If Clinton gets the nod, will I have to shut up or get tombstoned? (An Essay)

JackRiddler

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Tue Feb-05-08 04:48 PM
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If Clinton gets the nod, will I have to shut up or get tombstoned? (An Essay)

Edited on Tue Feb-05-08 04:54 PM by JackRiddler

(NOTE: Because of the deeply-held views I summarize below, I cannot conceive of supporting Clinton for president, but probably will vote for Obama in November, if he’s the candidate. A cardinal rule at DU prohibits postings that argue against a Democratic nominee in a general election. So if Clinton emerges as the nominee, which is possible at any point starting today, I will avoid threads about her until after November. I have a history at DU and enjoy the debates here on many subjects. I definitely do not want to get “tombstoned,” but I do want to take this possibly last chance to tell things exactly as I see them. Some people will take the following as “cynicism” or “defeatism,” but I disagree. Truth unvarnished, knowing where you stand is your only hope of commanding your own fate. Thanks.)

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A Sighing Endorsement for Obama

It’s axiomatic--and tragic--that our democracy is far less “one-person, one vote” than “one-dollar, one vote.”

The acceptable issues and the very narrow bounds of debate are defined by the money of the ruling class, the corporate media, and the weight of historic ideologies. Well in advance of anyone getting to cast a vote, the money and the media choose the “viable” candidates within the party duopoly, which retains an iron hold over nearly all offices. But in observing the Presidential dramas since 1976, I have never seen one as completely pre-arranged as this one, with controlled players in each of the usual roles years in advance. It’s like watching the perfection of a system, which may be a good thing since in human affairs perfection often indicates a coming upheaval.

Obama was conjured out of nowhere and declared as the only possible alternative to Clinton on the Democratic side. The money and the media and the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski fell in line to guarantee it, more than a year before anyone could vote. He did not use any of the usual catapults out of obscurity. He did not have national base, a long career as a politician, a single-issue focus, or a role in a defining event. The unprecedented way he just appeared overnight indicates some deal, to which are not yet privy, must have been cut.

And yet he offers the last sad glimmer of hope that anything the least unpredictable might happen once the election is done.

A frontrunner always generates an “anything-but” opponent. This goes double for a frontrunner with the baggage of the Clinton name. If Obama had not been set up as the alternative to Clinton from the start, someone more genuine, someone who had more to offer than empty promises of “Change” and “Hope” might have arisen to take on that mantle. But I doubt Edwards was that more genuine contender. With hindsight, his role also appears arranged: he talked like the real thing, but in the end he merely ate up the oxygen that might have gone to a potential left insurgency. (There's almost never really a danger of a left insurgency in U.S. politics, but the mind of the ruling class remains forever scarred by the Sixties.)

Let’s look at what Edwards actually did: His voting record and reliability in enabling the Bush agenda are indistinguishable from Clinton’s. In running against his own record, he is necessarily full of shit. But at least he says the right things about corporatism and to a lesser extent the occupation, unlike any of the other "allowable" frontrunners. Yet after stirring the pot with class-war rhetoric, he drops out just before most people get a chance to vote for him! Does anyone doubt he would have polled 15 percent and more in today’s contests, picking up a similar proportion of delegates, perhaps becoming the kingmaker at the convention? Instead, he denies a voice to the people stirred by the issues he promoted. In his farewell, he laughably says he is glad that Obama and Clinton have now adopted his concerns for workers and the poor. (!) This a betrayal. Edwards mobilized the left in a safe, predictable way, then dumped them suddenly, leaving no choice but Obama, Clinton, or irrelevancy.

The role of Ron Paul on the Republican side is similar, in that he marshalls a potential insurgency in an ultimately harmless fashion. But Paul presents a number of paradoxes. The only remaining principled stance against the Iraq occupation and imperialism (other than Gravel!) is coupled with the same free-market delusions that drive imperialism. The only direct challenge to the power of capital (at any rate, “bankers” ) comes with a fatally fantastic view of economic history. The one guy who wants to end the drug war and roll back USA PATRIOT also wants a wall on the southern border, and fails to see that his idea of an immigration policy necessitates a police state. Add semi-medieval positions on abortion and gay rights, and a view of the Constitution that apparently ends after the 11th Amendment. To his credit, and unlike Edwards, he may show the integrity to take his campaign to the convention. Although I could not conceive supporting him, he may be the least compromised politician in the running. (Then there is the paradox of his supporters; many of the most active of them attracted through the 9/11 truth movement, in an act of mass self-delusion; he can hardly be accused of pandering to them, as he has even endorsed the 9/11 Commission.)

McCain, Romney, Clinton, and 99% of Obama - is there a risk any of them will go against the will of the top quarter-percent, the owners and the power elite? Given the crisis, of course, the will of the "powers that be" (PTB) may prove to be less monolithic than usual.

What's interesting is how each of them comes ready-made with a grenade pin allowing their instantaneous implosion-by-media. This was always true of the duopoly party nominees, but perhaps never to this extent. McCain's an obviously sick man, liable to be spun into an unstable ogre by the media on command. He'd better avoid screaming. Romney's a nothing and a nobody, a sad blowhard, a car salesman, another actor, and no way he doesn't have his crooked deals and perversions on file with Spook Central. By this time, it is pointless to again review here the ways in which Clinton and her gang turned fraudulent many years ago; there are those who see it, and those who do not want to see it. In each case, the vulnerabilities of these candidates, more than their putative strengths, paradoxically attract the money and the nods from the power elites. Integrity and a lack of personal corruption are a disadvantage.

Obama, besides whatever secrets or bad real estate he may have been involved in, comes with the advantage--for remote-control saboteurs--that his race, which so far has been played as a strength, can be turned into negative among the white majority. It need not even be done by a direct attack. For example, any murder case involving a black man can be turned into this year's bogus media tsunami a la OJ Simpson (or Willie Horton), until no white person fails to associate it with Obama. One reason I will vote for Obama in November will be in an effort to counter the many white people who are likely to vote against him only because he's black--the vast number of them covert in their racism, so I'm talking about North and West as well as the clich� of the Southern redneck. (This endorsement depends of course on how horrid he gets rhetorically and whether I can still stomach him by then.)

Obama may finally get the nod from the PTB as a re-branding offensive. This country can sure use a new face for its global P.R., and it's hard to imagine anything that will set off more positive symbolic tremors in the world (without actually disrupting business as usual) than an African in the White House. This may make a real difference, if he's serious about talking to the "Axis of Evil."

Certainly the worst imaginable outcome is to continue the dynasty. I do not question Clinton’s gender, qualifications, talents or “experience”: it suffices to remember her record. As economy and society crash, HRC is guaranteed to follow the Clinton program of hold the fort and capitulate to the right.

Worst of all, her actions, no matter how egregiously imperialist, will be spun in the media as products of a hard-left or “liberal” mindset. Her enemies will be celebrate her return: they will never shut up about complete bullshit, and it will be faithfully echoed by the television. They will attribute all that goes wrong to her being “a lesbian,” or to Bill Clinton's godless dick. And have we not already seen how this routine sticks well enough to gum up all other business?

Let us hope enough primary voters wise up to the game before it’s too late. Obama is someone Republicans secretly think they can beat in 2008, simply because he’s black. But Clinton is the Republican choice for president. They expect to lose this election; she makes the perfect foil for Jeb Bush or some equivalent nightmare in an overtly fascist landslide in 2012.