I have grown tired of the idle support of Barack Obama by people on this site. I was recently accused of being a racist by one of the least palatable kneejerk leftinesses here, centerfielddj. Here is what he or she said regarding my ongoing opposition to Obama’s foreign and domestic policies and my support of the only national politician with any chance whatsoever to ascend to a position where he can effectively oppose those policies, Rand Paul.
Obama is “hustling us”. Obama is “arrogant.” All the derisive photos of Obama, targeted toward specific racial stereotypes. We know what you’re saying, Arthur.
All of your game playing around the Civil Rights Act is heavy racial code, and is incredibly disrespectful.
—snip—
I expect nothing more from dogwhistle-addicted kneejerks like this, but I do want to establish the basis for my opposition just in case someone here actually listens to this kind of drivel.
I am going to quote from a recent Counterpunch article by Norman Pollack that states many of my objections to Obama much better than I will ever be able to do so. Go read it is its entirety if you care at all about what is really happening in this country.
The Privatization of Repression-Blackwater’s Death Machine
Neoliberal technofascism is no less bloody than the old fascism; it just hides its dirty work better.
Read on.
JULY 07, 2014
The Privatization of Repression
BLACKWATER’S DEATH MACHINE
by Norman PollackObama is excellent at multitasking in navigating the waters of international politics, seeking to construct a political-structural framework of American global hegemony, formally (for who knows the full extent of the forces standing behind him?) presiding over a Juggernaut of irresponsible power in which the US seemingly thwarted in one theater of operations then springs up in another. Obama the jumping jack, but with malice aforethought, ever moving forward through intervention, carefully-delineated war (at least that is the claim), regime change, drone assassination, CIA-JSOC joint-paramilitary operations, alliance systems to rationalize the internationalization of American power (as with NATO and “friends and allies”) often bilaterally arranged, affording joint-exercises and lucrative arms sales, and not least, the subject of this article, the use of PRIVATE ARMIES, which have an increasingly important role as occupation forces and for guarding US interests, facilities, and personnel worldwide.
By multitasking, I mean proving oneself at being adept in the service of ruling groups and the needs and objectives of the political economy, from establishing beachheads for business (commercial-financial penetration) to presenting a counterrevolutionary front onto the world on behalf of the security of US and global capitalism, wrapped in the protective shell of military omnipotence. This entails awareness of multiple pressure points, either to be worked with or destroyed, a geopolitical landscape itself forever in motion, so that, if not Russia, then China, if not China, then Iraq and Afghanistan, etc., etc., which is entirely befitting one who presides over US-defined processes of industrial and trade expansion within a world system unwilling to accept, because of its increasingly multipolar structure, American supervision. This still sporadic, but now more and more resolute, resistance to unconditional US supremacy in all that affects the world system, conforming in power-terms to the realities of structural change occurring over the last several decades, places emphasis on FORCE in maintaining its suzerainty. Diplomacy be damned (except as camouflaged in liberal rhetoric to cover the relentless application of power), humanitarianism now being the spearhead for intervention and the expansion of spheres of influence.
This is not to suggest Obama’s expertise in international politics and economics; he has a pedestrian mind (run-of-the-mill intelligence, impressionable when confronted by financial and military arcanum), nimble mental processes (except becoming congealed when his considerable defense-mechanisms go up), antennae out for what sells, personally ingratiates, or aligns with instruments of power, genial on the surface, harboring desires for recognition based on an imagined sense of hurt and deprivation which gives license for belligerence, power, cruelty in national and world affairs. Consider his engagement with drone assassination, the vaporization of fellow human beings thousands of miles away, or the impoverishment and growing underclass his actions support, again, fellow human beings, as policy further enriches the already very wealthy. His psychological attachment to power brings him closer to financial, military, and intelligence elites, leading to an aggressive role in the massive surveillance of the American people, contrariwise, the near-absolute secrecy of government, in which transparency per se is feared as a form of terrorism (witness the fulsome use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers).
I repeat:
“…a pedestrian mind (run-of-the-mill intelligence, impressionable when confronted by financial and military arcanum), nimble mental processes (except becoming congealed when his considerable defense-mechanisms go up), antennae out for what sells, personally ingratiates, or aligns with instruments of power, genial on the surface, harboring desires for recognition based on an imagined sense of hurt and deprivation which gives license for belligerence, power, cruelty in national and world affairs.”
“His psychological attachment to power brings him closer to financial, military, and intelligence elites, leading to an aggressive role in the massive surveillance of the American people, contrariwise, the near-absolute secrecy of government, in which transparency per se is feared as a form of terrorism (witness the fulsome use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers).”
That just about pins it regarding Mr. Obama, as far as I can see.
As for the results of his tenure as President? Here they are in all of their bloody glory.
To know Obama is to understand better the relationship between the government and Blackwater, which is a particularly vicious form of private army, free-wheeling, trigger-happy, cloaked in patriotism, and demanding and receiving for itself complete immunity for the crimes it commits. These, however, are not crimes in ordinary parlance, because sanctioned by, and done in the name of, the government, which shares its ideology of force, righteousness, superiority. Mowing down the innocent, along with engaging in promiscuity on the government’s time, both revealed by investigators, are o.k., so long as counterterrorism can be a screen by which to hide behind. Under Obama’s umbrella, Blackwater was safe because deemed essential–and because there was a tinge of fear about going against it. When strength for questionable purposes is asked, one turns to the strongest, which follows an authoritarian mindset characteristic of the society.
Damage control is one area of his expertise bound to arise, given his record of war, drone assassination, regime change, and now, the use of private contractors, who are accorded (as are the military), through the status-of-forces agreements imposed where American intervention occurs, diplomatic immunity from punishment for the commission of crimes in the assigned country. Getting away with murder is both figurative and literal. A notorious case, in September 2007, occurred when Blackwater trucks entered a busy Baghdad traffic circle and, in a hurry and given prior immunity for their actions, simply cleared the way through spraying the area with machine-gun fire and killing 17 Iraqis. The “Ugly American” of the 1950s was Adonis compared with these mercenaries, themselves well-connected both with right-wing support in Congress and the Executive, and doing guard duty at foreign embassies as well as working with the CIA in conducting armed drone missions of assassination.
A private army, its usage is interrelated with the militarism-driven public policy that has shaped the confrontational posture toward Russia and China, and the broader context of counterrevolution where “Enemies” become defined and visited upon by all the majesty of military might. Proceed with impunity is the watchword for American forces, whether at an Iraqi traffic circle, a Pakistan or Yemen funeral procession (by definition bad guys because at the burial of the Bad Guy we just vaporized via a drone strike), or the numerous black-hole prisons around the globe recruited through rendition. Civilian or military, it makes little difference: impunity bears the imprimatur of Exceptionalism.
—snip—
Obama is the perfect dramatis personae in microcosm of one who thrives on a legal order to camouflage his illegal acts–which of course cannot be judged illegal because, as in massive surveillance he has a dummy court, the FISA Court, to back him up, and in drone assassination, the presumably authoritative memos of DOJ and the Office of Legal Counsel. So, too, Blackwater, with pick-and-choose justifications from the myriad operations of government and stretched-out interpretations of Congress. Obama did not invent the System, its practices, or its rationales, but neither did he qualify or oppose their workings. To blame Bush for being on the ground floor when Blackwater members exploded in Bagdhad, and stop there, begs the question of what Obama did or didn’t do for six going on seven years after as the CRIME festered in at least the eyes of the victims’ families and Iraqis in general, if not a world encouraged to forget and/or bought off to look the other way. Obama is USG in fact as well as in symbol, and, under his watch, there is a matter of accountability for repression in continuous effect, whatever its origins. One wonders how many other acts of legitimated violence occurred and still occur during his reign, by Blackwater, CIA-JSOC operations, or the use of embargoes to bring civilian populations to their knees?
—snip—
Obama’s rule-of-thumb, never admit wrongdoing, is similar in spirit and procedure to the Israelis, i.e., never prosecute one of your own, no matter how heinous the crime. For one, using live ammunition to shoot down children throwing stones, for the other, clearing intersections with machine-gun fire, either from impatience for traffic delay or cold-blooded enjoyment of shooting down civilians. It is difficult to determine who learns from whom, Americans learning from Israelis, or Israelis, from Americans. Occurrences of “collateral damage” are so numerous as not to draw attention, much less, if attention is drawn, to call for punishment, the victim’s alleged inferiority often assumed.
—snip—
Who are the true psychopaths, the ones doing the shootings, those who hire them–in the name of the people–to do the shootings, the American people complicit in the enterprise of global hegemony–or all three, and the framework for legitimating war, intervention, murder, social and economic pillage, in our name?
My New York Times Comment on the Apuzzo article, same date, follows:
The shootings occurred in Sept. 2007. Why nearly seven years delay? Blackwater is pure American, a privatization of mercenaries, murder, and intervention. The State Dept. in all this time has done nothing and probably still keeps Blackwater on the payroll (under its new corporate name and logo). Is it any wonder the US is increasingly despised in the world? Private armies with license to kill, quite a testimony to American democracy.
With the FBI handling details, one can suppose a whitewash. Habeas corpus rights denied to detainees previews the US judicial system (as does the FISA Court), so how expect justice to be done? Clearing that intersection with machine guns was reported at the time as Blackwater impatience to get through a crowded area. Allowed for seven years to remain out of sight speaks volumes about the status of forces agreement, the cynicism of intervention, and yes, the cover-up of US criminal activity.
I’m sorry Moniem and fellow Iraqis participate in this farce. They are hoodwinked. There will be no justice, merely damage control. And what of countless other unjustified killings, which will not even see the semblance of prosecution? Blackwater on one hand, Obama, with his hit list and targeted assassination on the other, and in between, CIA-JSOC paramilitary operations geared to regime change, together constitute the package of Obama’s liberal humanitarianism, bringing democracy to the ignorant at gunpoint.
Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.
Who are the true psychopaths?
The answer is blowing in the wind, my friends.
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Bet on it.
And the wind is headed our way.
Bet on that as well.
Ready for a domestic Blackwater? No? Better get ready, because it’s already here.
The karmic debt of relatively recent U.S. crimes has been building since at least the Korean War and it is now reaching critical mass. Only a real change at the top will fend off the inevitable payback. What goes around, comes around…street wisdom regarding karma.
WTFU, and…have a nice day.
Later…
AG
Do your worst, leftiness scum. If that’s the best you can do, we have nothing to fear from you.
Later…
AG
So, this is a call-out diary, but it’s supposed to make a case as to why Rand Paul is the greatest thing since fried Twinkies, but then there is this huge cut-and-paste of some op-ed by Norman Pollack, followed by some more of your rambling and chickens. So help us all out here: is Norman Pollack making the case that Rand Paul is the true lord and savior? What’s the deal? There is no coherence here. “Obama bad, Rand Paul good” may play well with the Tea Party crowd, but it’s not cutting it with this particular audience. Can you make your case in a way that genuinely connects with the concerns of this particular audience, without the schoolyard taunts, without the half-baked graphics, without deflecting and going off-topic whenever challenged? Or are you so blinded by your hatred of Obama that you cannot manage to do so?
Kneejerk as usual, D.D.
It is neither a call-out, a “diary” nor is it meant to make any kind of case for Rand Paul. What I write in my own diary would mystify you to the point of total incomprehension, bet on it. This is a post, not a diary despite what it is labelled on this site. “Diary” is just a leftover term from the remains of what little is left of last decade’s dKos revenants.
It is a condemnation of Obama’s two terms in office and a further condemnation of neoliberalism in general and also of those who support it. Go support Scrooge McDuck for all I care, but please, please try to see through all of the media-created smoke and mirrors that have surrounded the last 24 years of UniParty presidencies…make that 28 including Butch I….years that have created the sinkhole into which the U.S. is presently sinking.
Or not.
As you please.
I lay it down; you can either pick it up or pick your nose. I don’t much care.
WTFU.
AG
Well, you’ve managed to mystify probably the entirety of your audience, but not in a good way. So it goes.
“I lay it down; you can either pick it up or pick your nose. I don’t much care.
“WTFU.”
Very coherent.
We know from reading Rand Paul’s statements re. foreign policies, not just the carefully snipped ones Arthur provides, that a Rand Presidency would please neither him nor Pollack on the military-industrial complex issues which this post discusses.
Why is AG bringing us quotes from Pollack, anyway? Hasn’t Rand said a thing about this appalling travesty of justice? Senator Paul hasn’t called for jail terms for Blackwater personnel and executives, and excoriated the President for his Administration’s failure to act? He hasn’t authored a Bill meant to embarrass the President or force his hand on this issue?
Oh.
Then what’s this all about then?
Perhaps this post is offered in a very bad-faith way; perhaps it is meant to enable the right-wing movement. That would make it identical to every post Arthur has made here for quite a while now.
“Perhaps.”
Anbd then another “”Perhaps.”
A variation on the old “When did you stop beating your wife” routine.
As I wrote above:
Lovely.
Now I’m a right-wing troll, right? I disagree with almost everything that Obama has done during his trip to PermaGov heaven, so I must be a racist and a right-winger in disguise.
Thank you.
You condemn yourself with every post.
AG
You’re not in disguise anymore. You’re a Rand Paul supporter. The policies the Paul movement favors are almost entirely far, far right-wing, and are incompatible with liberal governance. Your “one revolution’s as good as another” claim is laughably false.
I’ve brought up plenty of specific information in my responses to you, and have made attempts to make the discussions less personal. Your absolute determination to not engage a respectful dialogue on these policy issues, but instead to plow forward with your insult-filled monologues, has shown you to be someone unwilling to entering into online discussions which are meant to persuade. Yet you rage on with your WTFU nonsense. At a certain point, it becomes necessary to question your intentions here.
Why hang out at the Frog Pond if you hate Frog Ponders? Your contempt for us jumps off the screen.
The record of the 2009-10 Congress was a proud one for better governance. No, we did not get magical ponies and fairy dust. Yes, I quarrel with some of the policies of the Administration and some of Obama’s rhetoric. But many of his policies are very good, and his rhetoric has taken a sharp left turn this year.
The fantastical storylines you paint of our President’s pure evilness are far removed from reality. All the things Obama does and says are worse than bad, they’re malevolent, and Paul policies which are not just bad, but very bad, are dismissed with a quick “they’re not perfect,” not to be spoken of again.
And if you don’t want your intentions to be questioned, don’t use very specific racially coded language and don’t play the same divisive word games the most immoral Republican campaign consultants dreamt up. You may have quarreled with Bush, but you didn’t encourage Americans to discover that Bush was “hustling us”. And your desire to give Rand Paul full cover with his “I deplore racism, but private business owners should be allowed to viciously discriminate” looks highly suspicious from here.
So, yeah, you’ve become a right-wing troll. I encourage you to think about what you’re doing here.
What bullshit.
“…many of [Obama’s] policies are very good,” eh?
Which ones? On the evidence of how well they have worked, of course. You cannot isolate “policies” from results.
Which ones?
Read my latest post for more on this.
Much more.
Signed, Sealed and Delivered. More on the UniParty from Counterpunch
Further…”hustler” as a racially specific word?
Where do you fucking live, centerfielddj? Somewhere very white, I’m guessing.
Sigh.
You’ve been watching too many bad movies and too much TV… places where the word “hustler” is indeed applied only to lowlife black criminals. You been tranced. Wake the fuck up. The mostly white .01% are the greatest hustlers ever to appear on the face of this good green earth, in my view. Certainly the most successful. On the evidence.
I see no racially specific terms here. You do, apparently. Physician, heal thyself.
Seen the movie?
The Hustler. 1961. Check it out. Paul Newman as the eponymous “hustler.” What? You thought he played it in blackface? You thought it had an all-black cast?
Oh.
I get it now.
You’ve got some serious racial problems of your own if you think that using the term “hustler” is a racial slur. It’s a personal slur, I’ll grant you that. At least it is the way I use it. I didn’t use it on Bush II because I don’t think that is is intelligent enough to be a hustler. Amoral enough, but not smart enough. That was the job of Cheney and Rove. Butch was just a good-looking front man.
My “desire to give Rand Paul full cover with his ‘I deplore racism, but private business owners should be allowed to viciously [your word, certainly not his] discriminate’ ” looks highly suspicious from your point of view? That’s because you are full of hate for a certain brand of white people too, I fear. You know…those (often southernish and/or ruralish) troglodytes who think the U.S. has gone off the rails because Big Government has gotten so far away from the people that it no longer relates to individual human needs.
Once again, here is what Rand Paul said on this Civil Rights subject:
And:
He has a philosophical quarrel with abridging individual people’s rights to choose what they say and do. He believes that private institutions owned by private people should be free to choose their attitudes and actions even if we do not agree with that choice. He also believes in the right to free speech, which is intimately connected with that right to choose. If I owned a store or restaurant I personally would refuse to serve known gangbangers, drug addicts or pushers, mafiosi and far-right, open carry gun nuts. Is that attitude a crime? If it is not, then there we jolly well are, aren’t we. If I truly meant to enforce that attitude, I would certainly need to be well-armed myself. Against the people I was barring from my establishment and quite possibly against the current iteration of the Feds if someone claimed that I was discriminating against people of color or Italians because most gangbangers and mafiosi are indeed people of color or Italian. The NRA ain’t all wrong. So it goes.
He also said:
Can’t get much plainer than that, right?
End of story. I’ve got other things to do than play your word games.
Later…
AG
The problem is: Paul’s “philosophical” quarrel would have had profoundly negative implications in practice for those who have been discriminated against by those private businesses. Thankfully, he was not in a position to shape the Civil Rights Act. It would have been far weaker had he been able to have his way. And even if he avows to be not racist individually, the fact that he would not stand in the way of private sector institutional discrimination is a bit disconcerting. To tackle institutional racism (or sexism, etc.), it requires not just preventing the public sector from engaging in it, but also the private sector. In fact, that may be more urgent given your hero’s (and the Tea Party’s) apparent fetish for privatizing public services. Real people are harmed when they are systematically barred from accessing the services of private businesses based on race/ethnicity, etc. That’s not a philosophical consideration. That’s a practical reality.
Arthur, you’re not a square. You know that some people use “hustle” as a pejorative against African-Americans. Frog Ponders certainly know it.
But you want the benefit of the doubt on that, and so much else, here. The respect you claim as your due would be easier to provide if you weren’t part of the Paul movement.
Sure, Ron and Rand have made their highbrow statements which abhor racism. In response, I ask you to respond to this question: why does the Rand movement attract so many racists? Why did the Stormfront/KKK crowd gravitate to Ron and Rand’s recent Presidential and Senate campaigns?
http://www.bilerico.com/2012/01/ron_paul_endorsed_by_former_kkk_leader.php
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/why-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters-didnt-hurt-him-
in-texas/250427/
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rand-pauls-base-neo-nazis-white-supremacist
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/09/rand_pauls_team_has_another_white_supremacist/
No other national politicians have as many unreconstructed white supremacists attached to them.
Sorry. I never travel in those circles nor do I spend any time whatsoever reading media like that. You do, apparently. So it goes. Frog ponders know that? Choose your friends wisely.
AG
P.S. I am “not a ‘square?” ” In what decade do you live? Lord!!! Are you hep to the jive, too? Your whole worldview appears to be rooted somewhere in the ’50s. Unbelievable. See you later, alligator.
Much later.
Like around 2014.
WTFU.
P.P.S. Those links…you are as gullible as the far-righters that you so detest. Two sides of the same coin. David Frum!!!??? Get real.
Frum would oppose on every possible level anybody who does not toe the pro-Israel/AIPAC line. That’s his job. He’s an Axis Of Evil hustler. The other leftiness sheets to which you link are just as biased as are say Fox News and The Wall Street Journal only in the other direction. That is the hustle, centerfielddj. Divide and conquer from the middle. Two wrongs don’t make a right, they just make a dominant center that can then do whatever it pleases as the patsies argue among themselves over “who’s right.” And here we are. Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with the PermaGov. Opt out. You be bettah off not believing either side. Bet on it.
You’ve got nothing but name-calling here which attempts to distract from one of the biggest problems your movement has. I’m surprised that you want to exercise a defense against well-documented facts here- you sure you want to do this?
David Frum is only one commenter in one of these links. What do you have to say about David Duke? Don Black? Chris Hightower? Jack Hunter? KKK, Stormfront, League of the South? The Ron Paul Political Report?
I believe nothing that is reported in the media that I sense is in any way politically motivated. None of it. All I have to go on…all any of us have, really…is my own life experience. I do not hear huge amounts of glitz or lies from the Pauls. I do hear those things from the mainstream representatives of the UniParty on both sides of the mythical aisle. I agree with a great deal of what the Pauls are saying. All the “he said, she said” malarky that passes for news in this culture is just advertising. Infotainment. Sports on a less real level. The partisan onlookers are no better than sports fans. They root for their team come hell or high water. He said!!!
Fox News is full of shit, MSNBC is full of shit; the major centrist networks are full of shit; the NY Times and Washingtoon Post are full of shit and so are the Wall Street Journal and Bloombergian News.
You are just another rooter as far as I am concerned.
Have fun.
The game’s almost over anyway.
Ratpublicans.
DemocRats.
Just more coprporate-managed advertising.
Branding.
As exciting as mud wrestling.
Both beers suck.
Branding sucks.
WTFU.
Only a third force can help us now.
Let us pray.
AG
P.S. I know you will come back with some more third-hand, partisan “news.” Don’t bother. We have not been told the truth about politics in this country since at least the JFK assassination. 50 years later and you are still swallowing the hype? Unbelievable.
“I have grown tired of the idle support of Barack Obama by people on this site”
For sure. And Obama is worse than Bush: He said he would stop the war crimes but instead increased them.
Oh yes, and executing citizens without charges nor trial nor conviction for crime. That is the end of the republic right there.
Enough said, I should think.
–Gaianne
Yoiu qwrite:
Yeah. I used to think that too.
No more.
Too bad. It would be so easy if only they could manage to kick their media jones. If only they could stop suspending their own natural disbelief in bullshit.
But they cannot.
So it goes.
Straight down the sinkhole, I fear.
Straight down the sinkhole, from both the left and right sides of the outhouse.
Most Americans no longer have the brains that God gave them. They have traded them in for infotainment nodules.
So it goes.
AG
By all means, keep posting!
–Gaianne
Thank you.
I do keep trying.
AG