>> Some of the good ways that the system of dominance could be undermined: There may be democratic and socialist radical change in the world that would lead to more and regions withdrawing from the U.S. imperial project. Or we in the United States can oppose our imperial institutions and undermine them through mobilization against them. That means mobilization against who-ever occupies the office of president. <<
Jerry ________ I don't believe Obama is a sleeper agent on th side of the proletariat. Or the image of the second coming of Christ. That he is a historical marker is to obvious to ignore. Obama is the first black President. That is what he has done that is the historical marker. I voted for him and remained convinced I voted on the progressive side of American history. Obama became a lightening rod for change aspirations for a complex of reasons, of which him being black is actually not the most important. But then again, him being black is really important. It is not important in the sense that Alan Keyes could not have won nomination in the Republican Party, much less President. Al Sharption could have not won the Democratic nomination much less President. Colin Powell could not have won President, or the Republican Party nomination. Jesse Jackson Sr. or Jr., could have not won the party's nomination for President, much less President. I sensed late in the game that Obama could and would win. In fact something was written on Pen-L about his speech in 2004. What was sensed was the death of the black leader, as black leader. Some of us have been trying to get our hands on this thing that is real American history. Obama is not a black leader and this is not a bad thing. On the most basic level he is not angry or suffer the wound of a thousand cuts from Jim Crow. A whole generation in American knows nothing of Jim Crow. Racism has not vanished from the landscape, but Jim Crow has. Mr. Crow is dead. Uncle Tom is dead. The black Leader as black leader is dead. A new configuration of our history has opened up and we can shape it in the flesh. This the stuff communist are born for. Communism. There, I said it again. For me the issue was not "is Obama a representative of capital?" Nor was I driven by a lesser of two evils fear. Obama is a juncture in our history for very complex reasons. One of them was pointed out as the reemergence of imperial rivalry. Another is international considerations and realigning American imperial policy. I have every intension of closing following his administrations actions in regard to the "Palestinian Factor" in the Middle East and relations with the state of Israel. A decisive shift away from support of the Israeli state would indicate not a change of heart of American imperialism, but common sense. Perhaps this will be the issue that brings Obama and Hillary to antagonism. Reforming our relations with Cuba makes basic common sense. Our government historical approach to continental African is in need of total over haul for common sense reasons. Not a change in the heart of imperialism but realignment as great as the policy change from direct colonialism to neo colonialism to financial entrapment by finance capital, no matter who amongst the former colonials command the power of the state. Chavez, who I deeply respect, is no threat to American imperialism on any level. He is used as an ideological target. Domestic and international policy is in shift. Exactly what will the Obama administration do? I don't know. Victory to the workers in their current struggle, no matter who is in office, is an approach and attitude bordering on the sacred. At the end of the day, the power of capital has to be overthrown, dismantled and the country reconstructed. Today is not the end of the day and I do not advocate not working toward the end of the day. Today is the beginning hours of the 4th day of Obama's administration and already I am not happy. I am happy we crossed a historical juncture, but I still am not emancipated. Proletarians cannot emancipate themselves until there is nothing left in the social struggle except their self emancipation. It took a long time to understand this. I want to see folks go to jail, who have been charged with and convicted of war crimes, beginning with George W. I want people in jail for stealing more than 200 million in so-called reconstruction funds earmarked for Iraq. I want the people in jail that looted the libraries and museums of Iraq, during the early hours of our armies military penetration of Baghdad. I wanted all ancient artifacts and art returned to their country of origin. There is a laundry list of wants, concessions, that are possible, because of the alignment of social forces in this country and the need for a shift in state policy. Not a repeat of the so-called Roosevelt Coalition, but a militant fight for the possible. This matter over NSA spying on American journalists and the outrage being generated means a Freedom of Information II is possible. The initial Freedom of Information Act was the product of the death of the rat fink Hoover. Many of my most personal friends and I were able to get our files. My point is that I did not understand what made the first Freedom of Information possible, until years later. There was a profound breach within the ranks of the highest levels of the bourgeois political establishment. Senators and workers within government bureaucracy was spied on by Hoover, and they wanted this information out of the hands of the state. Breaches, shifts in policy and what generates such shifts is a little bit easier for me to see nowadays. American imperialism needs to reform its relations with all the major states and not so major states of the world, without changing the property relations. This requires a political reordering domestically. Obama understood this and slip in between a complex of breaches and shifts. If only communists could master this art of the possible, and tone down the thick ideology. Americans will buy economic communism. They will not buy what has been ideological communism. The Obama campaign began transforming America and introduced some powerful organizing technique. Yet, far to often many of us argue over whether or not the campaign infrastructure was a real organization. The basis of his campaign was working class deeply rooted in our middle class. But that is how social processes evolve, or at least begin in America. The Civil Rights movement was not very different in this regard. The period of the late 1960s and 1970's found many middle class whites, driven my moral outrage, to join and create the various grouping on the left. The problem back then was that the Anglo middle class fighters (petty bourgeois, if you will) could not be united with the black workers. This was a historical alignment that I only vaguely understand back then. My point is the striving to catch up with our history because Obama caught most of the left and Marxists, with our brilliant dialectic, flatfooted. Iowa did not ring the bell for us, or rather me. Why? My own narrow mindedness. I expect nothing from Obama's administration but more pain. Different pain, but more. He has already done what he was drafted to do as a living embodiment of our history. Now, he just so happened to announce that he wanted the borders to Gaza opened so supplies could reach the people. Was this not the very issue that ignited this latest wave of war? The Israeli state interdiction of supplies and blocking borders? Who knows what can happen when shift is in play. Not a shift to a communist America and dismantling of all military basis. But shift. No, I do not advocate the road to revolution as the electoral path. 2 and 1/2 million showed up in Washington because the American people were mildly angry and glad to rid themselves of Bush W. Imagine 60 - 70 million in motion, demanding anything. Such a movement is the meaning of a mass uprising. Not a "riot" but a mass uprising American style. Obama is a juncture. WL. **************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
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