'i do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. i would not lead you into the promised land if i could, because if i lead you in, some one else would lead you out. you must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition.'

-- eugene v. debs, 1910.

look, if obama were half the things people who like him think he is, he wouldn't have had a chance of being elected. if he were half the things people who don't like him say he is, i, as an 'anti-american' (read: anti-imperialist) socialist would have voted for him. either way, the truth is that obama, while seeming like a step in the right (or, in this case, left) direction, and thus GOOD (or at least BETTER) isn't leading any of us anywhere new, not to the great amorphous 'change' we've heard about in the last two years or towards that better world our lost generation thinks is right around the corner. campaign promises are almost by definition not practicable, not that he ever had an intention of doing any of the good stuff in the first place.

i'm sure he'll be a 'great president' by the distinctly american definition of that term. he's made for it. he has the demeanor, cultish support, and an uncritical movement behind him. 'great presidents' do lots of bad shit, and obama isn't going to be any different. you'll get imperialism and war with a more rational face instead of that crazy old man from arizona-- and it will not be kinder or gentler, despite what you'll read. that was the essence of your 'choice' yesterday-- a choice between appearances and an appearance of choice. being so open about ruling the fucking world was getting to be distasteful.

i emphasise the 'uncritical' aspect-- liberals will line up behind everything he does for two reasons: it's their turn after years of republican rule, and lesser evilism. every time obama disappoints, every time he comes up short next to the messianic image they have of him now, it's the old trick through which the two-party system reinforces itself. what, you would rather have the republicans in charge?

this is the reason nothing ever changes, because people with good minds, as saccharinely utopian as they can sometimes be, habitually buy into the system and pull the level for the big D. once you do that, you throw out any influence. 'yes we can' carries on to election night; after that, it's more of a suppressed 'well, what are you going to do about it?'

a lot of people, especially the younger ones, and many of the ones i know, voted for obama because he was more in the direction that they want the country to go. long-term, every vote from the left that supports the democrats is a vote against our principles, no matter which particular left wing you find yourself on. do not forget that they are at best a centrist party, and usually a right-wing one. honour among our rulers will win out, and for every symbolic move that supposedly helps the common folks the democrats supposedly are fighting for, there will be insurmountable opposition from those darn republicans, or so the story will go. remember how the republicans, at the height of their congressional and executive power just years ago, would constantly blame the pathetic minority democrats for stopping their social agenda? shadow games for the base, and the dems done do it as well. get ready for nail-biting almost measures on energy policy and polarising social issues. elect more and better democrats next time around! only an increased hegemony will really get us moving!

read:

'. . . it's all rearranging deck chairs on the corporate ship of state, resulting in an ever-so-subtle shift to a slightly less unjust social system, if only through somewhat less willingness to sell off the government to the highest bidders. And there will be a slightly better chance of not exacerbating the crimes of the Bush administration. But those crimes aren't going to be repudiated, let alone prosecuted.

Iraq will remain a tactical mistake, instead of a grossly immoral abuse of national power. We'll still have "debates" about what sorts of torture we should and shouldn't be subjecting people to. Needless to say an Obama administration isn't going to be interested in giving back expanded executive powers to spy on Americans without judicial oversight, or to otherwise ignore the law when it considers doing so convenient (after all, it will be doing so for good purposes).

There will still be 2.5 million Americans in prison, we'll still be fighting a ferociously idiotic and immoral "war" on drugs . . . and there will be 10,000 editorials about how Obama must take this opportunity to "heal" the "partisan divide" in the nation (translation: Allow the rampant political criminality of the last eight years to go completely uninvestigated).'

additionally: capitalism's status quo rolls right along, and the collapse of that wonderful economic system worldwide only means more war and more suffering.

will it ever not be so? the thread running through all of this, the tie that binds the people i'm talking about above, is that fundamental belief in america and our supposed ability for redemption. christian nation. we have to get america on the right track, the flaw in that being the assumption that we were ever on it. the redemption narrative doesn't go away, and link that to christ's refusal to challenge the state (caesar getting what is rendered to him) and you aren't going to (and don't) see many americans putting much thought into the way we choose our leaders and the way we let those people lead. oh, sweet jesus, make us new again. just not too new.

you're not going to question the system at a root-seeking, fundamental, radical (oh, how we hate that word) level if you still believe in the country, because it is our tendency to believe in that which is and that which has been-- two parties has 'worked' for this long, and there is no other way to do it. but, as leonard cohen put it, 'everything can be different, any old different.' electoral politics isn't going to get you there (here's my soundbite: when you vote for a lesser evil, you're still voting for evil), and any revolution as we've known them will be saturated by the same opportunism and murderousness. so i'm not advocating for that either. this country? we'd fuck it up worse than most, trust me. the only thing i can advocate, seeing no way out, is this: let's have some thought. a little thought won't go a long way, but maybe a lot of thought will go a little. as you can imagine, i'm not hopeful.

obama, in the minds of many and the media, to look at what the ongoing narrative has been, represents america finally redeeming herself for her sins of the past. obama is a symbol for what they would have us believe, and his victory only ensures that we'll keep on sinning and sinning big, only with less visibility. we've convinced ourselves that we just voted out the people who do the bad things. so we're in this pretty fucking deep. we were born into this. if we grew up last night, it wasn't an equitable moral maturity we reached so much as it was/is a smiling executive monstrousness, demagogic (that not being anything new) and cordial.

so next time, read your mencius: 'to try to achieve anything is like digging a well. you can dig a hole nine fathoms deep, but if you fail to reach the source of water, it is just an abandoned well.'