What’s not to like about Barack Obama? He’s educated, erudite — and even cute. He gave a dynamite State of the Union speech. His family is perfect. Michelle is intelligent, suave, beautiful and compassionate, and Sasha and Malia look like an African-American version of the Brady Bunch. Plus every racist, wing-nut, fanatic, truther, birther and pond-scum in America hates Obama — so I should like him just for that reason alone.
Plus Obama is tall and thin like my father. How Oedipal is that?
And Obama is also trying to give us healthcare and to appoint judges on the Supreme Court who aren’t complete corporate shills and/or wannabe neanderthals. And the Prez is also trying really hard to drag America up from being ranked 33rd among modern first-world nations with regard to education.
Obama also represents all of that stuff that I fought for so valiantly back in the 1960s — racial equality, a Black man being able to achieve everything a White man can achieve, and like Ginger Rodgers used to say, “Doing it backwards and in high heels.” Except, of course, for the part about high heels.
So why are we progressives having so much trouble liking Barack Obama right now? Five little words. “Wall Street and War Street”. Too many of our young men and women in the military are dying needlessly and being used like Kleenex so that large corporations and weapons manufacturers can make a killing. Literally.
Plus Obama has allowed — and perhaps even welcomed — the militarization of America’s local police forces. The friendly cop on the corner is now wearing Kevlar and carrying super-heat.
And that’s not all. According to MSNBC, “Despite President Obama’s stated objections to American indefinite detention policy, his Justice Department has forcefully advocated for it in court.” http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/03/obama-signs-2013-defense-authorization-minus-indefinite-detention-ban/
And apparently this policy also means that if you and I object too much to the corporate takeover of our country, you and I can be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo too — not exactly the Caribbean cruise we were hoping for. And Obama is fine with that. And War Street is too.
According to journalist David Sirota, “Obama, let’s remember, is the president who escalated the Afghanistan War and whose spokesman recently reiterated that U.S. troops are not necessarily leaving that country anytime soon. He is the president who has initiated undeclared wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. He is also the president who, according to data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, has launched more than 20,000 air strikes — and those assaults show no sign of stopping” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_president_of_perpetual_war_20130125/
Not only that, but Obama has apparently been in cahoots with all kinds of sleazy Islamic fundamentalist wing-nuts trying to stir up big trouble in Syria as well — to the point that even those Syrians who truly hate Assad’s guts are beginning to prefer Assad over the foreign ‘rebels’ who are currently destroying their country with the help of the U.S.
And according to both CLG News and Haaretz, the Obama administration has also been giving War Street neo-cons in Israel a green light for further air strikes on Syria. “…’At least one to two additional targets were hit [there recently],’ a Western intelligence official indicated to Time, adding that Israel received a ‘green light’ from the United States to carry out further attacks in the future.” http://www.legitgov.org/US-official-says-White-House-gave-Israel-green-light-carry-out-more-attacks-Syria
That’s totally scary.
But the most important reason we have for not liking Obama’s constant flirtation with War Street is his increasing authorization of continuous drone strikes and “targeted” assassinations — both here and abroad. And do you know what this drone mess ultimately means for you and me too? At this current time, THERE IS NO PLACE IN THE WORLD WHERE ANYONE IS SAFE — not even in our own homes here in heartland America.
At any moment, today, right now, a War Street-owned hellfire missile could suddenly eliminate your home without warning — and you too. That’s even more scary than when I was a kid and we thought that at any moment an atomic bomb might do us in. But at least back then it would have been the enemy that was doing it.
In addition, on Obama’s watch, all too many Americans here at home have also been sold down the river into economic slavery by Wall Street — in its never-ending lust to gut the American economy, feather its nests in the Caymans and kill the golden goose that has been laying golden eggs for Wall Street all these years.
According to journalist Mark Karlin, “Obama, Geithner, Holder and others in the executive branch are sending a message that if you got enough dough and run banks too big too fail, you can break the law and hurt the economy for the average American, but you won’t be held accountable — and they will allow you to be rewarded to boot.”
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17776-treasury-approved-bonuses-and-raises-for-wall-street-bankers-who-tanked-economy
I would love to be able to like Barack Obama. But for these two reasons, I just can’t. Why has Obama never stood up to Wall Street and War Street? Not even once? If he had, if he did, then his legacy as President would be AWESOME!
But as it stands now, Obama is just managing to stand only a couple of rungs higher on the presidential-accomplishment ladder than even George W. Bush — who wasn’t even legally elected!
PS: In 2003, Time magazine published a letter from me regarding Bush’s upcoming war on Iraq. It read, simply, “Is it possible that Iraq will be to America what Afghanistan was to the U.S.S.R.? The similarities are chilling.”
Well, it turned out that Iraq (and Afghanistan too) actually is to America what Afghanistan was to the USSR. And if you are looking for any further proof of that statement, just go look in your mailbox on the first Saturday in August. A whole lot of the money that might have gone to saving our post office is now going to pay for the Bush/Obama wars.
And also it seems that RepubliDems in Congress have come up with various poison pills that will force the USPS to sell off thousands of our post offices to private corporations. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2012-11-09/article/40488?headline=Berkeley-s-Historic-Post-Office-is-NOT-FOR-SALE—Margot-Smith How post-Soviet-Union Russian oligarch is that!
And let’s not forget the poor buggers out in Rockaway who are currently dying in the snow because so much of our money went off to Wall Street and War Street instead of to them — just like all the old people who froze to death on the mean streets of Moscow after the USSR fell or else died when the equivalent of Russian Social Security disappeared. Oh well. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/02/us-cancels-regular-drone-strikes-on-saturdays.html
The Self-Delusions of the Wealthy: Are They Really Worth What They’re Paid?
“If the wealthy had to work as hard as the janitor, they’d demand enough money to hire someone else to do the job.”
– Richard Sherricky
As summer slides into fall, if not the financial fall that’s eventual, some things haven’t changed, such as the investment bank aristocracy of Wall Street, already wallowing in obscenely large salaries, apparently believing they actually earn their pay for continuing to peddle worthless paper and hoodwinking their own customers. This addled belief, however, is nothing new.
Having misspent a part of my youth as an advertising executive at a publishing company, I once had an opportunity to encounter wealthy people at business lunches and social functions, and noticed a few habits of hypocritical thinking most of them had in common:
– To a man — and they were all men back then — they believed, even the silver-spoon trust fund scions and coddled bosses sons, that they were ‘self-made’ and everything they had was attained by their own hard work, even if their wealth was derived from dividend income, the result of a long-dead relative fortunately picking the right investments or starting a successful business.
– Speaking of hard work, when these CEOs and corporate presidents drifted in at 10 or 11 in the morning to check the mail and sign a few letters, left for a two-hour lunch at 12:30, and then went golfing for the rest of the afternoon, leaving their overworked and underpaid secretaries to run the place, they would still insist that they had ‘worked hard’ all day. The trust fund scoundrels were even worse; they’d sit in a quiet bar in the afternoon hunched over a drink, or lounge at home in their bathrobe, and their ‘work’ for the day consisted of a few calls to the office to see if everything was all right. As usual, a secretary or senior manager was running the company.
– Whatever their educational institution, Ivy League or state university, they all thought they graduated because they ‘studied hard’ and ‘put their noses to the grindstone’ even though some would laughingly brag, after a few too many cocktails, about how they had hired poor ‘scholarship brainiacs’ or ‘eggheads’ to teach them how to cheat on their tests.
– While most of them abhorred any publicly-funded program that enabled poor kids to get a better education, and especially affirmative action, they were blind to their own advantages, beyond just being born white. If Uncle Joe picked up the phone to make sure they got into the ‘right’ college, or Daddy was once a student and fast-tracked their ‘legacy’ acceptance into a good university, that was fine — just the way the world worked. Of course, left unsaid was how they would have been able to make their way through college if such financially-strapped ‘scholarship brainiacs’ were not there to help them cheat, just one of many mental cul-de-sacs that these sons of privilege passed by quickly, lest they get caught on their own conundrum.
– Although most of them supported the war in Vietnam, none of them came close to serving in it. They either received school draft deferments like Dick Cheney; or, like Rush Limbaugh, had a note from the family doctor describing some dread condition that made them militarily unfit, but somehow didn’t interfere with their golf game. Others had a family-friend Congressman intervene to keep them out; or, like Junior Bush, had the Old Man pull a few strings to get them ‘Weekend Warrior’ duty in the National Guard. Privately, they had little regard or compassion for the troops in the field; in fact, they believed them stupid and that the grunts should show gratitude for the opportunity that military service provided to raise their lowly selves out of the ghetto or trailer park. Should they die or be maimed for life during this process of elevation – well, that’s just the price they pay for not having the foresight to be born in better circumstances.
– Most of them hated paying taxes, the hatred much more intense than that of those lower on the income ladder. Like Leona Helmsley, they thought taxes were fine — for the ‘little people.’ A couple of them were even said to spend more money on lawyers and accountants to avoid paying taxes than the amount they owed in taxes. But they didn’t mind one bit freeloading off poorer folks by using roads, highways, airports, parks, sewer lines and other public facilities partly paid for by the taxes of the non-rich; and they took it for granted their class would receive preferential treatment from cops and firefighters they didn’t want to pay taxes to support. I won’t even get into the courts, prosecutors, and military all arrayed to protect their property that they also didn’t want to pay to uphold — suffice it to say that they didn’t believe in any taxes for themselves, even for those things that benefited them greatly. It would be a mistake to take this as any sort of reasonable consideration on the subject of taxation; it was not – it was a nearly-hysterical emotional reaction born of mindless greed or sheer obtuseness.
Because of my position at the time, I couldn’t easily debunk or refute their various delusions and fits of psychological zoanthropy; to do so might affect my company and my employment there and, frankly, I needed the job. While I would pose a mild question or two — nothing too challenging or confrontational — I mainly just listened to their hallucinations. Two of the great common myths of American culture are that you can’t be too rich or too thin. Anyone who has seen a person dying of anorexia knows the first is false, and anyone who has encountered the wealthy as I did knows that an excess of money can be just as harmful to a healthy mind as eating nothing but candy is to the body. One thought, unexpressed, went through my mind repeatedly as I listened and watched these well-heeled business acquaintances go through the motions: what exactly do these people do that is worth so much money? One-thousand dollars an hour or more for calling into the office or letting your secretary handle things? Doling out a few million to someone who cured cancer would seem appropriate; but paying that to a man who rarely worked and took months off for vacation while begrudging his employees a slight raise and a couple of weeks off for a holiday? It was outrageous and the situation has worsened in the decades since these events happened. Then, top executives received about 50 times more than the average worker; today, it’s about 700 times. Yet, are they working any harder than the top execs of the mid-70s? I’d bet Lloyd Blankfein’s yearly salary of $55 million they aren’t.
(Incidentally, I’m exempting here those who really did start their own businesses from scratch with next to nothing. They worked hard getting the place running and deserve to be paid for their effort if they succeed. That said, I don’t know if that effort is worth billions, but that’s a question for another time. Also, I’m not taking a swipe at artists, entertainers or sports stars; most of them also worked hard to get where they are, generally have brief professional lives, and merit compensation for their talents since it’s usually based on public approval rather than a board of directors stocked with your cronies.)
Until executive compensation is brought into line with actual worthwhile work done, and the wealthy have to pay their fair share of taxes, including payroll taxes and capital gains taxes commensurate with what the average worker pays, I don’t think we can resolve our current economic mess.
That aside, the thread running through all of this is the massive degree of self-delusion practiced by those with wealth. It’s scary enough when they know they’re lying to make a buck; it’s pathologically dangerous when they buy into their own fantasies about themselves as have, it seems, the current crop of Wall Street bunco artists and banking grifters. In this case, it won’t end until Richie Rich, ensconced in an office at Goldman Sachs, dreaming up the next fraudulent financial instrument for his firm to foist on the gullible markets, hits bottom – an inevitability since they refuse to learn from their mistakes — and seeks another ‘loan’ from the contemptible ‘little people’ who pay taxes via the federal Big Daddy and, to mix metaphors, the cupboard is bare.
Then these Masters of the Universe will learn the tough lesson the cosseted Junior Bush as president had to endure: there are times when even Big Daddy can’t save you from the hard consequences of acting like a spoiled brat with too much for your own good.
© 2011 RS Janes.
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