Thursday, August 25, 2011

Obama: "silence the straw-demons" in November 2012

In his column today in The Globe and Mail reviewing television programs, John Doyle notes the "trash Obama" movement that is spilling over the airwaves on American cable networks. That Fox talking heads would be politically assassinating Obama, for whatever his many "warts" may be, is not surprising; however, that MSNBC host Chris Matthews is dubious about his re-election is not only surprising, it is quite frightening. Both Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC think he will be re-elected.
In this summer immediately following the April Spring in the Middle East, the U.S. equivalents to those taking to the streets in Cairo, Tunisia, Tripoli, Damascus, Amman, with fire in their bellies seeking vengeance against what they consider tyrannical despots, are the Tea Party zealots in the U.S. Their target, however, is not "Hosni" Obama, nor "Mohammar" Obama, nor "Bashar al-Assad" Obama, however much those American zealots want to make it appear that they, too, are fighting a tyrant. The fact that Obama's middle name in Hussein is just another of the targets painted on his back by an ironic "nature" of the universe that never seeks to take an opportunity to paint another enigmatic picture, an easy target for those mindless mobs of 'right-wing-wing-nuts' a name so appropriate it merits inclusion in the next Webster and Oxford Dictionary editions.
In fact, the U.S. President, a most remarkable world citizen and world leader, while he is being bashed by those on the political left as well as those on the political 'right', is and will be judged by history scholars, to have brought a high degree of intellectual and political discipline, rigour, and platinum quality rarely seen in any occupant of the White House.
Nevertheless, he cannot escape the multiple albatrosses that former President Dubya (Bush) hung around his neck in the form of:
  • a Wall Street meltdown
  • a deregulated financial services sector of the economy,
  • two unfinanced and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
  • a parmaceutical drug plan for seniors which was never included in any of Dubya's budgetary considerations, 
  • a tax cut for everyone that left the country virtually and literally broke
  • a housing bubble of bundled mortgages sold off to global banks and investors that were of little more value than the paper on which they were written
  • an angry electorate that searched for an "enemy" to punish in the 2010 election, bringing dozens of brain-washed neophytes, steeped in the Kool-Aid of the Koch brothers financed Tea Party, with whom no one of a more moderate political persuasion, including especially the president, could have negotiated on debt/deficit reduction...
Comedian Chris Rock, himself deeply immersed in the Black culture of the U.S., put it so succinctly around the time of Obama's election in 2008, in words to the effect that 'a black president would only have been possible in the current disastrous circumstances; only then would a black person have been considered eligible for the White House'.
As E.J. Dionne wrote this week, Obama needs to go big, and to go global in his creative reach for new approaches and policies in order to "recover" his fading presidency. His reach must include measures untouchable by the intransigent Congress, able to deploy millions of American workers in a project, or projects that change the face not only of America but also of the world, so that by the time November 2012 rolls around (only 15 months from now, only 60 weeks from now, only 420 days from now, only 10,080 hours from now), there will be no question from everything that is spoken and written in the digital world of political-speak known as cable news, including Foxmold, that Obama is the only politician still standing. And, not only is he standing but he is standing in the middle of the Main Street of the last best 'western' movie to grace the Hollywood screen, with his gun still in his holster, still loaded and still cold, because he wrestled these straw-demons, these mind-altering revolution-toting, drug-induced visions of their own narcissistic pursuit of power for the powerful to a silence borne of intellectual and pseudo-religious fervour that trumps both rational debate and measured governing, not only at home but around the world (they simply don't care!) to the ground of their own political graves...mourned not so much for their historic relevance but for their ingition of more of the powder that is encased in July 4th fireworks, making a loud bang and a flashy spray of sparks in the dark sky, leaving only a mess of ash in their wake, for those street cleaners still fortunate enough to have jobs, cleasing up after their "mastuh's" those rich white trash who could never countenance a brilliant black man in their world view, let alone one married to another brilliant black woman from the wrong side of the tracks, living in "their" White House...after all didn't they give it that name for historic purposes?

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