Given that there are enough people in this country who actually believe in Satan as evil incarnate, the Republican right wing can continue to try turning the most innocuous of Obama’s words and actions into demonic signs of impending tyranny, fascism, socialism and finally the arrival of the anti-Christ in the form of Obama himself.
Or is it because the Republican/conservative/lunatic-fringe actually have no remotely clear cut philosophy, platform or project which really serves America as a viable polity that they huff and puff with theatrically unconvincing feigned indignation and conviction? I simply can’t believe that anyone is convinced, for example, that Sean Hannity, who is far from stupid, really believes that Michelle Bachman is anything but a flake at best or literally delusional at worst, especially Hannity.
It is sad if not frightening however if in fact the real motive in all this fake-hysterical non-sense is to mobilize an irrational if not violent reaction by the pseudo-political hysterical fanatics who swallow the Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Beck demagoguery as objective truth. Maybe recent right-wing militant media is only life-support for the core loyalists, i.e., the fundamentalist Christian culturalists, but I do sometimes wonder if this could be more insidious than meets the eye. What exactly are the Republicans thinking if the best they can do is try to manufacture a mass ‘mob-mentality?’ And is this mostly media crowd of proto-authoritarians really anything remotely what we might authentically call “conservative” or “republican?”
Well, the “Republicans” who will in 2012 represent the real opposition to Obama have only one real interest to defend: the wealth and power of mega-capital which the recent 19 page Republican “budget” did its best to declare as its real interest. They did this by offering only one solution to the economic crisis: lower taxes on the rich.
Let’s get clear however, as Obama himself is proving, that there is no significant difference between the two major faux political parties in America. It’s not that Obama, unlike the Republicans, has a viable philosophy, platform or project that will transform America. He does not. He is proving to do nothing regarding the economic crisis except recycle the ‘bubble and bust’ boys but now with taxpayer money. Obama is the black Bush with a helping of Rooseveltian stop-gap measures. Obama is continuing the Iraq war and gearing up his own in Afghanistan. He apparently will continue to tap our phones and refuse to carry out the demands of justice by not prosecuting the Bush war crimes. Lastly, he seems to have little interest in restoring the integrity of the Constitution.
On the other hand, the opposition to Obama does not comprise a consensus let alone a coherent consensus. The vocal opposition to Obama that preponderates toward the lunatic fringe does not a party nor a “real opposition” make. Unfortunately the power of the centralist media and the force of mega–money will most likely again instumentalize, aggregate and mobilize the mass of Americans suffering the illusions propagated by the New Class. Again many will conceive of their situation as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. This mass authoritarian pseudo-consensus will continue to masquerade as the real opposition, the semblance of a political party and, unfortunately,as a meaningful, coherent, rational critique of our political situation as symbolized in Obama (which it is not).
But America is many blue moons away from any sober discourse and rational self-reflection on this time in our history. If rationality means anything amidst the irrationality of our time, it may well be an acknowledgement that we do belong to the same society and must all seek together to realize its universality as the maximization of social freedom. In doing so we must walk the narrow path between the Scylla of massification at the hands of the authoritarians and the Charybdis of atomization at the hands of the assorted cultural relativists and marketers of rugged, possessive individualism.
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