By Arthur Piccolo
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 27, 2011: Drink up America!
The White House Kool-Aid may be weak but it is loaded with artificial sweeteners and will never quench your thirst let alone your other needs.
Surprise! The New York Times reports today that Barack Obama’s support among African Americans is as strong as ever. Therein is a perfect example of the failure of our political system.
Call it identity politics in its perverse way. No it would be no different if Obama was rather Irish or Italian or of any other identifiable ethnic or racial group. Support him because he is one of us. Support him because the other side is far, far worse.
It is the flaw buried deep into our political consciousness that has
the situation for most Americans – call it the 99% or not – who become ever more dissatisfied and disillusioned with their lot because they don’t have a lot but fail again and again to apply the pressure where it will be effective.
Its reality is no different with Occupy Wall Street on a different level. Just like African Americans, those encamped at Zuccotti Park and other locations around the nation will never rally around a logical coherent theme that can produce the change they claim they want.
Barack Obama is ready made to have the voters and the groups he must count on to ensure his re-election – to threaten to withhold their support if he does NOT fulfill his commitment to bring real change we can believe in. Rather than be allowed to give the impression he is the President for everyone. Rich and poor alike.
An impossible goal except we let him get away with it. Back to the Black vote.
Among the unemployed as well as the increasing poverty rate and the inequality index as usual, African Americans are overrepresented in all three categories. In other words, if anything, since Obama has been President things have deteriorated for most Black Americans. That should be a sure formula for the most pronounced backlash blacklash if you prefer that Obama should be facing.
But that is not the case at all as The Times and others report. Obama’s support in the Black community is rock solid. And there is no threat of that changing under any circumstances that can be imagined in this universe.
So what incentive is that for President Obama to move off the middle of the road and stand for something? None whatsoever.
This is a Dream scenario for Obama. All he has to do is flash his Black skin and his Democratic Party card. Too bad African Americans and Occupy Wall Street don’t get it as obvious as it is.
Barack Obama and family are part of the 1%. Or as I have argued repeatedly for the idea of the 1% to have any useful meaning at all it must have a far more embracing definition than ONLY including precisely the 1% of Americans with the largest aggregate income. The 1% is a state of mind and a view of some toward the rest of us the 99% if it is to have any value.
In this world, the 1% are those who see themselves as members of a privileged class who deserve every last dollar and benefit they can grab from society and the rest of us. A view that they have earned everything they have with their hard work rather than “buying” the system which they have and the rest of us should be happy they are pulling so much of the load. And that sure is a load of …
That it is their success that is producing jobs and security for the rest of us (except we don’t have it) because they are so “generous” toward us and that it is their too high taxes that are carrying the burden for the rest of us. God bless the rich and the powerful. We all get the benefits of a plantation society.
It’s a crock, but they get away with it because the rest of us let them by limiting our disappointment and abuse to vague disillusionment without any specific or realistic alternatives as represented (sic) so “perfectly” by both Occupy Wall Street and the African American community.
So where does President Obama fit into this equation what makes him a member of the 1%? Glad you asked. Obama pays Lip Service to the very same free floating anxieties among the 99% of us while proposing the most innocuous and inconsequential changes imaginable that will have virtually no impact on the Status Quo.
That makes him a member of the 1% combined with his own elite
background and certain prospects once his time as President is over he will be fully embraced by the richest and most powerful without
The White House standing in the way of just how well they will embrace and “reward” Barack and Michelle for their service to the 1% in maintaining their privileges while in The White House.
One African American in The New York Times article pledged his undying support for Obama comparing Obama and without any hint of irony to how he loved The Cosby Show after enduring earlier TV series like Sanford and Son.
In fact The Cosby Show was so popular because it appealed to White audiences offering a sanitized colorless view of the “typical” Black American family as indistinguishable from well off White families. And the advertisers came flocking!!
In reality, the Huxtables represented a very tiny fraction of the real African American community that existed then and now. A sanitized version. The bigger irony is that the real Obama Presidency could just as well be a TV show in which Bill Cosby, aka Heathcliff Huxtable, runs for President and is elected. Yes as the African American in the Times article says in so many words Barack Obama is the spitting image of Cliff Huxtable.
Chew on this as an alternative.
The African American community could and would if we were fortunate enough to live in some parallel universe one that makes sense Black America is positioned to hold Obama’s feet to the fire.
In this parallel universe in fact, they would team up with the equally clueless Occupy Wall Street crowd to do so ….
They would make a series of demands on Obama to support his reelection OR otherwise withhold that support and take much of the 99% of us with them. What kinds of demands. Take a look.
1) Support for less taxes for the middle class and the poor.
2) Support for MORE taxes for the rich for all they benefit.
3) Significantly reduced military spending.
4) More spending for programs that benefit 99% of Americans.
5) Reducing the size of the bloated U.S. “intelligence” network and stop calling it the WAR on terrorism to justify wasting billions of our tax dollars each year.
6) The U.S. should stop acting like a colonialist power around the world and wasting American lives and resources for nothing.
7) Increased support for clean air and water and the health of our
environment for right now and for our future.
8) Reversing increasing inequality in the U.S.
9) An end to brutalizing immigrants.
10) Stop government from being controlled by the moneyed class.
Now there is the start of an agenda to either make it worth supporting Obama for re-election and if he will not embrace it ditching him in favor of another Democratic Party candidate for President who will represent the 99% of us.
Rather, in this American “universe” where we live, we are reduced to supporting the candidate of “our” party for re-election no matter how reckless he is or how much he has betrayed or lied to us.
It’s not about what is good for the majority of Americans or supporting a candidate worthy of our support or demanding accountability. Rather it is a perverted popularity contest in which re-electing the incumbent becomes the so called imperative we all bow to for no good reason and without benefit.
So what do we get? More of the same – NO real change and continuing deterioration for most Americans, most of all African Americans and those Occupying Wall Street across the nation, while African Americans, Occupy Wall Street and too, too many other Americans line up at The White House for an addictive dose of “poisoned” Presidential Kool-Aid.
Drink up America!
Just don’t expect to get filled up!! All you will get is bloated and a bad hang over from all the artificial sweeteners.
Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
