From: "Wahome, Kimamo" <WAHOMEK@uwec.edu> Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 10:23:38 -0600 Subject: 'Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama" Message-ID: <E3F0E607B3CF71418CE725F002B5F6047D1057053C@CHERRYPEPSI.uwec.edu>
Published on Monday, March 1, 2010 by TruthDig.com<http://www.truthdig.com/
report/item/ralph_nader_was_right_about_barack_obama_20100301/>
Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama
by Chris Hedges
We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney <http://bioguide.congress.gov/scrip
ts/biodisplay.pl?index=m000523> an apology. They were right about Barack
Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of t
heir convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridic
ule by liberals and progressives.
Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised u
s that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street woul
d open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit I
nsurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced
lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he wo
uld filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made le
gal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without
warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He tol
d us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facil
ity at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas co
rpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.
He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds
of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in
the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy in
surers' defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-p
ays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankru
pt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collaps
e of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environm
ental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMob
il. He empowers Israel's brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire fa
milies, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the
Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims' lungs. And he is deli
vering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.
The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward
in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begu
n under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals
when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emo
tionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea party protesters, the m
yopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers <
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/> and the myriad of armed patriot groups have s
wept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarian
s, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. Th
ey articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloo
dless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the p
rotofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack,
who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas
, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage
.
"Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable at
rocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and wh
en it's time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their glutt
ony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government ha
s no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?" Stack wrote.
"Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, inclu
ding the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of p
eople a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and th
is country's leaders don't see this as important as bailing out a few of th
eir vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political 'representatives' (thieves, liar
s, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit
around for year after year and debate the state of the 'terrible health ca
re problem'. It's clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don't
get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in."
The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and
mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obam
a and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the lo
nger they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time
to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party c
andidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support ma
y be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frig
htening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground amon
g the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-
wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea party protesters, re
sponsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we
have failed to articulate a credible alternative.
A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-ro
ots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilder
ness. We will again be told by the Democrats that the least-worse candidate
they select for office is better than the Republican troll trotted out as
an alternative. We will be bombarded with slick commercials about hope and
change and spoken to in a cloying feel-your-pain language. We will be made
afraid. But if we again acquiesce we will be reduced to sad and pathetic fo
otnotes in our accelerating transformation from a democracy to a totalitari
an corporate state. Isolation and ridicule-ask Nader or McKinney-is the cos
t of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injusti
ce, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And i
t is vital that this anger become our own. We have historical precedents to
fall back upon.
"Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, befo
re there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name
," the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said <http://www.jonbesh-ira
n.com/Jonbesh/Site/English/2009/Januar/WarandSocialJustice%20.pdf> in a lec
ture a year ago at Binghamton University. "Millions of people in the United
States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congre
ss and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like f
ourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism
-who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence
Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It n
eeds to be restored."
Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activis
m, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony
of the corporate state and the power elite. The longer socialism is identi
fied with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we a
llow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffe
ctual we become. The right-wing mantra of "Obama the socialist," repeated a
few days ago to a room full of Georgia Republicans, by Newt Gingrich, the
former U.S. speaker of the House, is discrediting socialism itself. Gingric
h, who looks set to run for president, called Obama the "most radical presi
dent" the country had seen in decades. "By any standard of government contr
ol of the economy, he is a socialist," Gingrich said. If only the critique
was true.
The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wi
der public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can conti
nue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure
the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support
the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable
socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled
open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinne
y and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.
© 2010 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com<http://www.truthdig.c
om>. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two d
ecades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of
many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning<http://www.amaz
on.com/gp/product/1400034639?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2
&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1400034639>, What Every Person Should Know Abou
t War<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743255127?ie=UTF8&tag=commondre
ams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0743255127>, and American
Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.<http://www.amazon.com
/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim> His most recent book is
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle<http:/
/www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkC
ode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1568584377>.