Liam redux

End of world rhetoric shortage nears

It looks like we are in for four years of uplifting vacuous rhetoric. What do phrases like “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep.” Or “let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder” actually mean? The…

Liam
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It looks like we are in for four years of uplifting vacuous rhetoric. What do phrases like “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep.” Or “let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder” actually mean?

The BBC has effectively been a branch of Obama’s election campaign for the last several months so there has been more opportunity than one would have preferred to get acquainted with his speechifying. Now apart from that one time where he bragged about hitching a ride in an Israeli army helicopter and how they where perfectly entitled to kill Palestinians the overriding feature of his orations has been their lack of real content.

Let’s take “change”. Harold Shipman was a change from the previous doctor in his practice. Tom and Jerry changed when they started speaking. Gordon Brown was a change. Well maybe that’s stretching the point. Obama’s principal message has been that he’s not a Bush or a Clinton thrown in with some hints that he might not be as neo-liberal as his predecessors and that by voting for him America could prove how anti-racist it is.

A lot of working class Americans are going to be overjoyed at Obama’s victory. The pictures of his victory rally showed that. Bush’s defeat is likely to open up space for radical politics in the United States in ways that it is still too early to predict. But when you do deconstruct phrases from his victory speech last night such as “a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you” the only plausible interpretation is that there is unlikely to be any significant strategic difference between an Obama White House and the Bush one. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue. US bases will be maintained all around the globe and they will continue subverting progressive regimes in Latin America. Internally, well that’s all down to the balance of class forces guv’nor.

Interesting and frequently updated coverage from Socialist Worker (US) here.


9 responses to “End of world rhetoric shortage nears”

  1. swp member Avatar
    swp member

    Other: Relief that the utterly appalling Sarah Palin didn’t get to be vice pres. That would have considered me that the planet would be one big version of Easter Island in another 100 years or so.

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  2. swp member Avatar
    swp member

    Whereas now it only might be..

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  3. Rustbelt Radical Avatar
    Rustbelt Radical

    Two words: Rahm Emanuel

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  4. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    What happened on Tuesday? Bush, Cheney and the rest of the PNAC scary brigade got their P45s. Racism in America became finally impossible to sustain with any semblance of rationality (“oh, yeah, the President – but apart from him…”) And a candidate running on a “troops out of Iraq, don’t bomb Iran, close Guantanamo Bay” platform was elected.

    I thought you’d be pleased.

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  5. hoot gibson Avatar
    hoot gibson

    Well said Phil. God, it’s no wonder the far left has zero attraction for black people.

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  6. I hate to be a naysayer, but… « Splintered Sunrise

    […] Liam points out, quite correctly, much of the media and the BBC in particular going orgasmic over Barack O’Bama’s election. At this point in time you sort of wish Edward Said was still alive, and wonder whether he would describe this as an Orientalist love affair. […]

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  7. Liam Avatar
    Liam

    Rahm Emanuel was shown on TV here tonight but what is he?

    Phil – let’s take the Kennedy analogy. Lots of people were really enthused by his election for much the same reasons as Obama supporters. Within a few years the US nearly blew up the world, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and actively supported neo fascist regimes all across Latin America.

    A bit of perspective is always necessary. One election does not change US imperialism or the class nature of the Democrats.

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  8. Rustbelt Radical Avatar
    Rustbelt Radical

    Rahm Emanuel is an uberZionist New Democrat. His main claim to fame before this was acting as chief whip for the Dems in getting NAFTA passed. He’s been a gatekeeper for Congressional candidates weeding out the anti-war and what’s left of the Great Society sectors in the party.

    A major force behind the scenes raising money from corporate donors for the Dems (many millions from big pharma, banks and insurance cos.) he then translated that into millions of dollars in the private sector where he made a bundle in investment banking. It’s good to know people.

    Oh, and he left the States to volunteer for the IDF in the first Gulf War and was Obama’s adviser on Israel before this (Obama was approved by AIPAC after a particularly fawning speech by him pledging support to an undivided Jerusalem. He is a neo-liberal Democrats of the Clinton school personified. Oh, and he like all good Zionists thinks Iran is the biggest threat to civilization since the Visogoths.

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  9. hoot gibson Avatar
    hoot gibson

    “let’s take the Kennedy analogy. Lots of people were really enthused by his election for much the same reasons as Obama supporters”
    Not exactly. Kennedy defeated Nixon by the narrowest of margins and that on the basis of ballot rigging. Few can have been disappointed by his foreign policy since he ran to the right of Nixon, accusing the Republicans of being insufficiently confrontational with the Soviets and allowing a missile gap to grow up. Kennedy certainly had no record of opposition to any imperialist wars, and little of any devotion to civil rights Frank Sinatra, who did have a record of campaigning on the latter subject, had to be drafted in to help Kennedy pull in the crowds in Harlem and elsewhere. Kennedy’s movements on civil rights came towards the end of his presidency, as a response to mass pressure from the movement in the South. Back then, you see, black people were risking death, beating, torture and imprisonment to win the right to vote. Pity Liam wasn’t there to explain to them that elections were meaningless.

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