Someone gave a proper order to a few very current events

Chris Floyd had the honor:

The uprising in Egypt on Tuesday is of infinitely greater importance than the goon show staged by the corporate-lackey-in-chief and the great mooing herd of cud-chewers in Congress the same night. For decades, the remarkably brutal — and rottenly stagnant — dictatorship in Egypt has been one of linchpins of Washington's never-ending effort to "project dominance" over the Middle East. If the Cairo regime falls to a popular revolution, it will send shock waves all through the world-spanning tentacles of the American Empire.

So, while Barack Obama exhorted Americans to suck it up and to firmly grab their bootstraps — "The future is ours to win." and "It [the future] has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle and meet the demands of a new age." — parts of the world were then forcing the American Eagle to retract his claws.

Blowback? Yes, indeed! Expected? Yes, at least by some. Welcomed? Yes, by many, for retrenchment of this kind is both inevitable and timely. It's inevitable because the United States cannot afford to engage forever in wars of conquest and pacification, especially since these will remain wars which it will never truly win. This incapacity can be explained by the fact that both global political and military power presuppose a globally significant economic power by the country that would be a world power. Yet having economic power of this magnitude is something which America can only watch dissipate while this economic power passes eastward from its hands to China and India's. It's timely because, for decades, America's global empire garroted America's modestly democratic institutions while it has also wasted the lives of millions of Americans and millions more of those targeted by Uncle Sam's juggernaut. Americans should never forget that the United States was the Rogue State in the world, one that was too powerful to resist by most of the Lilliputians who confronted it. Fortunately, successfully resisting the Rogue Power has since become a feasible goal for those willing to fight and die for their political project. This is their moment. This is America's descent to a condition of unexceptional existence.

As his speech neared its conclusion, Obama the myth-monger (on which, see this, this, this, this, this) exclaimed, "We do big things." Indeed, America has done many big things over the course of its history. In making this claim Obama clearly meant to convey to his audiences that he was hopeful about the future. Nevertheless, America will fail spectacularly simply because it does so many things in a very big way, as Floyd suggests in his conclusion:

Poor Barack. Not that long ago, he was taking the world stage in Cairo, with a speech that offered a "new start" in relations to the regions — empty words which have long since proved to have been just another part of the vicious deceptions currently being exposed by al Jazeera. Now Cairo is ablaze with the promise of a genuine new start, driven by the needs of ordinary people, not the greeds of the elite. More than ever, Obama looks like yesterday's man, abandoned by history as it sweeps forward, leaving him mired with the goons and the loons, fighting a rearguard action to save the pomps and privileges of a rotting empire.

This article was cross-posted at FireDogLake

Barack Obama — a neoliberal without restraints

Now that Barack Obama has provided Wall Street with the economic and political aid it craves, wrecked Health Care Reform for a generation or more, prosecuted two politically senseless and criminal wars, tipped the Supreme Court to the right, has the 2010 midterm elections the results of which he can use as shields when his deceptions prove too damaging to his persona — now that he has accomplished so much, he appears poised to ruin Social Security. His first trick in this game, the Cat Food Commission, failed to complete its mission. But Obama seems determined, and the Commission's failure only requires he use another tactic. The destruction of Social Security would be considered a decisive historical moment if it came to be, as Andrew Levine suggests: "The danger that the last nail is about to be driven into the New Deal's coffin is real and imminent."

Levine continues by stating a point that is obvious but often ignored:

Republicans may still be better than Democrats at engineering the tax system to redistribute wealth upwards. But Republicans can't touch the 'third rail' of American politics. Even with the vaunted "political capital" he acquired after the 2004 election, the first that he actually won, George Bush couldn't privatize (gut) Social Security. Clinton probably could have but for la Monica, and so can Obama, at least so long as the "folks" who routinely vote Democratic, the only people left who can block the Reaganite tide he is riding, continue to stand by their man.

We might hope that Obama faces strenuous opposition to his plan when it becomes publicly evident that he intends to wreck Social Security. Will he? Perhaps not. On the one hand, Obama would need to confront popular unrest before he trimmed his sails. On the other hand, he knows he can count on the Republicans for their votes on this matter and for more than that. Levine writes, that "Obama is counting on Tea Partiers and their representatives in Congress to scare those voters into line and to bring 'moderates' back into his fold. Perhaps they will." This is the "lesser evil argument" in action, revealing to be a mechanism which forces some to abandon their interests and others to follow the physically safe path.

Would it be surprising if Obama were to derive indirect political benefits from America's white terror? I think not! As Walter Karp remarked (Karp, 1993, p. 31) years back when he discussed state party politics:

It is not electoral competition which characterizes the relation between two state party organizations, but strict and pervasive collusion. That collusion does not necessarily require conspiratorial plotting in smoke-filled back rooms. It springs up automatically between two state party organizations by virtue of powerful bonds of common interest. Neither party organization could retain control of its party unless the two organizations were in collusion. As Senator Robert Lafollette rightly remarked in 1912: "Machine politics is always bipartisan." It is because it has to be.

An insight today even though the American political system is much different than it had been when Karp wrote these words (circa 1973).

This article was cross-posted to OpenSalon and FireDogLake

Let’s vote out the SOBs

We could do that, but such resistance today seems futile, according to Maureen Tkacik, of the New York Observer. She wrote:

"If you want to get some traffic on this one [the White House hiring Daley and Sperling]," a former senior House aide told The Observer, "make your angle 'Obama's Fixers to End the New Deal.' They are going to dismantle Social Security. I guarantee it. And he won't suffer any push-back. But Obama is the extremist here; he is the wing nut. There's been a total collapse of political power on the left. The left is not even at the table, and they don't even realize it. You can't blame the voters. In 2006 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts. In 2008 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts. And in 2010 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts."

Well, I am certain that some on the left are aware of their lack of political power. And for this situation the left in general cannot criticize the voters who voted for a national alternative that did not exist but for the 2008 Nader candidacy. Barack Obama may have fooled some Democrats or, perhaps, enabled them to fool themselves. But that was then. As of this moment, who but a political innocent, a yellow dog Democrat or a committed neoliberal would vote for him? No one would except for those savvy individuals who consider voting for the "lesser evil" Democrat to be an iron rule of political life.

Building large and well-organized social movements provides a path that can break the power of the legacy party duopoly, an outcome that would create political options for a left that effectively has none. This is the path principled leftist must take if they wish to become effective.

This article was cross-posted to FireDogLake and OpenSalon

A poll asks a grave question about the deficit and unbalanced budgets

Vanity Fair and 60 Minutes conducted the poll. The most interesting question of the lot is, "What would you do first to balance the budget?" While writing this post the tally of the response is:

75% — Increase taxes on the wealthy

16% — Cut defense spending

4% — Cut Medicare

4% — Cut Social Security

Obama and a lame duck Congress controlled by the Democratic Party just extended the Bush Tax Cuts. Significantly cutting defense spending is not on the agenda while Obama, his party and the incoming Republicans do intend to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Obamaland

A few caveats to consider before November

An earlier version of this article appeared on Firedoglake.

Might Barack Obama and the Democratic Party he leads feel more comfortable working with the Republican politicians who regularly and savagely oppose his programs? Do powerful Democrats and Republicans have common interests which draw them together? Might they have a common enemy? If the work of Walter Karp has any value today, if it provides the framework within which we may productively assess the politics of the moment, then we may wish to answer yes to each of these questions. They work together, have common interests and have a common enemy.

The common enemy of the two major parties: It is the citizens of the United States.

---

Years ago Walter Karp wrote:

Both the apologist and the Marxist agree in this, that the parties are political servants; of the people in the view of the former, of "economic power" in the view of the latter.

Such, in brief, is the prevailing doctrine about the political parties, minus the many qualifications called in to keep it plausible — the effects of "public apathy," of "straight-ticket voting" and the like. That doctrine whose essential principle is that parties are powerless rests entirely on the axiom that parties have but one principle of action: to win election victories at all costs. That has always been assumed in advance. What happens, however, if we do not assume it in advance, if we simply look at what political parties actually do? We will discover, quickly enough, that the realities of party politics and the prevailing doctrine about parties bear no resemblance whatever, that the reality and the doctrine are exactly opposite (p. 9).

Karp augmented his critique by asserting that:

The desire to win elections is not the basic purpose of the political parties, it is not their overriding motive and interest. For the leaders of political parties, trying to win and trying to lose elections are equally useful means to a quite different political end (p. 18).

He elaborates this point thusly:

Mutual noninterference in their respective party bastions is the reason both parties retain bastions at all. It is not electoral competition which characterizes the relation between two state party organizations, but strict and pervasive collusion. That collusion does not necessarily require conspiratorial plotting in smoke-filled back rooms. It springs up automatically between two state party organizations by virtue of powerful bonds of common interest. Neither party organization could retain control of its party unless the two party organizations were in collusion. As Senator Robert La Follette rightly remarked in 1912: "Machine politics is always bipartisan." It is because it has to be (p. 31).

Finally, most importantly and obviously, Karp pointed out that: "…the two party organizations actually form a single ruling oligarchy" (p. 33). If he is right about this, overt competition masks covert oligarchic cooperation, what, then, would the political end pursued by this oligarchical contraption be? One plausible answer: Together the Democrat and Republican Parties seek to remain the coherent and nearly unique source of electable political power in the United States today and, of course, tomorrow as well. Thus considered, they are the evil to which reformers want to provide an alternative.

What conclusions might we draw from this analysis given the oligarchical, collusive and exclusive nature of America's party system, the system's deep roots in the federal and state governments along with the counter-majoritarian features of America's political institutions? On the one hand, for instance, it follows that some electoral victories will be not at all wanted by the supposed winners of these elections (p. 41). On the other hand, it is clear that some electoral results will never be taken at face value by those who hold political power. Some elections are unwanted and denied by the powerful because they threaten entrenched political power, the two-party oligarchy. To my mind, Obama's 2008 triumph, an outcome that has already generated so much noise on the right, appears to be a victory of the latter kind.

We may consider it to be such because, as we know, Barack Obama appeared to the electorate as an agent of hope and change during his run for office. He not only ran as such, but he was elected by a comfortable margin to provide what amounts to a Thermidorian Reaction to the radical excesses of the Bush administration. He would govern the country as a mature adult and rational political agent of the people who elected him, not as a longtime bumbler and a political anomaly with a messianic complex and a taste for fame and money. Barack Obama — the humane technocrat who would provide Americans with the good government they crave. Yet, have the hopes Candidate Obama elicited in the electorate been met by his Presidency? No. Has he sought to realize goals that would affirm these hopes? Once again, no. As a matter of fact, President Obama has governed so far as an agent of the political system which nurtured him and which made him what he is today. Far from providing an antidote to Bush's extremist policies, Obama has worked hard to secure some of the Bush Era 'reforms' to America's institutions, to prosecute the irrational wars the Bush administration started and to implement the gist of Bush's reactionary economic agenda. And he gained his Bush-lite 'achievements' while his party controlled both Houses of Congress! He seemingly has led an administration that controlled its destiny. Nevertheless, by taking path he did, President Obama effectively threw away Candidate Obama's electoral victory. He has not used the power he acquired then to pursue a progressive reform agenda; he instead used this power to impose on the country a center-right political solution to its problems, a solution which will master no threat but those which entrenched economic and political power will confront in the near future.

Assuming my Karp-inspired analysis abstractly accurately depicts the electoral and political situation today, we may ask whether there was any reason to think long and hard about Obama's support for Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter in the recent primary elections?, the soft touch he has used when dealing with Joe Liebermann and Alan Simpson?, the concern he showed for the interests of the drug and insurance companies? and his fealty to the surveillance-security apparatus? I do not think so. Continuing to pose questions of this kind: Why, in general, has the Obama administration seemed unconcerned with the fate of the Democratic Party in November's elections? Walter Karp would have no trouble at all when evaluating the actions of Obama and the other leaders of his party with respect to these elections, especially their indifference to the composition of the Congress. He knew that each party considers the electorate at large to be the mortal enemy of the enduring Washington system. It will be this system which will be the true winner this November. And the two parties would not have it any other way.

The unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from this analysis: Barack Obama was and remains hope's enemy insofar as this hope is felt by the common man and woman in the United States today.

Quote of the day

This one issued from the keyboard of David Frum:

More proof of my longtime thesis, Repub pols fear the GOP base; Dem pols hate the Dem base.

Frum's judgment was a response to Presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' recent hissy fit. A few quotes that represent Gibb's perfervid mind:

"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."

And:

"They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

…

"They wouldn't be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."

It is so sad that Obama's magnanimity and courage have yet to be recognized by the Democratic Party left. How crude of these unrealistic leftists to demand effective action from a President they helped put into power. The partisan left, according to crackpot realist Gibbs, is ungrateful and unappreciative. It dreams impossible dreams; it refuse to accept the world for what it is. Look at what these wretches have done to poor Blanche Lincoln, who is so devoted to progressive ends that she chose to fall on her sword for her Party, the party devoted to progress and justice. So sad to be compelled to manage these ungrateful leftist bastards…

Glenn Greenwald's take on Gibb's fit:

The Democrats have been concerned about a lack of enthusiasm on the part of their base headed into the midterm elections. These sorts of rabid, caricatured, Fox-News-copying attacks on the Left will undoubtedly help generate more enthusiasm — more loud clapping — for the Democrats. I know I'm eager to go canvass and clap for Democrats after reading Gibbs' noble, inspiring vision. If it were Gibbs' goal to be as petulant and self-pitying as possible, what could he have done differently?

Crackpot Realist Gibbs works to control the damage he caused here. Why would he humble himself like this? As it turns out, his President needs the work and enthusiasm of the Democratic Party base and, alas, that base sits a bit to the left of Obama's failed administration.

Theda Skocpol criticizes the Obama administration

Skocpol wrote:

The same old story happens again and again. Dems in the House pass reasonable legislation, and Senate Dems dicker with centrists and Republicans over "compromises," weakening the legislation step by step over many weeks, only to find zero Republican support in the end.

The public has no idea what is going on, and just blames Democrats, who appear to be in charge in DC. Now it is happening gain with vital public spending for national economy recovery — state aid, unemployment relief, and adjustments in taxes and Medicare payments. This legislation is not just important to this or that group. It matters for keeping any semblance of national economic growth going, for creating and saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The President, Congressional leaders, and Democrats of all stripes should be yelling day in, day out, that REPUBLICANS ARE SABOTAGING NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. AND PREVENTING JOB GROWTH, JUST FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. That should be the message all the time, led by the President. Stop the murky compromises and the whining about "helping the unemployed." Stop pretending this is about the deficit — nothing will hurt the deficit more than delayed economic growth. Say what it happening in terms of the national interest.

Skocpol's argument is sound enough when taken at face value. Its deeper mistake lies in her apparent belief that the politicians of the Democratic Party care about unemployment and the unemployed more than they care about the deficits and financial capital and her belief that Democratic Party politicians prefer reelection to crossing their moneyed personal and institutional supporters. With a catastrophic real (as opposed to the official) unemployment rate of approximately 20 percent, one would expect a party and a president who considered mass unemployment a problem to act decisively to resolve the problem. This has not happened, though. On the other hand, America's country debt is considered a significant problem, one that might become a pretext for the destruction of the Social Security System. I believe Obama has already made his priorities clear enough.

Another day, another promise broken

Charlie Savage, reporting for the New York Times, states that:

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

The significance of this tactic was not lost on Glenn Greenwald, who stated:

So that appears to be a consensus: Guantanamo — the closing of which was one of Obama's central campaign promises — will still be open as of 2013, by which point many of the detainees will have been imprisoned for more than a decade without charges of any kind and without any real prospect for either due process or release, at least four of those years under a President who was elected on a commitment to close that camp and restore the rule of law. [emphasis in the original]

LangDetectde>en YahooC

Guantánamo

It’s duck and cover time

Starring Robert Gibbs

Obama affirms civilian authority

Earlier today Barack Obama fired — accepted the resignation of — General Stanley McChrystal, thereby sending a signal to the public at large and to the fractious members of America's military elite that insubordination remains intolerable.

For what it is worth, and it is worth a lot given the undeniable importance of civilian control over the military, it is clear that America's accommodating President acted within the limits of his competence and with the foresight needed to secure the boundary which separates the political branches of the government from the technical powers allotted to the Pentagon. McChrystal's insubordination was neither his first (see this and this) nor trivial given his command. Forgiveness for McChrystal was a legally and political dubious choice which the President soundly refused.

The McChrystal interview is now online

Rolling Stone serves the public here.

Is he jumping or has he been pushed?

A Rahm Emanuel rumor:

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

Helen Thomas retires

Long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas retired today after prompting strong criticism with these comments:

Will there be harsh consequences for Israel?

Some are skeptical

From a Dawn editorial:

Given the nonchalance with which the Israeli military sheds civilian blood regularly as a matter of policy, one shouldn't be shocked by the grim drama that rocked the ships carrying aid and relief workers to the Gaza Strip on Monday morning. Israeli forces boarded the vessels and killed a number of passengers, even though the flotilla carried nothing but relief goods.

…

Save condemnations from around the world, one can reasonably be sure Israel will face no material consequences for this brutality on the seas.

Writing in Newsweek, Ben Adler considers America's tacit complicity in the massacre along with the probable consequences of this complicity:

When it comes to the U.S., those hoping that the deaths of nine foreign-aid workers will produce a notably different stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ought not to hold their breath. Current political circumstances, including the fact that this is an election year, make it very unlikely.

Just consider the difference in the statements by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President Obama. "I condemn the violence, and Israel must explain," said Ban, while Obama was considerably more circumspect. The White House statement on Obama's call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "The President expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today's incident, and concern for the wounded, many of whom are being treated in Israeli hospitals. The President also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances." This is not a paradigm shift, nor will it become one.

Update

Ahmed Amr believes that Israel and Netanyahu will suffer mildly if they suffer at all:

Anybody with half a brain should be able to figure out that this most recent Israeli atrocity was premeditated. Netanyahu will pay a price and there will be a price to pay but it will be paid in short term currency. Obama might or might not figure out that he gave away the store and walked away empty handed but with mid-term elections on the horizon, he'll still shield Israeli leaders from accountability for their war crimes. The relationship with Turkey will be strained and a few European foreign ministers will fume. The United States had no problem figuring out how to react to piracy with the Achille Lauro, but all they can muster up in response to this latest act of Israeli state terrorism is a benign statement of 'concern.' Washington might even work up the courage to ask the Israelis to conduct an inquiry. Israel will be ostracized for a few weeks but Netanyahu will have accomplished his goal by derailing yet another peace initiative and winning additional time to continue building settlements and dispossess the Palestinians of their native soil.

Update II

Writing for Foreign Policy in Focus, Stephen Zunes asserts:

Every time Israel's right-wing government engages in yet another outrageous violation of international legal norms, it is easy to think, "No way are they going to get away with it this time!" And yet, thanks to the White House, Congress and leading American pundits, somehow, they do.

Last update on June 3, 2010 at 9:37AM

Quote of the day

Today's winner sprung from Glenn Greenwald's keypad and refers to Israel's recent terrorist attack on a humanitarian aid ship sitting in international waters:

When exactly did Israel acquire the right not only to rule over Gaza and the West Bank, but international waters as well? Their rights as sovereign are expanding faster than the BP oil spill.

Indeed they are, and Israel's sovereign rights appear as pleasing to the world as BP's oil slick!

Ken Salazar rattles a saber

Salazar is Obama's Secretary of the Interior. The New York Times quotes Salazar as saying:

"I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this oil from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading," Salazar told reporters after visiting BP's U.S. headquarters in Houston.

"We are 33 days into this effort and deadline after deadline has been missed," Salazar added, referring to the failure of containment efforts attempted so far by London-based BP to control the gushing undersea well one mile down on the ocean floor.

Why is Salazar talking tough? The Times attributes his current line to the fact that:

President Barack Obama's administration is facing growing public and political pressure to take full charge of the oil spill containment operation as criticism against BP grows.

Yikes

Neoliberalism in action

While our President and his administration produce change we Americans can believe in, some of us — fishermen and women living in the Gulf region — are losing hope altogether (h/t): "The situation in the gulf is getting so dire for some in the seafood industry, they've thought about committing suicide. Steps to intervene are underway."

Obama needs to get off his skinny ass…

…and fix the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, as Rayne writing for FireDogLake suggest:

It's been more than 30 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and the well nearly a mile below on the sea floor began to erupt oil and methane, killing 11 of our fellow citizens and injuring even more both immediately and in the continuing damage which followed.

And nothing has happened of any consequence since then.

Oh, we've had a Category 5 hurricane of hot air, some decent questions from Congressional hearings, but zippo-zilch-nada in the way of an effective solution. (I pity the people of the Gulf who had to deal with another hurricane they couldn't escape.)

We had a big metal box set over the leak, not to stop it but to try to capture the oil. Anybody with the wherewithal to Google could predict this was going to fail because of the hydrates. They crystallize on contact with a solid surface in deepwaters below the average depth of the Continental Shelf.

And then we've had a tiny little pipsqueak of a hose nosed into the well pipe, which might as well have been a toothpick stuck in our mouths.

Now the White House is having a hissy behind closed doors with the media because dammitall, they can't stop asking questions about the spill. Oh that'll work, that'll make a difference; the biggest environmental disaster our country has experienced will go away if only the media shuts up about it.

Screw that. This has been nothing but a corporate-induced environmental and socio-biological experiment perpetuated on our commons without our consent, and the American public doesn't take well to experimentation without debate in advance. Witness our slow-moving policy on stem cell research, for example. We don't frigging like it.

She follows this invective by enumerating the steps the Obama Administration should if it intended to address this crisis with the seriousness it demands. Her article is must reading for those concerned about the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the political disaster in Washington.

The times they are a changing…

Writing for that normally hyperbolic anarcho-syndicalist rag the Financial Times, the historian Simon Schama takes stock of the moment:

Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can't smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage. The Spanish unions have postponed a general strike; the bloody barricades and the red shirts might have been in Bangkok not Berlin; and, for the moment, the British coalition leaders sit side by side on the front bench like honeymooners canoodling on the porch; but in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage [emphasis added].

…

So we face a tinderbox moment: a test of the strength of democratic institutions in a time of extreme fiscal stress.

Schama is hardly complacent. He believes popular rage and distrust could threaten Europe's political project:

On the one hand, we should be glad that the mobilisation of public energy in elections can channel mass unhappiness into change. That is what we must believe could yet happen in Britain. Elsewhere the outlook is more forbidding. In the sinkhole that is the eurozone, animus is directed at unelected bodies — the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — and is bound to build on itself. Those on the receiving end of punitive corrections — in public sector wages or retrenched social institutions — will lash out at their remote masters. Those in the richer north, obliged to subsidise what they take to be the fecklessness of the Latins, will come to see not just the single currency but the European project as an historic error and will pine for the mark or franc. Chauvinist movements will be reborn, directed at immigrants and Brussels diktats, with more destructive fury than we have seen since the war.

To be sure, rampant internal political animosity — if not war per se — would terminate any Euro-wide political project. A democracy deficit seems to be one cause of the danger at hand.

Schama's take on the United States is less certain in general but ominous nevertheless:

The same kind of pre-lapsarian romanticism targeted at an elitist federal authority is raging through the US like a fever. The best way to understand the Tea Party, which has just scored its first victory with the libertarian Rand Paul defeating the choice of the official Republican party, is to see it as akin to the Great Awakenings and the Populist furies of the end of the 19th century. There are calls to abolish the Federal Reserve or in some cases Social Security, fuelled by the conspiratorial belief that it was an excess, not a deficit, of government regulation that brought on the financial meltdown. Claims that Washington has been captured for socialism are preached on rightwing talk radio as gospel truth. As they did in the 1930s with Father Coughlin, the radio demonisers are pitch-perfect orchestrators of hatred for listeners in bewildered economic distress.

Against this tide, facts are feeble. When Senate Republicans succeed in briefly blocking financial regulation by representing it as an infringement on liberty rather than as a measure minimally needed for the security of the commonwealth, you know the truth needs help from the Presidential Communicator-in-Chief. He is back on the stump, but as with the case for healthcare reform, his efforts are belated and cramped by misplaced obligations of civility. But if his government is to survive the November elections with a shred of authority, it will need Barack Obama to be more than a head tutor. It will need him to be a warrior of the word every bit as combative as the army of the righteous that believes it has the constitution on its side, and in its inchoate thrashings can yet bring down the governance of the American Republic.

It is clear to some Americans, but not to the elitist Schama, that Obama intentionally broadly complies with the forces of reaction in the United States, is a fiscally conservative agent of the predatory fractions of American capital (the much despised FIRE sector), a dedicated leader and defender of the security-surveillance state in its most Kafkaesque form and, more importantly, a crisis manager of some skill. Given these qualities, it would be unrealistic, at best, to expect Obama to come to the aid of the commoner. Obama is not a man for all seasons but, rather, a man of his times, possessing the impulses of his peers and the goals of the American system as he found it. Although his considerable rhetorical skills might have gotten him elected to the Presidency, they may eventually prove deficient if Americans were to recognize the intentions of his administration and the social forces it represents. Hope elicited and then defeated can lead to resignation or to an explosive outburst buy those defeated by a country's normal politics. This situation is America's tinderbox, and it presently stands populated by arsonists, witless match lighters and deluded opportunists. We can thus anticipate an explosion even if we cannot rationally forecast its occurrence. Yves Smith concurs:

Having weakened faith in government and made considerable progress towards creating a social Darwinist paradise of isolated individuals pitted against each other, the oligarchs may be about to harvest a whirlwind.