The Lefty Response to the State of the Union

Empty nationalistic rhetoric ruled at the State of the Union tonight. President Obama continued to hone his skills at bouncing between conciliatory and tough, liberal and conservative, partisan and bipartisan, humanitarian and militaristic, and so on. As far as substance goes, even W through more math and specific bills into his speeches.

Tonight, I remember Howard Zinn and his views toward political slogans and justifications for war. May his precise and authentic words continue to inspire for generations.


Rhetoric: Obama begins the speech by recalling the days of WWII and the Civil Rights era to try to inspire nebulous American values in order to accomplish.... something. I have a suggestion to inspire political courage... fire Rahm Emanuel!

Economy: Obama says he has never been more hopeful than now, but fails to say why. Politicians still have no explanation for how giving money to big business somehow 'trickles down' to 'main street.' The ghost of Reagan lingers. He goes on to claim that most of the bank bailout has been recovered, that's a new one to me and I find it extremely hard to believe. He claims the economy is getting better and that retirement funds are back on track.... for who? Obama finally introduces one of the only semi specific proposals of the night -- give $30Billion to community banks. Might not be a bad idea, but more details needed. Starts to hit his stride as he talks about closing tax breaks for companies moving over seas, only to jump off the Free Trade cliff into quasi economic nationalism/neoliberal ideology.... We must open global markets, blah blah blah.


Health Care: Obama says that if you have a better plan, he's wants to know. This after continuously shutting out the massive single payer movement from the political process. This, the only solution that realistically reduces the deficit and delivers health care to all.

Style: Jumps around the entire speech between taskmaster and joker, but holds one thing through most of the night -- pandering to Republicans. After over a year, he is still trying to get Republican votes for legislation that they will not support because of who would sign it. Leadership is hard to define, but whatever it is, Obama has shown remarkably little of it. You set the agenda Mr. President, and try to drag as many along as are willing without sacrificing the whole project.

Environment: Yikes!!!!! Offshore oil, 'Clean' coal, 'Safe' nuclear, OH MY! Can someone please enter some science/logic/logistics into this discussion?!

Education: The best tool to fight poverty is education. I can agree with the statement. Almost no substance once again, though. He proposes vouchers for college, but you have to afford to pay for the school before you get the tax credit. Can we just subsidize higher education more and forget about tax code nonsense?

Deficit: According to Obama, our huge deficit is 'mostly' from two wars not paid for. When can we stop having wars that we have to pay for? When can we stop increasing the Pentagon's budget year after year and bring it to within range of domestic spending? When can we stop paying billions to fraudulent private contractors? Obama also wants to institute a spending freeze on most everything BUT defense. HELLO! Our budget is almost exclusively spend on "defense", and now you want to cap domestic spending to somehow save the budget?!

Nuclear arms: Obama calls out Iran without pointing out that we are not following international treaties ourselves. Just because we are UHmerca, does not mean we get to play by different rules.

Iraq: This whole 'Combat Troops' euphemism is starting to make me nervous.

Haiti: Yes Americans are generous and want to help people in crisis. Too bad the government is slow. China, Ireland, and Cuba all beat us to Haiti by a couple days, and when we got there, we militarized the whole affair. You don't get to take responsibility for the good things that have happened there Mr. President.

All in all, our President says a lot of right things, but he is so frustratingly vague that not much gets done. Much better than whatever the Virginia Governor was trying to communicate after. They still haven't found a coherent platform. But if the Democrats are ineffective unless working for big business, what difference does it make?

Thanks you, god bless you, and god bless Antarctica!

A Rap on Sanity in Empire

As our imperfect experiment in republican government corrodes under the stresses of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, it may be helpful to think about what your definition of sanity is while listening to the news and political discourse. It is important because while you may personally feel more comfortable with the rhetoric of one party over the other, almost zero of our federal leaders are attempting to halt our government's descent to desperate empire.

The first thing to go in imperial societies is the precision of language. When there are no logical defenses of despicable actions (war, torture, deception), empty patriotic slogans become the rather sparse lexicon that all politicians must work with. "Support the troops", "God bless America", "Mission accomplished", "Axis of evil" are all meaningless phrases meant to stop people from thinking too much. These phrases tap into a - perhaps - natural group psychology that makes violence quite palatable.

Slogans get repeated ad naseum, politicians acquiesce to war and corporate interests, and political philosophies - not to mention facts - must be fixed around the policy.

Now you find yourself in a society whose definition of insanity is peace over war, humanity before flag, and wisdom instead of fear. If your philosophy fits this definition of insanity, you just might actually go insane listening to the news and pundit media.

You may go insane because you realize you have 23 choices of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, but only two serious choices for imperial president. You may go insane because there is more ink spilled on Tiger Woods' 9th mistress than on war profiteers. You may go insane because the flag you are supposed to worship, has come to represent Madison Avenue and Blackwater.

The truth is, empires only last so long. Our economic hegemony is on the decline, and as many bases and weapons as the USA has, we cannot occupy the whole world. As our nation's leaders try to grip the world tighter, they will get more insane and desperate. With a fundamentally unsustainable economy, it is only a matter of time before our nation as we know it collapses. It will be slow, but for all the might and chest beating, we will either change the way we treat ourselves and the rest of the world or face collapse.

In an era of glossy materialistic empire, real sanity turns out to be a desire for our nation's leaders to fail in their imperial endeavors.

Peace