US President Barack Obama gave a State of the Union speech on Wednesday. The speech itself was vacuous and of far greater interest was watching some on the left rush to prop up the Democratic Party member Barack.
It was great, it was wonderful, it was beautiful.
To listen to the garbage passing for critiques, that's what you'd think.
But it was a speech promoting dangerous nuclear energy, it was a speech that never acknowledged women (not unlike his 'reform' plan), it was a speech that fudged facts on Iraq ("combat" troops wasn't the only fudging -- asked last week about a US withdrawal, US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill based his reply on not being a psychic and not being able to predict -- that's not "there will be a withdrawal!"), a speech that ignored the poor, that ignored the government's role in creating jobs (you don't just toss money at the private sector), a speech that laid the ground work for the next round of attacks on Social Security . . .
In short, it was a speech that had nothing in it for the left to applaud.
But various idiots (mainly at The Nation) rushed to assure us that it was remarkable and wonderful and left!
This is how the left is destroyed.
Pay attention, because this is how it happens.
The left spends forever -- when a Republican is in the White House -- calling out this action and that action and trying to put forward left beliefs only to toss them all into the trash can when a Democrat takes the White House.
It wasn't always that way. During Vietnam, for example, the New Left (usually described as the "student left") were way to the left of the LBJ administration and FDR was elected at a time when the bulk of the left was far to the left of him.
When that happens, you see pushing in the immediate time and you see movement building in the long term.
The alternative is what exists under Barack. It's the same thing that existed under Bill Clinton and under Jimmy Carter.
While The Nation and assorted idiots (frequently heard on KPFA) are happy to trash Bill Clinton and claim he destroyed the left, they never cut off a slice of the blame pie for themselves. They should, they've earned it.
Day after day, The Nation obsesses on how to push Barack's centrist or right-leaning agenda and it's a waste of time for everyone.
For the left, it's a waste of time because when the left is trying to sell non-left programs, they are pushing the conversation to the right. When the left is pushing non-left programs, they are wasting time they could use for actual movement building and conscience raising.
A left writer (of books) noted Saturday that The Nation would do the entire country a service if it would stop cheer leading Barack -- let him rise or fall all on his own -- and instead spend the next three years writing about issues, writing about them from a left perspective and doing as much as possible to enlarge understanding of actual left positions instead of whoring out whatever remains of the magazine's once mighty reputation (and circulation) to pimp corporate programs advanced by a corporatist War Hawk.
The left can't get beyond personalities. Or the chattering class of the left can't. And they wrongly see their survival as tied into Barack Obama. Barack Obama will be out of the White House after 2012 or 2016. The world will continue. The country will go on. How left the country will be will depend upon how well the left articulates what they stand for and what they believe in.
If the left repeatedly and continually promotes centrist and center-right programs, they repeatedly and continually shift the national conversation to the right.
Left positions -- when presented as positions and not as left or right -- repeatedly poll high. The American people are not afraid of positions that happen to be left. But many times, they just don't know what is left anymore. You can be loony Katrina vanden Heuvel and blame Bill Clinton for the rest of time, or you can wake up and realize that every piece of s**t Katrina (or her assistant) churns out promoting these bad programs from the White House do more to destroy the left than a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama ever could.
In Barack's defense, he is supposed to be president of all the people.
In Barack's defense, he may mistakenly believe the country is right-wing.
If the left wants to change that, it's time to stop cheer leading him and stop making his efforts our own.
We are not on the same side. He is the president of the United States. He is attacking Pakistan. He is continuing the Iraq War. He is continuing the Afghanistan War. He is preparing to cut social programs and further destroy the safety net.
We are not on the same side.
His job is to serve the people, all of the people.
Our job is supposed to be to advance the left.
We will never do that by whoring whatever's left of our principles and beliefs out for a president.
----------------
Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Wheel of Misfortune."