When I went to my polling place here in Harlem I witnessed something I had never seen before. There was a line stretching out the door, down the block and around the corner. Fortunately the poll workers did an excellent job of managing the crowd and it took me no longer to vote than it did in any other presidential election year.
It was a strange day for the Obama non-fan. We were definitely left out of a very big party. It was quite moving to see people who were obviously first time voters. They were excited and engaged about the political process, some for the first time in their lives. It is good to know that it is still possible for people to be newly energized. Hopefully they can be energized to do something truly useful in the future. I don't know how they would explain their feelings, but it is certain that by voting for Obama they were upholding war and theft on a grand scale.
I know that Green party candidate Cynthia McKinney got at least one vote in New York City yesterday. I used to say that living in a solid blue state made my third and fourth and fifth party votes justifiable. Now I say that I will only vote for peace candidates. If I lived in Ohio, the swing state where I was born, I still would have voted for her. I will never again cast a vote for a war criminal. That conviction means I am disenfranchised. My vote will never count and I can only play the role of spoiler. I no longer care. I can't pretend that America's aggression around the world can be dismissed if it is carried out by the lesser of two evils.
So what do we have to look forward to? Read Black Agenda Report and find out.
"We have learned that this generation will have to learn from damn near scratch what a real social movement looks like - which will be doubly hard, since they have been misled to believe that this year's frenzied electioneering was actually a "movement." Now it is over, and one Black man is moving - into the White House, having never promised his Black supporters a single thing of significance. But of course, hardly anyone Black made any demands of Obama."
Sad but true. I fear that the situation will continue. Obama can get away with anything, and that makes him a truly dangerous man. Black America lives vicariously through him, asking and getting nothing in return. White progressives are likewise silent.
"I'll give Obama this much -- his campaign has been one of the most brilliantly conceived and cynically executed appeals I've ever seen. His propaganda team has ably exploited people's desire for HOPE and CHANGE, offering them empty platitudes which they can fill with any fantasy they choose. Even when Obama baldly states whose interests he actually serves, his followers either don't care or pretend not to hear. Besides, they bleat when pushed, Obama will be pressured to do the right thing should he stray too far from liberal concerns. The fact that he already has done this shows that claim to be as empty as Obama's speeches. The idea that libs are going to shift from genuflection to lighting fires under Obama's feet is preposterous, but fully in line with the general fantasia."
Dennis Perrin is absolutely correct. Progressives aren't interested in saying anything. I know because I used to be just like them. When Bill Clinton was president I was overjoyed to see a democrat in the White House. I excused almost everything he did because I thought that support was the only way to keep republicans at bay.
It takes one to know one. Obamites will say nothing if he bails out thieving banks or starts new wars. It will be a sad day when black Americans , ordinarily the group who opposed the empire, fall in line and make excuses. It will be a day to grieve when people who took to the streets to opposed the occupation of Iraq excuse Obama's continuation of that violation of international law and human rights.
Much of the joy comes from relief that the republicans are gone. Ding dong the witch is dead. The Bush years have been a nightmare and we are waking up from the terror.
Now we have a man in the White House who can hide his criminality with intellect and good marketing. Because he is the big money candidate the press will protect him as much as they protected Bush. McCain got the shaft because his party had fallen out of favor. Their brand is dead right now. Otherwise he would have gotten the kid glove treatment like Bush did for so long.
Stay tuned. So much is changing in the world right now. The economic meltdown has not hit bottom and new wars are in the planning stages. We will see what supposedly good people are made of.
