Obama Forced to Kowtow to the Whites
“I categorically denounce any statement
that disparages our great country"
This is a little too over the top even
for the audacious Obama,
who takes special delight in saying
remarkably reactionary things
even while pandering to the 'progressives'
“I categorically denounce any statement,” Obama proclaims, “that disparages our great country.is a little too over the top even for the audacious Obama, who takes special delight in saying remarkably reactionary things even while pandering to the left.
It carries extremist rightward and nationalist implications that ought to send a chill down the spines of anyone who wishes to see the rescue and expansion of a democratic political culture in a nation that has been slipping further and further into a form of what the prolific left political analyst Charles Derber calls "Fascism Lite."
Such a culture requires honest and comprehensive scrutiny of existing national and social structures, policies, and practices.
It privileges critical thinking and candid societal self-examination over blind obedience to flag, blood, and soil.
It values rigorous truth-seeking and truth-telling over the often negative and authoritarian reference group that is the Nation State.
It expects a nation's defenders to respond to criticism of that nation's policies or social structures or culture (or fill in the blank) with reasoned argument, not cold and "categorical" DENUNCIATION.
Obama's Credo: Make Love & War
As I’ve been saying since one day after the 2004 speech that made him the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Barack Obama is a walking delusion and deception machine.
Here’s the latest from the self-declared “American exceptionalist” Obama, the supposed “progressive” peacenick and civil libertarian who holds such a powerful death grip on the hopes, hearts and minds of millions of liberal and other Americans:
“I categorically denounce any statement,” Obama proclaims, “that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies.” This lovely statement can be here. Wow. This stark and sweeping utterance came in response to the public release and broadcast by numerous television stations of “inflammatory” (Obama says) statements made by his longtime South Side Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Besides denouncing the “United States of White America” for advancing and being “based upon” racism past and present, Rev. Wright ruffled the feathers of imperial and nationally narcissistic political correctness by having said the following (millions of media consumers have recently learned) on the Sunday after the terror attacks of 9/11:
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africa, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Wright’s comments may have been technically accurate in critical ways but Obama has no choice but to distance himself from them and his “extremist” pastor – no choice if he is serious about winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
That is, the words of the charismatic Afrocentric pastor who once brought Obama “to Jesus” have to be “reject[ed] outright” and condemned as “appalling” – Obama’s words on The Huffington Post.
The urgency of doing so is particularly great after Clinton campaign has challenged Obama’s qualifications to be “commander in chief.”
This prompted the "antiwar" candidate to assemble a team of retired U.S. military commanders to declare their manly and martial support for “No Drama Obama” at a bizarre special press conference in Chicago – and as Obama girds his imperial loins for an epic contest with the American military hero and Iraq invasion uber-hawk Bomber McCain.
DENOUNCE OR DEBATE?
I don’t have any problem with Rev. Wright’s comments – they accurately describe key aspects of American reality with greater accuracy and honestly than do the depressing centrist twaddle, vapid bromides, and false populist posturing that is regularly served up for the bewildered herd by Hillary Clinton and her moral-ideological twin Obama.
I do get that Obama has to run from the man who baptized his children if he wants the nomination.
"No shock Barack" (as one of the retired generals deployed to Chicago called him) has to run from "radical" Reverend Wright if he wants to be president (not an especially honorable ambition, in my opinion), anyway.
But the claim to “denounce any statement that disparages our great country” is a little too over the top even for the audacious Obama, who takes special delight in saying remarkably reactionary things even while pandering to the left.
It carries extremist rightward and nationalist implications that ought to send a chill down the spines of anyone who wishes to see the rescue and expansion of a democratic political culture in a nation that has been slipping further and further into a form of what the prolific left political analyst Charles Derber calls "Fascism Lite."
Such a culture requires honest and comprehensive scrutiny of existing national and social structures, policies, and practices.
It privileges critical thinking and candid societal self-examination over blind obedience to flag, blood, and soil.
It values rigorous truth-seeking and truth-telling over the often negative and authoritarian reference group that is the Nation State.
It expects a nation's defenders to respond to criticism of that nation's policies or social structures or culture (or fill in the blank) with reasoned argument, not cold and "categorical" DENUNCIATION.
Don’t like hearing that imperial U.S. global policy helped create the context for 9/11, Mr. Cheney and Mr.Obama?
Don’t like to hear that the United States is deeply and persistent racist?
Well, Dick and Barack, perhaps we could have an honest evidence-based debate about how and why those assertions may or may not be true.
Obama has given that sort of consideration -- privileging reasoned discussion over flat denunciation -- to the many good Republican friends he's made at places like the Harvard Law Review, the Illinois State Assembly, and the U.S. Senate.
AMBITION, ARTIFICE, DECEIT, AND CONCEIT
The closer we get to the general election, the more and more it is going to dawn on entranced Americans that Obama is just another capitalist politician.
As the neoconservative New York Times columnist William Kristol – no common or natural ally of this essay’s author – recently noted in the wake of the Wright revelations:
“Obama seems to have seen, early in his career, the utility of joining a prominent church that would help him establish political roots in the community in which he lives. Now he sees the utility of distancing himself from that church...
“The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there.
There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit – all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate is different”
Penned though it may be by any leftist’s moral and ideological enemy – by a leading and enthusiastic advocate of the racist, arch-criminal, mass-murderous, and petro-imperialist Iraq occupation (launched with what Obama considers to be "the best of intentions") – Kristol’s well-crafted judgment strikes me as all too perfectly accurate and on-point.