is this from Julio or Fred? anyway, I think it's quite possible that your expectations of an Obama presidency were much too high. He's saner, smarter, more sophisticated, more honest, etc. than Dubya, but such personal characteristics are only a drop in the political bucket. Whoever gets elected POTUS has to deal with the existing balance of class forces (and ethnic forces, gender forces, ...), along with the existing government bureaucracy. And given the fact that the Democratic Party lost its "progressive" backbone a long time ago, what can one expect?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Julio Huato<[email protected]> wrote: > More and more I suspect that the successful coup of sorts is taking place > not in Honduras (where the putschists are embattled) but in Washington > (where it is meeting no visible resistance, including from one of its > central targets, the current President. > > Maybe I'm paranoid -- well, of course I'm paranoid, I've lived in the USA > all my life, what else coud I be -- but watch this space for further > developments. I wish I had voted for Zelaya, while not a revolutionary by > career choice,knows how to take a fundamentally principled stand and stick > with it in a flexible manner, but he wasn't on the ballot. I had to settle > for Cynthia McKinney, a tough fighter but totally out of the running.) > > We seem to be seeing a disintegration of the Obama administration. Maybe -- > MAYBE -- they will allow him out to give one of them inspiring speeches he > does so well, or maybe for SIGNIFICANT social events like the meeting with > the pig and the perfesser, with Biden around to prevent any spontaneous > "racism-in-reverse" in favor of the perfesser. But at this point, the Obama > presidency as a distinct period like the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, > Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush III presidencies, seems to be already over. > > Understanding the dangers we face in the situation taking shape on every > level including elementary democratic rights, is a very important challenge. > I assure the ultra-critics of Obama that grasping this is much more > difficult and much more important than "seeing through Obama" which is > radical child's play. > > One prediction I can stand on is my view that a Black person could only be > elected president of the United States in a situation of crisis. I forgot > the obvious corollary. This excludes the possibility that the first Black > President will have a normal presidency. And so it appears. > > >From the start of the Honduras crisis, Fidel and Chavez insisted that this > was a crisis and a struggle for the US government as well, and that it > represented an attack on the Obama presidency. I don't think the slightest > element of prettification of what Obama represents is needed to recognize > the truth of this. > > I'm a slow coach. It took me weeks to catch up with them Fidel and Chavez. > Hopefully others will get the message as well. > Fred Feldman > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Jim Devine / "All science would be superfluous if the form of appearance of things directly coincided with their essence." -- KM _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
