The election that was supposed to be too close to call turned out not to be so close after all. In my opinion, Obama won for two reasons: (1) Obama is non-threatening and inclusive, whereas Romney exuded a “us vs. them” impression that many found threatening, and (2) the election was not close enough for the electronic voting machines to steal.
As readers know, I don’t think that either candidate is a good choice or that either offers a choice. Washington is controlled by powerful interest groups, not by elections. What the two parties fight over is not alternative political visions and different legislative agendas, but which party gets to be the whore for Wall Street, the military-security complex, Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and energy, mining, and timber interests.
Being the whore is important, because whores are rewarded for the services that they render. To win the White House or a presidential appointment is a career-making event as it makes a person sought after by rich and powerful interest groups. In Congress, the majority party can provide more services and is thus more valuable than the minority party. One of our recent presidents who was not rich ended up with $36 million shortly after leaving office, as did former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who served Washington far better than he served his own country.
Wars are profitable for the military/security complex. Israel rewards its servants and punishes its enemies. Staffing environmental regulatory agencies with energy, mining, and timber executives is regarded by those interests as very friendly behavior.
Many Americans understand this and do not bother to vote as they know that whichever candidate or party wins, the interest groups prevail. Ronald Reagan was the last president who stood up to interest groups, or, rather, to some of them. Wall Street did not want his tax rate reductions, as Wall Street thought the result would be higher inflation and interest rates and the ruination of their stock and bond portfolios. The military/security complex did not want Reagan negotiating with Gorbachev to end the cold war.
What is curious is that voters don’t understand how politics really works. They get carried away with the political rhetoric and do not see the hypocrisy that is staring them in the face. Proud patriotic macho American men voted for Romney who went to Israel and, swearing allegiance to his liege lord, groveled at the feet of Netanyahu. Obama plays on the heart strings of his supporters by relating a story of a child with leukemia now protected by Obamacare, while he continues to murder thousands of children and their parents with drones and other military actions in seven countries. Obama was able to elicit cheers from supporters as he described the onward and upward path of America toward greater moral accomplishments, while his actual record is that of a tyrant who codified into law the destruction of the US Constitution and the civil liberties of the American people.
The election was about nothing except who gets to serve the interest groups. The wars were not an issue in the election. Washington’s provoking of Iran, Russia, and China by surrounding them with military bases was not an issue. The unconstitutional powers asserted by the executive branch to detain citizens indefinitely without due process and to assassinate them on suspicion alone were not an issue in the election. The sacrifice of the natural environment to timber, mining, and energy interests was not an issue, except to promise more sacrifice of the environment to short-term profits. Out of one side of the mouth came the nonsense promise of restoring the middle class while from the other side of the mouth issued defenses of the offshoring of their jobs and careers as free trade.
The inability to acknowledge and to debate real issues is a threat not only to the United States but also to the entire world. Washington’s reckless pursuit of hegemony driven by an insane neoconservative ideology is leading to military confrontation with Russia and China. Eleven years of gratuitous wars with more on the way and an economic policy that protects financial institutions from their mistakes have burdened the US with massive budget deficits that are being monetized. The US dollar’s loss of the reserve currency role and hyperinflation are plausible consequences of disastrous economic policy.
How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” can hold a presidential election without any discussion of these very real and serious problems being part of it? How can anyone be excited or made hopeful about such an outcome?
Copyright © 2012 Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. His home page is paulcraigroberts.org.
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I think it likely that the infamous tape of Romney dissing 47% of the U.S. population was planted by someone representing the large oligarchical interests, immaterial of which “party” might have been involved.
That gaffe alone took a huge chunk of support away from Romney – in fact almost too much. And so I believe that the puppeteers, aided by their complete control of the MSM, engineered election commentary to make it seem much closer between the two candidates. Why? Simply to keep the focus on “horse race” issues, and prevent time within a more one-sided “race” for attention to roam and possibly hit on significant issues hiding behind the curtains – e,g, drone war / NDAA / climate / etc.
IMO Obama has been their man since before the 2008 election. Since he’s been phenomenally successful in achieving many of the aims of suppression & complete control of the population, there was no way they’d allow him to go down to defeat. So they threw money at Romney while concerting their actions toward clinching it for Obama.
Thus Obama remains Trojan Horse in Chief – even after 4 years functioning as such in plain sight. The problem with the sight thing is that the majority of his followers have blinded themselves to all but the illusion they have of his fulfilling in some perverted way the legacy of MLK.
The sheep/lemming depiction of voters is well-earned in cases such as this.
Now climate change looms as the greatest ally to progressive thinking and actions. The people have become so dumbed-down and programmed that only increasing shocks, such as Hurricane Sandy, representing the consequences of our dereliction of duty to protect the environment, seem to be the only way to “rattle the public cage” violently enough to get them to open their eyes to what’s been in front of them for so many years.
Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, notes that 527 groups existed well before the high court’s ruling in Citizen’s United. The traditional issue groups, though, are focused entirely on specific interests, rather than on electing Republicans or Democrats more broadly.
Halleluiah! Obama won! Proving there is still hope for we the people of the United States and all others around Earth. Now we shall see what Obama is really made of, whether he is the wimp, opportunist, warmonger and human rights usurper many said he was during his first term, or whether he was merely a wise president doing what he had to do to survive a first term and get reelected in the real world of politics. Income, dividend and estate tax rates for large corporations and the elite rich should now be raised, ideally back to where they were in 1981 when Ronald Reagan rode into Washington to set in motion the greatest transfer of wealth and power from the relatively poor to the relatively rich in human history; and expenses must be cut, especially military expenses, to start balancing the budget. If necessary to make significant long-run progress President Obama should let the federal government fall off the so-called cliff when 2013 arrives, by implementing the Budget Control Act of 2011, agreed to by a majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats and signed into law by Obama, entailing across the board budget reductions and eliminating the Bush II tax cuts for the elite rich. Most likely implementing this law will not seriously reduce economic growth in the short run from what it otherwise would have been and will provide the federal government short run cash savings and inflows for creating infrastructure jobs—to jumpstart the US economy back to acceptable levels of employment as soon as possible! Most important, implementing the Budget Control Act of 2011 will teach irresponsible Republican extremists in Washington a lesson about how to run a government, who now, thanks to President Obama’s reelection, under the US Constitution, can seize no more than one-third of the legislative power.