It's easy to dismiss the new Republican talking points about Obama being a Socialist as the last gasp rantings of a failed party, but is that all that's going on in these last days? It's similarly easy to grimace at their continuing attempts to spread false alarms about vote fraud and questions suggesting that Obama's contributions are also suspicious, but is this something more sinister than we can see over the glee of our impending electoral victory.
Sure the Republican trash talkers that are being recycled, DeLay, Armey, Guiliani, Rove come across to us as the idiot shills they are, but are we too innocently dismissing the intentions of the monied powers behind them, the same one's who have been behind the excesses of Bush/Cheney? Are we to imagine that the powers that have been manipulating our national existence for over fifty years will just step gentlemanly out of the way, or should we already be on alert for the battle yet to come?
In the past few weeks, the dying GOP and their delusional spokesmen, Palin and McCain, have taken every opportunity to portray Obama as a socialist and a terrorist, one who "hates" our Constitution, and one whose election should be viewed as illegitimate. To those of us who have read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and to those of us who remember what Nixon and Kissinger did to that democratically elected socialist leader in Chile, Salvador Allende, there should be sufficient cause for, if not alarm, at least a heightened sense of awareness to the potential for destabilization of our government in the years ahead!
True, Salvador Allende was an announced socialist and Barack Obama isn't even remotely one, but this a'int Chile either and the stakes couldn't be higher for our ruling class. Allende's Chilean reform movement was sabatoged by Nixon and Kissinger from day one. The Generals led by Pinochet were trained and supported by our C.I.A. This isn't speculation, but as Colin Powell would say, indisputable fact! The country soon became the lavoratory for Milton Freidman's Shock Doctrine. Can it Happen here?
All we need is the bleatings of a defeated right-wing party about illegitimate elections and the sabatoge of Obama will start. He will be facing enormously difficult economic problems and you can be sure that from day one the GOP remnants will be critical of every "socialist" solution Obama will offer. Add to that the inevitable withdrawal from Iraq and the cries of treason and shame and McCarthyist reaction will be all over the airwaves. No one knows now what we face and what these front-men for the real vested economic powers will attempt to stop true change in this country.
Obama and we, his supporters, may, and hopefully, will prevail, but we should not be laughing at these ugly claims of illegitimacy and socialism. We should be calling them on this and not dismissing it as if we've already prevailed. Anyone who knows the devious history of our nation in the past fifty years should already be on high alert for the battle to come!