of the
Democratic Party talking heads Maddow fails to mention the
ever present threat from the Obama administration's
"diplomacy" when dealing with other nations: "all options
remain on the table". This is not a very diplomatic way to
tell the world "you will do it our way or you will face the
possibility of a US invasion or at the very least a carpet-
ing of cluster bombs, white phosphorus and unmanned drone
missiles. This bogus nuclear summit is simply more advertis-
ing hype and does not represent any significant change from
the second Bush administration.
THE INCOMPETENT MACHIAVELLIAN
Machiavelli refused to be deflected by utopian dreams or
romantic hopes and by questions of right and wrong or good
and bad. He rejected the entire concept of moral philosophy.
He is often considered to be the father of modern political
realism, or what has been called "realpolitik". It is one
of the most seductive ideas of our time. The constant cry
of the Democratic Party is: "be realistic... you're living
in the real world... it's good to have idealistic visions
of a better world, but you're living in the real world,
so be practical." Every time Ralph Nader tried to get
Democrats to stand on their hind legs, party leaders
quickly reminded them that they must be "practical" that
they must be "realistic". Like Machiavelli, the Democratic
Party is not concerned with right and wrong or good and
evil. It has rejected all moral philosophy by accepting
the Machiavellian concept that "the ends justify the
means".
How many times have the ideas and positions of Ralph Nader
been demeaned as foolish idealism impractical in a world
where one must "win elections"?
Realism is seductive because once it has been accepted
as a reasonable notion that actions should be based on
"practical" reality people are too often led to accept,
without questioning, someone else's vision of what reality
is. It is a crucial fact of independent thinking, typical
of Ralph Nader, to be skeptical of someone else's
description of reality. Democrats never question the
"reality" presented to them by the Democratic Party. For
this reason the Democrats present an even more dangerous
and violent threat than the tea party movement which it
has engendered and which it continues to empower by its
own lack of moral clarity.
The Democratic Party's talking heads from the most
articulate and erudite to the more brutish philistine serve
the same purpose as the Republican Party talking heads.
Their job is to secure the election of Democrats not to
present an objective evaluation of their performance and
recommend the appropriate action. Far from playing the role
of chess master, Obama is an incompetent Machiavellian.
Virtually nothing Obama and his representatives in the
liberal media (the talk show hosts previously mentioned)
have told us about this health care reform bill is true.
[7] The entire thrust of the legislation was to prevent
campaign contributions from big Pharma and healthcare
insurance companies from flowing into Republican coffers.
By euphemistically calling this piece of corporate welfare
"health care reform" Obama has sacrificed the needs of the
American public in order to achieve his reelection and that
of the Democratic Congress. For Obama, the ends justified
the means. No moral philosopher in Eastern or Western
civilization condones such a philosophy. Only Niccolo
Machiavelli advanced such a thesis.
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Usually, those who try to get away with "the ends justify-
ing the means" at least have some noble end in mind. The
reelection of the Democrats is anything but noble and
the means was a purely cynical act on the part of the
Democratic Party. Even a Machiavellian however would be
embarrassed at the incompetent execution of Obama's loutish
strategy. A good Machiavellian would certainly have planned
for the possible unintended consequences of such a strategy
and hence have prevented their occurrence. A competent
Machiavellian would have started his administration by
ensuring that the Senate changed the filibuster rule from
41 to 49 votes. This rule only requires a simple majority
vote in order to be changed. It is a Senate rule, not a
law. Moreover, the incompetent Obama administration,
while achieving its ends created such blowback from the
ridiculous right that the United States is now as close to
collapsing into a fascist regime as it has ever been in
its history.
The attitudes of the people in the tea party movement are
completely justified. Not only has there not been any
increase in the standard of living over the last 30 years
while productivity has increased by over 78%, real incomes
of working Americans have actually declined. While Reagan,
the Bushes and Clinton are to blame for the adoption of
"neoliberal economics" the Obama administration with its
continuing support of the banking industry was the straw
that broke the political camel's back.
Obama, more than any Republican, is linked to the bankers.
They supported him over McCain. When Obama started to
criticize the bankers, in true Machiavellian fashion,
he did an about-face proclaiming: "I, like most of the
American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth.
That is part of the free market system."[8] Of course
Obama is completely in error. Americans actually do
begrudge the $17 million bonus awarded to Jamie Dimon,
CEO of JPMorgan Chase and the $9 million issued to Lloyd
Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. No one should be surprised
that Goldman Sachs contributed $1 million to Obama's
presidential campaign [9].
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans like to talk
about class warfare but that is precisely what the
incompetent, Machiavellian, cynical Obama administration
has engendered. Unemployment is reaching near depression
levels while Obama's banking buddies bathe in bonuses
beyond imagination and people are not happy about it. The
job growth statistics quoted by the Democrat talking heads
are mostly in non-tradable services area such as janitors,
retail sales persons, waiters and waitresses, orderlies
and attendants. These minimum wage paying jobs were
created by corporations which have outsourced good paying
American jobs in engineering, manufacturing and information
technology [10]. Such outsourcing continues under the
"free trade" supporting Obama administration. Ironically,
the highly trained workers in those well compensated
fields are now used to account for the "new jobs" being
created by the Obama administration. Such a clever way
has the Obama administration devised for job creation;
turning well paid information technology specialists into
low paid retail clerks!
The working class has been marginalized as the costs of
our economic collapse are socialized and profits are
privatized. Frustration and outright rage is the natural
and expected response to the callous Obama administration.
Instead of getting answers from the left however, they
receive political placebos along with the puerile pabulum
fed to them by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.
Chris Hedges warns us of "the Weimarization of the American
working class" [11]. Just as demagogues in post-World War I
Germany were able to play upon the despair of the working
class, the same type of forces are now in place in the
United States. He suggests that even though the tea party
movement itself may be tiny, it is a well-funded and well-
organized group. Properly managed, Hedges suggests "this
tiny group can count on the sympathy and support of perhaps
as many as 100 million evangelicals". It would only take a
crisis to catapult the leaders of this movement into power.
Naomi Klein in her work "The Shock Doctrine" [12] spells
out precisely how such a crisis could produce a disastrous
political, social and economic revolution. Another
terrorist attack would be all that is necessary. Such an
attack is not just probable but inevitable. The resulting
fascist order would face no resistance. At a time when
violent resistance from the left might be required, the
left has been disorganized and distracted by the Democratic
Party. As the left smokes Obama's wacky tobacci and sings
"Kum By Ya", the forces which would destroy civil society
as we know it are singing "Praise the Lord and Pass the
Ammunition".
There is good reason to be afraid. We must not however
confuse fear with cowardice. In the final analysis we
either stand up for our convictions or we stand for
nothing. The continued voting for the lesser evil has
not, nor cannot save this country; it can only hasten a
total collapse. Those who are too afraid to voice their
conscience and make it felt politically, by any means,
are already slaves; they simply have not yet heard the
rattling of their chains.
[1] Rahm Apologizes for Privately Calling Liberal Activists
"Retarded"
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/02/rahm-apologizes-for-priva=
tely-calling-liberal-activists-retarded.html
[2] Rahm Emanuel: Don't Worry About the Left
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/18/rahm-emanuel-dont-worry-about-th=
e-left/tab/article/
[3]Kerry, the Hawk; Justin Raimondo, October 07, 2004
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2004/10/06/kerry-the-hawk/
[4] Here he comes: The New Neo-Con! http://muslimsfornadercamejo.bl=
ogspot.com/2004_10_03_archive.html
[5] Stay and Win in Iraq; Will Marshall January 8, 2004
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=450004&subsecID=900021=
&contentID=252289
[6] The Rachel Maddow Show, April 12, 2010 MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36460299/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/
[7] Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill
Jane Hamsher Friday March 19, 2010
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/fact-sheet-the-truth-about-th=
e-health-care-bill/
[8] Obama Doesn't 'Begrudge' Bonuses for Blankfein, Dimon
Julianna Goldman and Ian Katz
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKGZkktzkAlA&pos=
=1
[9] Open secrets: top contributors to Obama
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n0000963=
8
[10] Paul Craig Roberts, How the Economy Was Lost;
(California: AK Press, 2010), 20-21
[11] Chris Hedges, American Fascists (The Christian Right
and the War on America); (New York: Free Press, 2006) 266
[12] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, the rise of Disaster
Capitalism; (New York: Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt &
Co. 2007) 309
John Murphy was the independent candidate for House of
Representatives in the 16th Congressional District of
Pennsylvania in 2006 and 2008. He is a retired management
consultant and is one of the founding members of the
Pennsylvanian Ballot Access Coalition where he represents
the independent candidacy of Ralph Nader. He can be reached
at: johnamurphy@comcast.net
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