I've been reading over at Belmont and there are various assessments of why Wall Streeters have turned on Obama according to a recent poll. The resulting consensus seems to be that Obama is either a stealthy ideologue or a feckless politician. I think he is the latter by training and the former at heart. Reading through the comments reminded me of some of the things I wrote about Obama as a member of the Talented Tenth.
It also bears tangential mention that the sort of ideologue Obama is, relates directly to the sorts of people he believes that he owes his efforts to. My sense of this is that as the kind of Leftist he is, that he identifies with a permanent, disenfranchised majority, in fact, the majority of humanity. And so his willingness to be feckless with people one might ordinarily see as useful, say General McChrystal for example, only serves his greater aim which is to hand out Thanksgiving Turkey in Harlem. Obama walks with criminal kings to feed his common touch, and he'll shoot them all for the legitimacy of his welfare program. For him as a Democrat, it's the perfect setup because the entirety of the American government steals taxes from the rich to give to the poor.
Joe the Plumber is one of those people for whom his message does not resonate, because Joe has the nerve to deny the free turkey. Obama spits because Obama knows Joe's no gangster. You better take this turkey, boy. I'm the only free lunch you get, and if you think you can hang with the monsters I deal with, then you'd shut your ambition up.
So let me go down memory lane and see if my assessment of Obama from a Talented Tenth perspective holds up in this new light. But there's a trick that I'm going to do. I'm going to change my use of the term 'black' to 'common' and 'white' to 'elite'. So if you understand that the 'commoner' is put upon and needs rescue (in the way liberals and reactionaries think of black Americans), and you understand that 'elite' means implicitly corrupt (in the way liberals and reactionaries think of white Americans) then you'll see exactly what I mean. With only those slightest edits, read on:
I once wrote that the common electorate always wants more government because history is that it got none. And so there is a perception that only when common folks step up and demand government concessions will they ever get treated equally. This is taking the rhetoric of politicians very seriously, especially those associated with unions and machines. Common folks are hungry for patronage, why not get their share? It's all dirty. And that's what politics as usual means, and if the majority of politicians are elite, well then obviously elite folks are getting their patronage. If Cheney can have Halliburton and Iraq, why begrudge Obama and Wright? It's not like we're killing people to steal oil and get rich. Any documented corruption in American government is subject to such reasoning, where is common people's payoff?
Obama is therefore on the hook to deliver some genuine common patronage to his constituents, those he directly works for and those commonners who have adopted him symbolically. And thus he is obligated to take on the mantle of commoners who speak truth to power and demand some common grease. But today that is done in the politically acceptable language of multiculturalism. Obama is in the position of answering the questions once and for all "What do you people want?" Everybody knows it.
So if social justice can and equality can mean proportional representation in colleges for commoners and all other underrepresented minorities, then Obama has to be the man to deliver those. In every aspect of Obama's policy, one can interpret that it means more for those who never got their 'fair share' of government largess. If you have to tax the rich elite bastards, so what? They've already got the American Dream, we live the American nightmare. Sure it's self-serving, and Hillary Clinton is not?
The employment of Wright and Wright's church serves the purpose of keeping such principles of 'social justice' in mind and letting Obama know what kind of flack he's going to get for enabling it. And everybody who has a gripe against social justice, just because a common man is giving it to common Americans is going to have to face the wrath of Christian ministers who are not afraid to call America on it. From a purely Christian perspective, America is evil. This is not unpatriotic, it is the disambiguated 'America' of power, wealth, corruption, and world domination. This is America from the perspective of people who have hardscrabble jobs and have no idea how the economy works except that it doesn't give them a break. All of Ron Paul's people have the same idea. You have to do something radical to give the little guy a break, and only a new kind of politician can do that.
If you care about 'social justice' and 'equality' then Obama is your man. And you know the System is going to try any way it can to beat him down. Is this the politics of resentment? Yes. It is also largely the politics of impatience. There remains a presumption that there is a polycarbonate, transparent aluminum ceiling established for those who don't sell out the poor and powerless in America. Not so much that there is some absolute deprivation in lower middle-classness or minority exile, but that such Americans would do better if they had *their* president in power, who could arbitrarily stop the war, lower gas prices, get us all free health care or otherwise do whatever he wanted as the People's President. That is a sentiment that will always have a constituency in America, and Obama is their draftee. It's the job he really wants.
Everything that every American doesn't participate in equally is suspect in this liberal framework, and Obama seeks to adjudicate this. He is prepared to believe that all resistence to him is prejudicial and misguided, and he has ample precedent as one of the upper class to believe that to be true.
That holds together pretty well, although with Wright it gets a little queer in the middle. I don't think Obama has been able to successfully update his moral appeal in response to the times. He's still ideologically bound to the the Wretched of the Earth, which is why he will give lip service to the idea that Muslims are hated and feared in America and that they must press for their Constitutional Rights at every turn. Not that that's working. Instead, he is surfing the waves of crisis as opportunities. Not working well either.
The dominant dialog out there, as I said, is the conflict between those who have bought into Obama's fundamental idea of America and the more traditional one. On the Obama side, America is only exceptional in its Robin Hood potential, and that every other common bloke wants and needs his stimulus turkey. Stiglitz, unheard of and unread by Democrats before 2008, now trundles the water of the Government Supply Side, thus enabling Obama's moral and correctional agenda. On the Other-American side, romantic notions abound.
I still believe that the country can be divided right now into those two factions. Those who see Obama as fighting a never-ending battle, even as President, against the forces arrayed to deprive the common man of his stimulus turkey; and those like me who want no part of his American Gangster game and abuse of government - those who will take their chances with the sharks, and are not willing to pay protection taxes to the great loving arms of Obama.
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