Many of us, at least us older fogeys who roam the virtual halls of Dkos, remember the Roadrunner cartoons, where the ever-resourceful but perennially unsuccessful Wiley Coyote would dream up wildly imaginative plans to catch the Roadrunner, only to fail miserably every time. There was always at least one time in every cartoon, where ole Wiley would race off the edge of a cliff, then hang in the air for a second or two and look down, before plunging into the abyss below.
Guess what, folks! Our economy done run off the cliff, and all this brouhaha over Obama's stimulus is but a drawn-out Wiley Coyote moment. The abyss is there, and we're about to take the plunge.
Most of the diaries I've been reading on the stimulus plan are focussed on the politics of it, and arguments over whether Obama has some "grand strategy" that he is following or not. It doesn't really matter whether there's some grand startegy or a series of improvised tactics; the real question is whether this massive mish-mash of same-old same old is gonna keep ole Wiley out of the abyss. According to Chris Hedges, the answer is most definitely no.
At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.
How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out.
I'm afraid I have to agree.
This is not a matter of "disillusionment" with Obama. I believe he is a good man who is trying his best to do the right thing; his best, however, will not be good enough. This country -- through laziness, stupidity, hubris, and incredibly self-centered exceptionalism -- has thrown itself off the cliff, and is now preparing to plunge towards oblivion in an ever-steep death spiral. Perhaps -- PERHAPS -- had a real establishment-shaking leader stepped forward for the past presidential election, we might have been able -- with huge sacrifice, and many hard decisions made -- to pull out of it. Obama is NOT that establishment-shaking leader; to his credit, he never pretended to be. To be frank, the POSSIBILITY of such a leader ever being elected was nil. The system is set up to exclude such individuals from the process.
Obama is a conventional politician with a gift for oratory whose ideas are alarmingly -- conventional. The stimulus plan is a thoroughly conventional response to a massively dangerous situation that requires a thoroughly unconventional response to succeed. Sheldon S. Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, states it thusly:
"The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged...This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium."
What is needed is structural change, systemic change, and Obama will never sponsor such change because he is fundamentally a product of the system. He would never have been elected president if he weren't.
History is littered with the carcasses of great nations whose lust for power exceeded their ability to wield it.
I suspect we shall presently join them.
I know, I'm not supposed to be cynical anymore. Obama will be different. Blah, blah, blah.
Show me.