Freedoms’ showcase
When the
president leaves, the whole regime may fall apart
By Daniel
Paquet dpaquet1871@gmail.com
After
George W. Bush and his pathetic and dangerous regime, the U.S. Establishment
was eagerly looking for a new and comforting personality (as a president), which
could appease the growing hostility within the population towards the “system”,
i.e. the despotic policies of warmongers and the economic calamities: real lower wages, unemployment and especially
racial tensions, actually settled down by the financial crisis.
“In 2008,
when voters were projecting whatever they wanted onto a candidate with little national
track record, Mr. Obama,s background in community organizing was used to fill
in ideological blanks. To supporters on
the left, his fight for social causes in impoverished, overwhelmingly
African-American neighbourhoods fit into a narrative of civil-rights activism
and spoke to a deep passion about issues they cared about. To a suspicious right, modern community organizing’s
roots with the rabble-rousing Saul Alinsky –author of Rules for Radicals, which promised to reach ‘Have-nots’ how to
seize power from those who hold it – proved that Mr. Obama was a dangerous
socialist.
If he had
actually wanted to be an ideological
warrior, the circumstances over the past eight years – a Great Recession
fuelling public anger at financial elites; mounting political polarization
coupled with shifting demographics that favour this Democrats – could hardly
have been more ideal. From a certain
perspective, maybe an ideological warrior is what his country needed. Had he
run a little more hot – channeled Americans’ anger rather than seeking to calm
them – perhaps Donald Trump would not be about to assume the presidency.
Either way,
there was no mystery within his circle about his long-term plans when, after three years of organizing ,
he decamped for Harvard; his message, upon announcing his departure, was that
he would be able to do more good on the other side of the table, with the
politicians. But neither was he animated
by a particular policy mission; he seems to have believed he would bend the
universe’s moral arc toward justice – as he would later quote Martin Luther
King Jr. – by tackling issues as they arose.
(Some) suggested that that calm went hand-in-hand with an aversion to
class warfare. (…) If he were more ideological,
he would have done everything he could to score victories for the left –
dramatically curtailing capitalism’s excesses, or massively expanding government
at a time when such victories might have felt earned. (…) among the swiftest decisions Mr. Obama make,
despite knowing it would cause white-hot anger among people who felt they were
being left to fend for themselves as they lost homes or saving, as to bail out banks (…) even if it requires
compromise (sic).
If the
level of effort Mr. Obama put into post-partisanship in his first term is
debatable. It’s clearer that he had almost completely given up on it by his
second.”[1]
“Mr. Obama
leaves office with an American polity that is less coherent and more divided
than it was during the Vietnam War. An anti-globalization, anti-elite populism
is shifting the contours of politics in America in strange, new
directions. Self-interest and
nationalism are now in the ascendancy. (…) Mr. Obama’s international actions
more generally have failed to reassure a majority of Americans and many of
country’s erstwhile allies that the United States is still the leader of the
Western world. (…) Electoral support for
Mr. Trump was fuelled by Mr. Obama’s policy failures and fears of America’s
fading image in the world.”[2]
“It should
not be forgotten that things often turn out differently in practice. There are plenty of instances of a
constitution which according to its law is not democratic, but which owing to
custom and training is democratic in its workings; conversely, there are in
other places constitutions which according to law incline towards democracy,
but by reason of their customs and training operate more like oligarchies. This is especially apt to happen after a
change of constitution. The citizens do
not at once discard their old ways, but are at first content to gain only
moderate advantages from their victory over the opposing side, whichever that
may be. The result is that the existing
laws continue to be valid, but power is in the hands of those who have brought
about the change in the constitution.”[3]
Blog: Communist News www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com
In French: La
Nouvelle Vie Réelle www.lnvr.blogspot.com
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[1] Radwanski,
Adam, Decoding Obama’s West Wing, from Chicago’s South Side, The
Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday 7th, 2017, pages F2, F3, F4
[2] Burney,
Derek; Hampson, Fen Osler, Obama’s legacy is crumbling before our eyes, The
Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday, January 7, 2017, page F7
[3] Aristotle, The
Politics, Penguin Classics, Toronto, 1981, page 253
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