Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Is there a cure for Obamamania?




by Malik Sekou OSEI / William PLEASANT

Oh, well...Let us say it again: Pres. Barack "Buckwheat" Obama is simply the glib stand-up comedy warm-up act for the main event, namely the economic rape of poor and working American people. All the cheap t-shirts, wall calendars and preacher-borne allusion to how far Black people have come to finally have one of their own (????) in the White House will not change that fact. Obama is not a sellout to the Black-led working class agenda. He was never bought into it. That is why he was enthroned by the corporate elite in the first place. And he has more than repaid his benefactors, literally with the blood of poor people.

Obama is not the lesser of two evils, vis-a-vis the Democrat and Republican brands (with or without condom) of rape. He is the clear and present evil, a class enemy. Black people know this in their bones. The slums of America resound with their cries of misery. They know that Buckwheat has forsaken them, but they fear  to speak up. Remember the millions of Black folks who stampeded to the polls on behalf of a Black savior in 2008? Well, they have nothing to show for that nearly unananimous act of devotion, except growing heartbreak.

But an army of cultural nationalist fakirs, chicken wing preachers, party hacks and tired Social Democrats (the Democrats' Socialists), has been employed to insist that the horror in the streets of urban America is merely a speed bump on the road to Buckwheat's Promised Land. They tell the howling masses that their steep and rapid cultural and economic decline can in no way be blamed on Buckwheat and his policies. And even if it is overly apparent that our blood is on Buckwheat's hands, then we are urged to forgiveness. This is the yarn that Buckwheat had to stab the poor in the back with a steak knife first in order prevent the mean 'ol Republicans from gutting us with a butcher knife. He was doing us an act of mercy, after all. Any writer who dares fail to genuflect before this--the sum of Obama's progressive aspects--is made to pay through public denunciation as a "race traitor" and/or puppet of the right.

A political madness has seized the Left inteligentsia in this country. Obamamania--driven by Black sentimentalism and hippie nostalgia--coupled with the Social Democrats' (Communists', too!) lesser-of-two-evil electoral paradigm, has left poor people in the US politically disarmed and disorganized today. This social backwardness will not abate until there arises a broad and organized independent political OPPOSITION in this country. That means a pro-working class formation that is not afraid to flush Buckwheat and his Democratic Party turds down the toilet. As cultural workers and social activist, how do we contribute such a development? The first step is to go for the jugular vein of hegemonic American political pragmatism in word, song and vision.

Capitalism and private enterprise are still seen as the proper and only vehicles for mass economic stability and actual development. Polite conversation, even among erstwhile socialists, completely avoids the fact that monopoly capitalism is an utter failure at meeting the needs of people on a global scale. Today, even the relatively priviledged workers in Europe are crying bloody murder. Meanwhile, legions of people from Mexico and Central America risk their lives to slip into the US every year to ESCAPE monopoly capitalism in their countries where it, as a system, has uttely descended into outright barbarism.  Can we, as progressive social changers, stand up and insist that exploitation and abuse are not NATURAL, i.e., some sort of divinely ordained, biologically-determined order of things? Can we insist that exploitation and abuse cannot be accommodated? President Buckwheat can't and won't do that. He is not a leader of working and poor people. Can we say that? That is what is called for today.

Nearly three years into an administration that has overseen the biggest transfer of wealth from the public treasury to the financial elite in history—with no strings attached—and that has refused to take any serious measures to address the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, a period in which poverty and social deprivation have soared alongside record corporate profits and CEO pay, Buckwheat and the Democrats now present themselves as the saviors of jobs and social justice. Can we exposed their posturing as a genocidal lie. Or do we fear that Obama and his crew are all that stand between the poor and the herd of right wing buffoons in the Republican Party? Do we really believe in ourseleves, in the decency and power of the people?

What do we do with the collapse of MF Global, once headed by DP honcho and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine? Some $633 million of clients’ funds--mostly pension funds--are still unaccounted for. The corporate 7-11 was robbed by men in blue suits, while the cops (Obama's Securities and Exchang Commission--SEC) munched doughnuts in the parking lot. That was no accident.

Corzine’s career typifies the revolving door between the boardroom and government office, and the intimate ties that bind the Democratic Party to Wall Street. The multi-millionaire banker/politician, now under criminal investigation for stealing clients’ funds, is a major fundraiser for the Obama reelection campaign. He hosted Obama’s first fundraiser this year at his posh Manhattan apartment. Are we afraid to point that out, to teach the deliberately befuddled working class and poor that corruption comes in both dominant political party wrappers?

The US Palace Left hailed the crumbs of Obama's pseudo-populist American Jobs Act as heavenly gifts. Like every other measure proposed by his administration to "create jobs," this caper was just a corporate welfare package of business tax cuts and other regressive measures, including cuts in payroll taxes for employers as well as employees that will drain the Social Security trust fund. Can we say that crumbs are crumbs, that the entire cake belongs to the people who produced it?

Counting on the Republicans to block the jobs bill, Obama readied his "We Can’t Wait" road show, in which he staged announcements in various cities of token executive actions supposedly addressing urgent social issues such as home foreclosures and student debt. In fact, all of the measures Obama has announced have been thoroughly vetted by the banks to insure that they do not in any way encroach on their profits. Can we insist that Barack Obama is at best an imbecilic failure? Can we show that, even with the best of intentions, he cannot put the Humpty Dumpty of monopoly capitalism together again?

Buckwheat's reform agenda is utterly substanceless when compared with the concerete needs of the prople. For example, he recently spoke at a Head Start center in the Philadelphia suburb in Yeadon, Pennsylvania. In the name of "reform" and "accountability," Obama announced a new rule that will defund Head Start programs across the country on the pretext that they have failed to meet national achievement standards. This represents an extension of the so-called "reform" agenda that has shut hundreds of schools and laid off hundreds of thousands of teachers. It was just a sugar-coated and Blackfaced version of GW Bush's NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND hoax. In other words, just another unfunded federal mandate that ultimately punishes poor local jurisdictions. Never forget: THERE IS NO NATIONAL STANDARD OF LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM FUNDING.

The political venom that intoxicates and paralizes poor and working people in the US must be eliminated. To say that Buckwheat and his Democratic Party minions are the current active ingredients of that psycho/cultural poison would be an under statement. The notion that the oppressed and repressed must somehow accommodate themselves to the lawlessness and savagery of the ruling strata as the NATURAL ORDER of human organization has to be confronted and smashed without mercy. In our capacity as cultural workers, our challenge is to discover the ways that our gifts and charms can be applied as a progressive anecdote.
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