A Year of Obama

We’ve been had.

Last December Americans were excited by the election of Barack Obama and optimistic about his eloquent promises of change.
Today they are writing report cards of his broken promises. Advocates for health care, banking and mortgage reform; women, minorities, and labor; civil liberties, the environment, and a just foreign policy are watching in disbelief as the man who promised positive social change aligns himself with Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex.

The Audacity of Hope

We want to love Obama. George Bush’s eight years of lies and
deceit left the American people bankrupt, homeless, spied on, and sick.
The only benefit of his policies was the backlash they created against
astronomic Wall Street paydays, the pitiful response to Hurricane
Katrina, the lives and money wasted in Iraq, and the unraveling of the
social safety net. As poverty rates soared, unions were dismantled, and
middle-class security evaporated, formerly apolitical citizens – even
registered Republicans – began to speak out.

Enter Barack Obama, offering desperately needed hope to those who had
lost it – along with jobs, homes, and retirement savings. Obama also
inspired millions of young voters who knocked on doors, dialed phones,
and raised unprecedented amounts in small donations. He lifted the
spirits of people whose despair had been growing since Ronald Reagan
began dismantling the New Deal. They believed in him and in the future,
and he rode the wave of their hope into the Presidency.

Chess or Checkers

During the first six months of Obama’s presidency his supporters
were forced to speculate on the reasons for his slow pace of change.
Many wondered why he surrounded himself with advisers from the Bush and
Clinton eras – many of them the same people who had orchestrated the
financial breakdown and war-mongering policies that predated his
inauguration. But we gave him the benefit of the doubt, and gave hope a
workout during that first period of backtracking.

What we didn’t know was that, in the White House, secret deals
were being struck with the colossal pharmaceutical companies to squash
the public option for health insurance; with the CEOs of the biggest
banks to deliver half a trillion taxpayer dollars for executive
bonuses; with arms manufacturers, mercenaries, and oil and
reconstruction companies to continue the flow of illicit cash for
Bush’s Endless War. Contracts were renewed with security giant
Blackwater despite their indictment for the mass murders of Iraqi
civilians.

The new administration continued Bush’s policies of covertly
wiretapping American citizens, opposing the exposure of government
wrongdoing, and using “extraordinary rendition” to send suspected
enemies overseas. The closing of Guantanamo has been delayed, and the
war in Afghanistan is escalating.

So what happened?     

Groomed for the Job

From its inception, America was built over ransacked Indian
villages and on the backs of slaves and immigrants. Class war has
pitted those who believe in the Constitution of the people against
those who believe in the right to amass and use great wealth to pervert
that same Constitution.

As the nation grew, American business grew with it, from
controlling domestic resources and profits to acquiring worldwide
dominance. Fruit exporters moved into South America; sugar interests
took control of Caribbean islands. American companies vied with
Europeans to exploit and control a weak China, annexing Hawaii, Samoa,
and the Philippines in the process. The combustion engine made oil the
most valuable commodity of all, and for more than a century American
and European nations have struggled to control the reserves – wherever
they are found.

And for two centuries American presidents, backed by the
military, have been at the forefront of promoting American business
interests, regardless of the needs of the common people. To the power
elite, that is the president’s job. Barack Obama, like his
predecessors, understood this before he even ran for office. Otherwise,
he would never have been elected.

Since Ronald Reagan, the first Hollywood president, every
successful candidate has been groomed to project image over substance.
Image control is simplified by control over the media, which has given
corporate America unimaginable power. The elite that controls America’s
economy evaluated the country’s disdain of the Bush Administration and
bet on Obama, helping him outspend John McCain almost two to one.

Obama spoke the soothing, optimistic words America wanted to
hear – while, behind closed doors, he soothed the men in the
three-piece suits. And as long as there was talk of change, the people
wanted to believe – despite the continuing theft of their taxes, homes,
social services, retirement pensions, and even the lives of their sons
and daughters at war.

But now, for how much longer?

With or Without Him

The president, of course, does not stand alone in this American
charade posing as democracy. Since the Democrats took control of
Congress three years ago, they have voted to continue funding illegal
wars, pay off the same Wall Street barons, and continue Bush policies
of unregulated capitalism and domestic surveillance. We should not be
surprised: most of our politicians rely on contributions from a
powerful economic elite whose goal is to maximize profits and to find
the right figureheads to help them do so.

In America, a coup is not necessary to establish absolute
control. Instead, a gradual bleeding of the American people, with
trillions of dollars given to banks “too big to fail” and trillions
more given to the military for an endless war on a vague enemy from no
specific country, insures that there will be nothing left for the
social programs and safety nets created to meet earlier crises. This
attack on the rights and needs of the common people was something we
hoped Barack Obama would challenge as vehemently as Roosevelt did. But
now we know this is a fight we will have to make without him.

In an open letter pleading with Obama to stop the escalation of
a needless and fruitless war in Afghanistan, filmmaker Michael Moore
asserted that with just one speech President Obama has turned a
multitude of young idealists who were the backbone of his campaign into
a new generation of disillusioned cynics. Let’s hope Mr. Moore is wrong
and that Mr. Obama’s betrayal of the American people only strengthens
our commitment to peace, justice, freedom, and the goodness of man.