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Mendacity of Hope: Obama Eviscerated

March 2, 2010 By hubspoke

Like your left rants high-octane? I do. Chris Hedges obliges on truthdig with Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama. I’d like to hear people’s refutations after reading Hedges.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush.

The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer 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 candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible 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-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness. 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.

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Filed Under: User Tagged With: green-party, liberals, nader, obama, third-parties

Comments

  1. bob-neer says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    The left stands for nothing.

    <

    p>That may be true from the perspective of a “senior fellow at the Nation Institute and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University” but I certainly don’t think it is true at, say, Blue Mass Group. Posters and commenters here take positions on many issues every day, and many stamp their real names on their positions. We support candidates with endorsements, volunteers, activism and money from our PAC. The many comments from our esteemed conservative posters, and our bloggy rivals over at Red Mass Group and elsewhere highlight the many places where we take stands.

    <

    p>

    We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.

    <

    p>This is the real abdication of responsibility. As Obama often says, we have to live in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. If there was any evidence — for example, in opinion polls or offices won — that the “Green Party, McKinney and Nader” had significant support in the country (say, 20-30 percent of the population), he would have an argument. In fact, however, their support is vanishingly small (more’s the pity). Progressive Democrats are the folks that deserve support and can actually implement improvements, not those like Nader who put George W. Bush in office.

    <

    p>As to Obama, I agree he needs to lead. He should have pushed through his agenda using the constitution, which requires 50 votes in the Senate plus the VP, not some made up rule that requires 60 votes, from Day One. He is still wasting time, even after the wake up call delivered from Massachusetts. If he doesn’t, he will pay the price and so will the Democrats later this year. But, he has done much that is good, and has been a much better President than John McCain.

    <

    p>I find the criticism, the philosophy, and the call to action not well thought out and perhaps indicative of too much time spent in the salons of Manhattan and not enough time in the blogosphere and involve din ground-level politics and activism.

    • hubspoke says

      March 2, 2010 at 3:02 pm

      I don’t think Hedges, author of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,can be accused of spending his career in cushy Manhattan salons. From Wikipedia:

      He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years.[1]

      • bob-neer says

        March 2, 2010 at 3:53 pm

        That part of his career produced magnificent work.

        <

        p>I stand by my statement.

      • lightiris says

        March 2, 2010 at 4:11 pm

        ever since.   I teach War Is a Force; it’s a good text.    One thing I no longer do, however, is tell students to read his other works.  Athough his American Fascists:  The Christian Right and the War on America is well done, his stuff for TruthDig ranges from self-indulgent rant to pastiche gibberish.  

        • hubspoke says

          March 2, 2010 at 6:18 pm

  2. smadin says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:31 pm

    That seems a bit much.  Not that I agree with Hedges – and the idea that McKinney, Nader, and the American Green Party are the who we should look to for progressive leadership is, bluntly, laughable – but there’s a pretty significant gulf between “the liberal/Democratic establishment is irredeemable and progressives need to abandon it” and “suicide-bombing government buildings is a good idea.”

    • bob-neer says

      March 2, 2010 at 3:57 pm

      But he comes close enough to deserve the tweak, I think.

      <

      p>Joe Stack was a terrorist who killed an innocent person just going about their daily work. Chris Hedges should also spend some time analyzing what Vernon Hunter thought was important:  ABC “Joe Stack’s Daughter Samantha Bell Agrees With Victim’s Son: Victim Vernon Hunter Was the ‘Hero'”

  3. patricklong says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    He doesn’t put forth an agenda here. He doesn’t give any examples of Obama, or Dems in general, lying, or being cowards. He just begs the question. Obama’s done a reasonably good job. So has Pelosi. Reid, not so much. He’s the one who deserves the blame for letting a tiny minority control the Senate. Replace him and we’ll be fine. I don’t need to see any more of Jim Bunning crying because his own efforts to kill an unemployment benefit extension kept the Senate in session late and made him miss a football game.  

  4. stomv says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    the article is foolish, inflammatory, and in many other ways like the amateur-hour hit pieces that folks like the LaRouchites, Naderians, Truthers, Birthers, 912ers, Area 51ers, et al put out.  The world is oh-so-wrong, and requires immediate, dramatic, reality-shattering change, Right Now, lest the universe spiral out of control toward [something bad].

    <

    p>

    We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state.

    <

    p>Is the state more or less corporate than one year ago?  Ten?  One hundred?  Two hundred?

    <

    p>

    They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

    <

    p>No, she’s ridiculed for being a Truther, a conspiracy nut (she wanted to review murders ranging from MLK to 2Pac for new evidence), and for bullying past a Capitol Hill Police officer.  He’s ridiculed for his quixotic quests for the presidency, notably 2004 and 2008.

    <

    p>Both did some great things early in their career, but then something changed.  Perhaps they ate paint chips under high voltage power lines or something.

    <

    p>

    Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942.

    <

    p>The difference between a lie and making a prediction that doesn’t pan out isn’t that complex.

    <

    p>

    As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation.

    <

    p>Plus, both Obama and Bush have ears.  Big ones!  They’re like practically the same!

    <

    p>

    He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

    <

    p>None of this has happened… yet.  Will it?  I hope so.  This criticism was equally valid 12 months ago, which is to say, he said he would do it and he still might.

    <

    p>

    <

    p>It’s unfortunate, because a strong and sane Green Party could really help pull the Democrats to the left on a number of issues.  Instead, far too often the leaders and followers of the Green Party promote this guano, and, if anything, it pushes the middle 48/50ths of the population in the other direction.

  5. petr says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    … does that mean that the rant is the enemy of the rational???

    <

    p>Methinks somebody has stewed so long in their own anger that anything short of nirvana won’t suffice to pull them out of it… …. sad, that…

  6. sabutai says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    And it makes one of the strangest and simplest mistakes out there — taking it at face value that Obama represent “the Left”.  Thus, with a discredited Obama in his eyes, the left is also discredited.

    <

    p>While the pace of this progressive “change” has been glacial in some areas, to be generous, and retrograde in others, that doesn’t mean that the left is wrong or spent in the Democratic Party.  It just means that President Obama is not responsive to it.

    <

    p>All that is presuming agreement with Hedges’ other ideas, which is dicey at best.  Obama has been a disappointment, yes, and is resolutely unaffected by the wishes of people who worked so hard for him.  However, it seems that one could say that the biggest mistake of the Left was their choice of champion.

    • paulsimmons says

      March 2, 2010 at 3:40 pm

      He makes it quite clear – and has throughout his public career – that he is a empiricist with little tolerance for ideologues, left or right.  He has, however noted with amusement the tendency of some (left and right) to projection.

      <

      p>Case in point: the “activist” fantasy. In Chicago, for example, what Obama encountered was the results of forty-plus years of corruption within activist culture; in particular the lack of street-level activist credibility,  which was what brought him into electoral politics in the first place.

      <

      p>Hedges et al are imposing a fantasy on Obama, his recorded beliefs notwithstanding.  I doubt, however, if the President is losing much sleep over that fact.

      • liveandletlive says

        March 2, 2010 at 4:04 pm

        on Obama, it’s because they were invited to do so. Too bad Obama didn’t put a disclaimer at the bottom stating:
        “This is only a fantasy.”

        <

        p>

        • john-from-lowell says

          March 2, 2010 at 4:30 pm

          Actually, Obama and Hedges are asking us to do the same thing.

          <

          p>Don’t know about you, but I’m not mailing it in anymore.

        • paulsimmons says

          March 2, 2010 at 4:50 pm

          He has, however, written about the tendency of some, right and left, to project their ideological bias on to him.

          <

          p>In my opinion, his tendency to dispassionate observation, in both written and spoken word, tends to reinforce preconceptions from folks who should know better, given Obama’s political and intellectual background.

          <

          p>Whatever the cause, it gives me a great deal of amusement that the political premises, port and starboard are almost identical.

          • liveandletlive says

            March 2, 2010 at 9:47 pm

            quite clear:

            <

            p>

            He makes it quite clear – and has throughout his public career – that he is a empiricist with little tolerance for ideologues, left or right.  He has, however noted with amusement the tendency of some (left and right) to projection.

            <

            p>he would not be President of the United States.  He ran farther left than Hillary Clinton, which is why he was
            promoted so heavily by lefty blogs during the campaign.

            <

            p>I can see the “dispassionate observation” tendency in him now. It’s absolutely disturbing to watch him sitting and standing about as if he is removed from the crisis that
            is hitting our country.  Sure, he can buck up for a speech or a Q & A, but once he is back at the White House, the problems are again ours to solve, like we’re a bunch of little ants scurrying around trying not to be stepped on.  And he is dispassionately observing the whole thing.

          • mizjones says

            March 3, 2010 at 1:48 pm

            I have seen so many examples of how Obama’s actions have continued the policies of Bush, when he could have chosen to do otherwise.

            <

            p>For example, why do we have an Attorney General who had recently worked for a law firm that did work for the RNC? This AG has gone easy on the prosecution of Republican wrong-doing and has done nothing to correct some egregious political prosecutions done by the Bush Justice Dept.

      • liveandletlive says

        March 2, 2010 at 10:01 pm

        who currently sits in our White House.

        <

        p>

      • sabutai says

        March 3, 2010 at 8:32 am

        That’s why as a progressive, Obama was near the bottom of my list.

    • hubspoke says

      March 3, 2010 at 10:53 am

  7. lightiris says

    March 2, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    I use his War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning as the textbook in one of the elective classes I teach.  I used to admire him greatly because his analysis in the early 2000s was fairly cogent, factual, and reasoned.  I was rather pleased to see that he’d gotten a gig writing for TruthDig, too.  Unfortunately, his stuff has become increasingly irrational and arch, to the point where it’s so nutty I can’t even take him seriously.  His arguments are often so poorly reasoned that I’m amazed anyone bothers with him anymore.  (Indeed, he’s lost a lot of readers over the years if the comments on TruthDig are any indication.)  The column where he argued that the only meaningful recourse for conscientious and thoughtful citizens is to stop paying taxes is one for the ages.  

    <

    p>The day Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney become icons of virtue and are believed to possess the capacity to point liberals in the direction of true north is the day I move to Canada or Norway.  Hedges’ inane bombast reveals only one reality:  he is dancing on the fringe and is, consequently, irrelevant.  To me, he and folks like him represent the textbook loony left, unproductive and untethered.  No thanks.  

    <

    p>Next year I hope to swap out Hedges War Is a Force for Eugene Jarecki’s The American Way of War:  Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril.  Jarecki’s head is screwed on straight and his arguments rational and reasoned.  I’m all set with the drama queen Hedges.    

    • gregr says

      March 2, 2010 at 9:36 pm

      The day Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney become icons of virtue and are believed to possess the capacity to point liberals in the direction of true north is the day I move to Canada or Norway.

      Ralph Nader has become a self absorbed jerk since the Reagan years and McKinney is simply a bat-shit crazy publicity hound.

      <

      p>Hedges can be dismayed at the lack of progressive change coming from the White House. That’s fine. I am more than a little annoyed at the lack of fortitude as well. Hell there are Dems who should be tossed oout of the caucus for the blatant hypocrisy.

      <

      p>However, the meme that ‘the GOP and Dems are the same’ needed to die a long time ago. Had Nader not been on the ballot in the state of Florida in 2000, you cannot say with straight face that we would be in the boat we are in right now.

      <

      p>F’ Ralph and the many horses he rides on.

  8. liveandletlive says

    March 2, 2010 at 3:10 pm

    but he makes valid points, and I can appreciate his anger.

  9. hoyapaul says

    March 2, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness.

    <

    p>Yeah, because being in the wilderness during the Bush years was such a pleasant time.

    <

    p>It’s sad, and rather pathetic, how quickly people forget how bad things get when Republicans are in charge.

    • mizjones says

      March 3, 2010 at 1:56 pm

      that we only ask the Democrats to be slightly better.

      • petr says

        March 3, 2010 at 2:53 pm

        *[new] It is also sad (0.00 / 0)

        that we only ask the Democrats to be slightly better.

        <

        p>… there is now ample evidence (I’m looking at you Scott Brown…) that the electorate, as a whole, is really only willing to go so far (“slightly better”).  

        <

        p>Obama didn’t get elected because people wanted a whole lot better but precisely because they were only willing to gamble on only ‘slightly better‘.  Those of us who are, indeed, asking for a whole lot better are, sadly, a minority.  There are many reasons for this, as I can see, not least the constant diet of fear and smear… but you can’t expect the willingly duped to suddenly wake up and realize that they’ve been duped, and then publicly admit to such, to boot.

        <

        p>Nor is Obama, historically, all that much of an aberration: Those whom we consider the great liberal/progressive icons were only progressive in context  JFK was quite the cold-warrior/tax-cutter and FDR was noted for dissembling (though, in truth, I don’t think he lied, per se, only that he had a talent for leaving all sides believing he agreed with them… only to decide as he saw fit.)   In short, FDR and JFK, had similar detractor and persons lamenting how they might have been only slightly better… of course, the Internets amplifies this…

        <

        p>We, also, tend to romanticize the past and awfulize the present: expecting Obama to make changes as sweeping as FDR did, with a lesser crisis and smaller majorities is, frankly, naive.  FDR was faced with real bank runs and collapse, well over 20% unemployment  and old people dying by the bucketful.  That’s how we got banking reform, jobs programs and social security.    Obama is a victim, in some ways, of his own success: having stabilized the economy and got things running again, we’ve been treated to the privilege of ‘woulda coulda shoulda’ when in fact, for example, FDR was kinda operating under ‘hadda’

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