Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Aug 25, 2009 8:14 PM PDT
This essay is dedicated to Thomas Paine, who led us to victory in the winter of our despair.
President Obama is in a more precarious political position than most people seem to realize. He publicized widely and frequently the amount of individual contributions that he was taking in early in his campaign, but became mute on the subject of how much of his war chest that came from this source after accepting $17 million from the finance industry in the latter stages.
Many progressives were shocked to learn of the extent of the largess of financial interests only after the massive “mistake” of leaving out adequate guidelines for the use of the TARP funds. We all know now that the money was used more for buying smaller banks at fire sale prices than for lending, and that it had little immediate effect at unfreezing the credit market, as had been promised.
Many progressives were shocked to learn of the extent of the largess of financial interests only after the massive “mistake” of leaving out adequate guidelines for the use of the TARP funds. We all know now that the money was used more for buying smaller banks at fire sale prices than for lending, and that it had little immediate effect at unfreezing the credit market, as had been promised.
Meanwhile, Citicorps and Goldman Sachs, recipients of some of the largest stacks of bailout money, walked away with record profits while Goldman competitor Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. It is no coincidence that Fed chairmen and Treasury Secretaries have been drawn from the ranks of Goldman Sachs for decades.
It is fair to ask why Obama accepted this gift when he had the money to outspend McCain at least 2:1 early in the race. A look at the books tells the story: After accepting public funds for his campaign and decrying Obama for not doing the same despite his earlier promise, McCain used a questionable “loophole” in campaign finance law to accept over half his total campaign contributions from these same Wall Street investment banks.
Had Obama refused their offer, his Presidential hopes would now be swimming with the fishes. As usual, the big money boys were hedging their bets until they sensed which way the winds would blow. Of course, the corporate media never reported the whole story, if in fact the bare bones news divisions of the major newspapers and broadcasters had the means to investigate it.
Had Obama refused their offer, his Presidential hopes would now be swimming with the fishes. As usual, the big money boys were hedging their bets until they sensed which way the winds would blow. Of course, the corporate media never reported the whole story, if in fact the bare bones news divisions of the major newspapers and broadcasters had the means to investigate it.
A key objective in this first battle in the war to take back America from the corporatocracy and return it to the people is to free Obama from the political prison in which he finds himself. The plan will depend on him understanding when he is to make the break. If he develops the Stockholm syndrome and begins to think like his captors, he may not be capable of being saved.
It will be difficult for the Soldiers of Peace to effect a rescue mission if he gives us no signal that he is ready to be freed from the fascist counter-Revolutionaries who hold him and the American people prisoners. He will then be sentenced to a total of four years of hard labor if he intends to try and change the system from the inside.
If he tries too hard, the stern judges of the fascist shadow government might even impose the death penalty, as they did for Kennedy when he stood in the way of the plans for the fascist New World Order prepared in the aftermath of WWII. If he does his job as well, he will be released for "good" behavior if he is unable or unwilling to challenge the financial wizards and other corporatists who have locked him in his golden cage. If we work to be the change that we voted for, we can free him to do the job for which he was elected.
It will be difficult for the Soldiers of Peace to effect a rescue mission if he gives us no signal that he is ready to be freed from the fascist counter-Revolutionaries who hold him and the American people prisoners. He will then be sentenced to a total of four years of hard labor if he intends to try and change the system from the inside.
If he tries too hard, the stern judges of the fascist shadow government might even impose the death penalty, as they did for Kennedy when he stood in the way of the plans for the fascist New World Order prepared in the aftermath of WWII. If he does his job as well, he will be released for "good" behavior if he is unable or unwilling to challenge the financial wizards and other corporatists who have locked him in his golden cage. If we work to be the change that we voted for, we can free him to do the job for which he was elected.
We cannot simply await the signal from our Commander in Chief that he is ready to lead us to victory in this war on American fascism. We fully understand the meaning of his warning that he cannot change the system himself, but that we must be the change that we have waited for.
We are recruiting and training daily for that time when he gives us the signal to act. In the meantime, we will carry out our mission in any way we can as opportunities present themselves. This is a battle for the soul of America and it can only be won if we succeed in winning the hearts and minds of the confused but patriotic American people.
We are recruiting and training daily for that time when he gives us the signal to act. In the meantime, we will carry out our mission in any way we can as opportunities present themselves. This is a battle for the soul of America and it can only be won if we succeed in winning the hearts and minds of the confused but patriotic American people.
Please join our ranks and work to get the message out. There is a way to freedom and democracy in America, but it requires each of us who understand the mission to become active in the battle. As when the Revolution began, this is a crisis and with common sense we can reestablish the rights of man. We need a new Thomas Paine to rise among us and explain to the frightened and bewildered populace in plain language why we must fight and continue fighting until victory is won.
We must all hang together or surely, we will all hang separately. America must again become a beacon of hope to the world or all hope will be lost. Let the sunshine soldier and the summer patriot prepare for a long winter. Let us have faith in our God that it is His will that there be freedom in America, so that there may be freedom and the blessings of democracy throughout the world.
We must all hang together or surely, we will all hang separately. America must again become a beacon of hope to the world or all hope will be lost. Let the sunshine soldier and the summer patriot prepare for a long winter. Let us have faith in our God that it is His will that there be freedom in America, so that there may be freedom and the blessings of democracy throughout the world.
Rick Staggenborg, MD
At the AFGE convention in Reno, Nevada.
I wrote this essay when it became apparent that Obama was going to be pilloried as bad by the radical Left as he could expect to be by the fringe Right. As noted above, he always told us the "I cannot be the change, we have to be the change."
ReplyDeleteHow can it be that so many people worked so hard for him only to abandon politics when he needed them the most? I knew what he meant and even though I did not work to get him elected, I knew that he was far more fit than McCain to lead us in the post-Bush world. McCain turned into a craven flip-flopper after the Bush slime machine derailed the Srtaight Talk Express in South Carolina in 2000 with the whispering campaign designed to convince racists that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.
I am not prepared to argue that Obama is doing his best, but the odds are certainly stacked against him when most of his supporters jumped on his wagon after the election, apparently expecting that he would pull them instead of them pushing him forward.
More importantly, Obama is working with an often criminally negligent Senate, most of whose members care little about anything other than being re-elected. They are willing to deal with the devil if the international corporate terrorists who call the shots in Washington promise to keep the campaign dollars rolling in.
As I have been arguing from the beginning of the health care debate, Obama can do little to advance democracy in America if we do not hold our Senators to account for their treasonous abandonment of the American People in favor of the corproate Puppetmasters who finance their campaigns.
Obama also faces a difficulty few of us have to deal with in our day-to-day lives. I cannot say how many times that I have heard chicken doves say that he should lay down his life to challenge the corporatocracy, if need be.
I have only heard this from those who never served in the military, however. Most of them are snot-nosed brats who are too young to remember that a President who tries to prevent or stop a war that the international war profiteers want to start or continue are killed or otherwise deposed faster than you can say Jack Kennedy. These fools do not seem to want to accept that dead Presidents accomplish little other than to represent the dashed hopes of Americans who then turn their backs on politics.
I remember the day Kennedy was killed along with the hopes of millions around the world. It is the duty of Soldiers For Peace International to protect our Commander-in-Chief while he walks through a minefield with sniper rifles trained on his head from every direction at every step.
President Obama will be our representative in the White House at least until 2012, Insha'Allah. We must do our best to cool our own temperatures and check our own pulses before contributing to the corporate-media inspired hysteria that could get him killed.
If you don't believe me, ask yourself why he spoke to an audience of at least 60,000 in a stadium where the attendees were not screened with a metal detector. less well known is the fact that when he spoke at Camp LeJuene, the armories were left unlocked. It seems that the Secret Service has been less than diligent in protecting the man we elected as our President.
If he was exposed to the threat of being killed by some PTSD-crazed Marine, we have to ask ourselves if we can trust the military command structure to protect him. Why was this not investigated and the commandant demoted and transferred?
If and when we clean up the senate by passing a Constitutional amendment outlawing the purchase of the senate by international corporate terrorists, we are not in a position to judge Obama the man or Obama the President. If we succeed, the voters will judge him in 2012.
This is the most persuasive and powerful argument for working together to make sure that the corporate profiteers don't get rid of Obama. He is not able to do what he wants at this moment, but when he is freed it will become apparent where he stands.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading this and sharing, Careyann. I couldn't agree more. You have to believe that people are essentially good to believe that self-rule in the form of democracy is even possible.
ReplyDeleteTo hold Obama accountable for failing to free the nation from fascism is naieve in the extreme. Obama made clear in The Audacity of Hope that he recognizes the solution but he needs us to be the change that will allow him to do what must be done to save the nation and give the world a chance to save itself.
Until then, we are all responsible for the mess we have helped create through greed, indolence and lack of faith in the essential goodness of Man.
thanks, Rick. A fantastic job...and very much needed. It is good to see a rational mind (yours) in the internet mix.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Michael. I could say the same about you and your great books on line!
Deletehttp://culturewarclasswar.wordpress.com/culture-war-is-class-war/
Thank you for writing this. Tweeted.
ReplyDeleteThanks Pianorama for sharing this essay with others. I hope that my perspective adds to the conversation. The more widely original ideas are shared, the sooner we can create a united international front against fascism and war with the strength to crush the corporatocracy and dismantle the fascist New World Order.
DeleteI just came across a speech by Jim Douglas, author of JFK and the Unspeakable. In it, he summarizes the array of the forces of the military-industrial forces aligned against Kennedy as he made the crucial shift from commie-baiter to dedicated peace proponent, a fateful decision that cost him his life. Like Lincoln, Kennedy made this decision with full awareness that it was likely to get him killed.
ReplyDeleteDouglas dispels the efforts by revisionist historians to slander Kennedy by implying that his early anticommunist record belies his devotion to the cause of peace. He reveals his secret communications with Kruschev that gave the world its first real hope for peace in a world gone mad with war lust.
In the speech, Douglas emphasizes the hope that knowledge of the truth of how close Kennedy came to peace will inspire today's generation to abandon the belief that war is inevitable. This is the first step in getting people to organize to push Obama to take the risk of challenging the corporatocracy knowing that he has the People behind him and that should he pay the ultimate price for freedom, he will not have sacrificed his life in vain.
The situation is getting critical. In the question and answer period following the speech, the reporter makes the comment that Obama is in the same situation as Kennedy. This is not true. The military industrial complex has grown exponentially stronger since they killed Kennedy.
Getting the truth out is the only hope for freedom and democracy in the world. Should we fail to do so, as Mick Jager said: "Who killed the Kennedys? After all, it was you and me." JFK will not die as long as we keep his memory alive. If we awaken the American people to speak about the unspeakable, the last, best hope for the freedom of Mankind can be revived shall not perish from the Earth: http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/COPA2009.html