I have a confession to make.
I am guilty of the greatest sin of a student of history: forgetting the lessons of the past. I was seduced--reluctantly, half-heartedly, and when I absolutely should have known better. I was charmed, at least a bit, by image and illusion, into forgetting a bitter reality that eight years of activism have proven to be true again and again.
On election night, I watched thousands of ecstatic African-Americans...nay, ecstatic Americans...pour into the streets of New York, Washington, DC and other cities, overwhelmed with joy. And it melted even my cynical fuck-the-two-party-system heart. This was a historic moment, to be sure. A great barrier had fallen, and I'll admit that even I was at least partially taken in by the messianic Obama glow. Despite the warning cries of the little Marxist on my shoulder (I think it might be Peter Camejo) I started, almost, to believe that this guy was at least somewhat genuine. I know, I know! As a revolutionary socialist and a long-term third-party organizer, I of all people should know better. What can I say? The Obama phenomenon (Obamenon?) is powerful indeed. I daresay very few on the left escaped that tractor beam.
Thankfully, history saw fit to correct my momentary delusion, and hastily indeed. Obama is not even in office yet, and already he's working overtime to tarnish that shiny halo as much as possible. The sparkle started to fade with his first appointment, power Zionist Rahm Emanuel, and took a big hit when Obama decided to retain Iran-Contra-entangled former CIA director Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's heir apparent, as Secretary of Defense, and appoint mysoginist globalization guru Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council.
My fellow degenerates, we have now reached 100% disilluionment. What was the slap in the face that shook me out of the temporary hypnosis that foolishly made me believe we could expect any genuine change from the two-party system? Why, of course, Obama's choice to appoint anti-gay, anti-abortion evangelical zealot Rick Warren to give the invocation on Inauguration Day.
Who, might you ask, is Rick Warren? He is not just your average crazy Christian. He is the pastor of Saddleback Church, the Orange County megachurch that provided a significant portion of the money and foot soldiers behind Prop 8.
Your next question, quite justifiably, might be, why? Why, out of all the thousands of religious leaders in the US, did Obama decide to pick this guy? Because he's only too eager to pander to the Christian right? Because he doesn't care nearly as much about the activist base that propelled him to victory as they do about him? Because he thinks that progressives will continue to fogive him because they're so happy to be rid of Bush? Or D, all of the above?
Obama might feel like a rock star right now, but if you ask me, he is playing with fire. When you build up people's hopes and dreams and then dash them, when you hold out the promise of a better world and then snatch it away, people tend to get angry. Professional liberals are already in a tizzy of hurt and confusion over how Obama's administration is shaping up. And recent events--from the surge of Prop 8 protests, to the Republic factory occupation, to the current occupation of the New School--have shown how quickly the deep anger churning under the surface of US society can flare up.
If Obama is not careful, I think there is a good chance he will be remembered not as a Lincoln or a Kennedy, but as much more like another liberal who rode to victory on a wave of dicontent with war, racism and inequality--Lyndon B. Johnson--who, coincidentally, holds the record for the largest inagural crowd in history. 1.2 million people descended on Washington to watch him take office in January 1965, aglow with his promises of a War on Poverty. Instead, Johnson delivered a war in Vietnam and an increasingly violent crackdown on the protest movements of the '60s--in many cases, on the very people who had helped him get elected just a few years earlier. The result was four years of rage--and the Democrats' loss in 1968, as their young, progressive base came to the realization that they change they wanted was something that politicians were neither interested in nor capable of delivering.
Of course, no one can predict what an Obama administration will bring, and it's useless and simplistic to try to fit the template of history past onto the current situation. Indeed, in many ways, the world we live in today is far more volatile than America in the 1960s. I am indeed hopeful for the years ahead. I think change is on the horizon. But not at all--indeed, least of all--because of who is in the White House.
Sing it sister. I knew this was coming, I knew I couldn't vote Dem and therefore didn't.. but still on election night I cried with all the liberals and lefties.. I had hope, even for that brief week that maybe change would come. Not the change we imagined sitting in night cafe until close drinking gin and tonics dreaming of the revolution.. but a change. which is better than no change. But... alas, we knew better. Sighhhh.. Doesn't it suck how predictable American Democracy/ Capitalism has become?
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