It's downright weird to watch America's right
wingnuts react to Obama. Sometimes you just have to admire how their racism
goes so deep it overcomes their native love for fascism. In that case, it must
simply gall them to watch a black man serve the cause of "job creators" and
creeping fascism far better than Dubya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld themselves. Or
maybe they just like their Mussolini-style, corporate-government fascism more
open, red-blooded, bloodthirsty, and jingoistic. Real men don't p*ssy-foot.
But they fail to give Obama deeply deserved credit.
Bush and his boys had so thrown in-your-face, warmongering, 1%-serving fascism
into disrepute that saving it required a subtler, more devious hand. A
deeper-pigmented hand, for one thing, one that could credibly--at least
way-back-when in 2008--invoke the long heritage of black struggles against
oppression and the legacy of Martin Luther King. Yet in so many ways FAR
better, more presidential than King--lighter skinned, Harvard-educated, with
much more the air of a slick corporate lawyer than a soulful Southern Baptist
preacher. But who could convincingly preach "Hope" and "Change" in his own content-desiccated
fashion. America's milk-chocolate savior. Float like a butterfly, strike like a
drone. Corporate fascism's stealth Messiah.
And so for a long time, Obama's had to make a
wholehearted, sincere pretense of serving his progressive base. Like his
half-hearted stimulus package, to be starkly contrasted with his full-blooded
consequence-free bailout of Wall Street. Or his radical-sounding one-off "storm
the barricades" speech at Osawatomie, Kansas in December 2011--reading at the
moment like an early Christmas present or even early Valentine to Occupy Wall
Street--except that we now know the whole Homeland Security apparatus, in close
collaboration with private corporations and local authorities and police, was concurrently
spying on and infiltrating Occupy, all under Obama's benevolent Il Duce gaze.
Obama just couldn't yet openly join the chorus of right-wing voices urging
those terrorist-suspect losers to get a job.
But the "redneckier" side of American fascism may
soon get its good red meat. They should really pay attention, as Obama's
masterfully starting to show his masterful fascist hand. Or perhaps better,
jackbooted foot. See, every good fascist knows you can't p*ssy-foot forever.
Silently eroding civil rights only goes so far. A point comes when you really
have to show your manly willingness to clamp down on their exercise. And
believe me, Obama's getting there. You just have to read the signals without
prejudice.
Of course, Obama has had a pretty good record all
along of "manning up" and showing his iron fist where whistleblowers, leakers,
and suchlike folks were concerned. But here he's had the cover of the war on
terror, where the xenophobic nightmare fears of even liberals' brains are
brought into play (see my earlier OpEdNews piece "The Dangers of Liberals'
Repressed Reptilian Brains"). Bill Maher's attribution of almost all our
terrorism problem to the crusading bloodlust of a primitive, medieval Islam is
a case in point; I here obviously agree with Glenn Greenwald in thinking our
own crusading, imperialistic foreign policy might play a substantial role. But
beyond the war on terror, a man like Obama--with so much to hide (like the
extent of his Uncle-Tomming for the white 1%)--must have a deep hair-trigger
personal aversion to secret-revealers and whistleblowers. I personally would
consider it the highest honor--and an almost certainly unattainable measure of
success--to be placed on his drone kill list. But one can always try.
But I digress. If I may mix seemingly incompatible
things in a bizarre but appropriate way--for only such ideas fit our "bizarro"
world--as a manning-up corporate fascist, Obama's really coming out of the
closet. Probably his reelection to a second and final term (final, that is,
unless he goes supernova fascist--which is highly improbable) has a lot to do
with it. For example, his willingness to appoint billionaire patroness Penny
Pritzker--who as a predatory lender to blacks and union buster is a clear
"smoking gun" for his Uncle-Tomming--is a real advance in Obama brazenness. And
his willingness to target even the mainstream Associated Press in his attacks
on a free press is another. But a deep instinct tells me that Obama's
increasing brazenness is a matter of clever timing, so "straight, no chaser"
fascism will have nearly become the new normal by the time it's needed
most--after Obama, fascistically trampling science and sanity, approves the XL
pipeline. This is when our gun-toting right-wing crazies will really get their
red meat. They probably still won't stomach good-old-boy fascism in blackface,
but it won't be because Obama didn't try.
See, the pipeline itself is a watershed moment for
fascism--an utterly unjustifiable, wildly environmentally irresponsible gift to
big fossil fuel corporations--that many of our best, brightest, and most heroic
citizens will inevitably put their bodies on the line to resist. It's clearly
been supported by lying propaganda--this is how things go down in fascist
regimes--touting wildly exaggerated numbers of jobs and energy-independence
benefits and pooh-poohing its truly frightful environmental effects. A clear
mark of the propaganda--and fascistic intent to shove it down our throats--is
that no one in government is breathing a word about nationally televised public
debates pitting staunch climatologist opponents like James Hansen and informed
activist opponents like Bill McKibben against the best pipeline proponents can
bring. The reasons for this "oversight" should be obvious. But in this case, a
well-organized, highly motivated opposition to the pipeline vowed to civil
disobedience is in place--so the NEED for some fascist skull-cracking is also
obvious. Obama's been foot-dragging on the pipeline simply to prepare the
ground for this. And possibly, the internment camps.
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