Election 2012: A post mortem

Did you really want to face Mitt Romney and his gang? The ex-private equity CEO, company-killer, tax cuts for the rich enthusiast? The truth is, what Obama did was outflank and out-bullshit all these smart-ass white guys that voted for Romney, thinking they were a winner like Mitt was, on the money, no more taxes, the fix is in, all that and more, denial of women’s reproductive rights, denial of equality in the work place and so on.

But what the comfortably well-off, nouveau riche and old money guys didn’t remember was that the rest of the white gals and guys (not so rich, middle-class or poor) voted for Obama, including blacks, Latinos, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Mexicans, and everyone one else swinging loose in our daily economic Hurricane Sandy.

Yet, I don’t’ think that black activist Glen Ford, writing in the blackagendareport is trying too hard to be radical black in his piece, Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil, when he writes, “Let me say from the very beginning that we at Black Agenda Report do not think that Barack Obama is the Lesser Evil. He is the more Effective Evil.” What Ford says has an uncomfortable reality, like . . .

“He [Obama] has been more effective in Evil-Doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power, and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks—just as he hired himself out to do.

“That was always Wall Street’s expectation of Obama, and his promise to them. That’s why they gave him far more money in 2008 than they gave John McCain. They were buying Obama futures on the electoral political market—and they made out like bandits.

“They invested in Obama to protect them from harm, as a hedge against the risk of systemic disaster caused by their own predations. And, it was a good bet, a good deal. It paid out in the tens of trillions of dollars.

“If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama’s service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it. . . .”

Funny, this sounds somewhat like my last piece for Intrepid Report, Those Election Day blues, in which I enumerate the pros and cons of voting for Obama as the lesser of two evils, listing his sins as well as (to me) saving graces. Although, Ford brings some new sins to the table and dissects them. Yet, a friend did send me Ford’s article in response to mine, maybe for me to compare notes.

Ford writes as if Huey and Stokeley, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were not gone, just vanished a while in the fog of time, as if we could call on them and the Black Power movement for courage. But I guess Obama was different and beat the rich white boys at their own game, working in the system while retaining his 2008 base staff to shore up any voter losses.

Moreover, at the end of the day, facing the prospect of Romney and Ryan, Obama’s mix of voters, people of all classes, colors and ethnicities began to look real good to me. If the Repugs hadn’t become so scary right-wing, not only to women, but to older people on Social Security, Medicare, even Medicaid—if they had looked even half-human (not like tea party thugs), Romneyites might have had half a chance.

Also, the Republicans shot themselves in the foot with that circus called the primaries, in which they paraded out a stage full of bizarros, from Herman Cain through Ron Paul, the sanest but oldest. We (those of us who attempted to watch it) shunned it after one or two viewings, the craziness in all shades. By the time they nominated Romney and Ryan, the Mormon and Catholic dynamic duo, with enough god-bless-you anger to knock over a dinosaur, people were thinking strange things are happening here.

Yet there was Obama with his wife and two daughters playing it straight at the Democratic convention, owning the mid-ground where Mitt wanted to be. What Mitt didn’t want blown was the news of him hiding money in Bermuda, Cayman, and Swiss accounts to dodge paying income tax. That stuck in every working person’s craw. But obviously Glen Ford, and I guess I can’t blame him, couldn’t forget a few things either about Obama.

Notably, that Obama had made his pact with the Wall Street Devil. As he writes, “He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks—just as he hired himself out to do . . .”

He adds a touch of irony, “Power to the people!”

Yet, who are the people here except those who voted Obama in for a second term, myself included, frankly freaked by the White Republican Mafia.

Ford’s most powerful statement comes when he talks about Obama’s war-making: “The real Obama was the initiator of this Austerity nightmare—a nightmare scripted on Wall Street, which provided the core of Obama’s policy team from the very beginning. That’s why Obama’s so-called Financial Reform was so diligent in making sure that Derivatives were virtually untouched.

“The real Obama retained Bush’s Secretary of War, because he was determined to re-package the imperial enterprise and expand the scope and theaters of war.

“He would dress up the war machine head-to-foot in a Chador of Humanitarianism, and march deep and deeper into Africa.

“He would make merciless and totally unprovoked war against Libya—and then tell Congress there had been no war at all, and it was none of their business, anyway.

“And he got away with it.

“Now, that is the Most Effective Evil war mongering imaginable. Don’t you dare call him a Lesser Evil. Obama is Awesomely Evil.” It’s tough to argue this.

And it is strange stuff to read, coming from a black man’s pen. But the irony is real and certainly Ford has every right to call ‘em as he sees them, as I do. I didn’t agree with Obama’s obscene violation and destruction of Libya either or the NDAA or the Afghanistan surge. But as Election Day approached, I may have softened at the last minute and given him a pass for jumping into Hurricane Sandy’s wreckage to supply FEMA with relief funds. Yet, the moral gravitas of Ford is exemplified in many examples in this piece you should read, especially his closing words on Obama:

“If you are going to fight for anything, you’ve got to fight for the right to fight. That means fighting for the rule of law. So, if you don’t plan to go underground or into exile anytime soon, you must fight the president who claims the right to imprison or kill any person, of any nationality, any place on Earth, for reasons known only to him. The man who excelled George Bush by shepherding preventive detention through Congress—Barack Obama, the More Effective Evil.”

Then, too, I remembered that sinking feeling watching CNN when Romney started getting out front first in the electoral and popular vote on the big digital map. I got that queasy Titanic feeling Obama was losing. But then the red states miraculously started turning to blue states and Wolf Blitzer’s sidekick started touching the map to show that counties won by Romney were not populous but the ones Obama was winning were.

And, all of a sudden there was a turn, and the ship of state looked blue as the sky not red as blood. The numbers for Obama caught up with Romney’s, both the electoral and popular votes, and Obama’s numbers started passing Mitt’s. It looked like the hand of God, but it was just Blitzer’s anchorman. Yet the rest became history and a sigh of relief.

Yet, I thought what of ex-Bush brain Karl Rove strategizing for Mitt, the Koch Brothers hemorrhaging money into his Super PACs, Donald Trump making Obama a five million dollar offer to show his college records and passport, Schmucks Are Us incorporated. And, after all that money spent, they were getting soaked by higher (or lower) powers. And Ford’s words came back:

“If you are going to fight for anything, you’ve got to fight for the right to fight. That means fighting for the rule of law. So, if you don’t plan to go underground or into exile anytime soon, you must fight the president who claims the right to imprison or kill any person, of any nationality, any place on Earth, for reasons known only to him. The man who excelled George Bush by shepherding preventive detention through Congress—Barack Obama, the More Effective Evil.”

There was no backing off on the truth, for Ford. As he put it, “No genuine anti-war activist can endorse the war-maker, Obama. If you want to resist actual imperial wars, you must fight Obama. Period. Anything else is to endorse or acquiesce in his wars.”

Jesus, this was pedal to the metal stuff. Rough for real. It seemed as if it were all coming back, what we were just getting rid of . . . the wars, the drones, the chance of immediate arrest anywhere for anything you might have done considered seditious.

But was Glen Ford really ready to do what he wrote? I hope this wasn’t political posturing. If so, then what was my article? White on white? And was the embodiment of the past four years reviving? That tall grinning man, the equally tall strong wife, and two innocent, tall girls. How deep can you go with this memory? Victory night was like a dream, with millions of people screaming and cheering in Chicago bars and New York’s Times Square for Obama. Did I really live through the first four years? Will we make it through a second term? Or will we get caught in the shredder of our own dissidence?

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.