[Peace-discuss] Why Obama has to do that...

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Beauty, and vitreous humor, are in the eye of the beholder.

C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Mort continues to find my opinions "vile," "noxious," "vitriolic" and 
> "despoiling this list" -- apparently because I state accurately what 
> Obama has said and describe what his administration will do, without 
> the misrepresentation ("framing") that Mort apparently prefers. He's 
> unable to show that I've misquoted Obama and continues to claim what 
> I've denied, that I'd prefer a McCain administration.
>
> As I've said all along, I think McCain is mad, bad, and dangerous to 
> know; that he'd be a "loose cannon" as president (as both Chomsky and 
> I have said, explicitly). And I think that he's a war criminal rather 
> than the war hero that Obama and the Democrats have called him.  But 
> Mort and others seem so scared of him that they're unwilling or unable 
> to see Obama for what he is -- or even have anyone else say it.
>
> Mort's intemperate language seems to suggest the "desperation of 
> Democrats": they know, perhaps tacitly and to their dismay, how much 
> the pro-war, pro-business Obama administration will continue the 
> policies of the incumbent administration; they realize (some with 
> satisfaction) that members of the vestigial anti-war movement who have 
> promoted Obama into the Senate and the presidency will have to admit 
> that they were deluded or willfully ignorant about what was going on 
> in American politics. MoveOn et al. won: the anti-war movement has 
> been co-opted for war.
>
> It's hardly necessary for me to say that I agree with the comment by 
> Chomsky below.  I've said it several times; Mort has even posted this 
> particular passage before.  And I've defended "lesser evil" arguments 
> in the abstract and in this particular case.  Mort seems to substitute 
> repeating these charges for defending Obama's (admittedly 
> indefensible) views. Will he finally be ready to talk about those 
> views -- and attack them -- after Tuesday?
>
> (Incidentally, there's a suggestive error in the transcription: the 
> "lessor [sic] of two evils" would be someone who provides space [for 
> rent] for two evil enterprises -- which could still be Obama, with the 
> evils being pro-war and pro-business policies...)  --CGE
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> The desperation of Republicans (e.g., by the local N-G) as the 
>> electoral campaign winds down is paralleled by this noxious piece, 
>> which ends up expressing no alarm (even hoping for?) at a 
>> MaCain-Palin presidency. If only Carl read more carefully what his 
>> mentor Chomsky has expressed recently in Z-Magazine, Nov., 2008:
>>
>>
>> David Barsamian asks:
>>
>> /…So, realistically, whichever candidate is elected, can a president 
>> make a difference?/
>>
>> NC:  /Oh, yes. Presidents make differences. In fact, over time there 
>> are systematic differences between Republicans and Democrats. So, for 
>> example, if you look over a long stretch, fairly consistently, when 
>> there is a Democratic president, there is a level of benefits for the 
>> majority of the population. Wages are a little better, benefits are a 
>> little better, for the large majority. When the Republicans are in 
>> office, it's the other way around. There are benefits, but for the 
>> super rich. The same is true for civil rights and other things. It's 
>> a consistent difference, even though they're within a narrow spectrum. /
>> / //The same is true in international affairs…  I don't doubt that 
>> there would be some difference between an Obama and a McCain 
>> presidency. The McCain presidency you can't predict very well because 
>> he's a loose cannon. It could be pretty threatening./
>>
>> DB: /What do you think of the lessor of two evils argument?/
>>
>> NC: /It depends whether you care about human beings and their fate. 
>> If you careabout human beings and their fate, you will support the 
>> lessor of two evils, not mechanically, because there are other 
>> considerations. For example, there could be an argument for a protest 
>> vote if it were a step towards building a significant alternative to 
>> the choice between two factions of the business party, both of them 
>> to the right of the population on most issues. If there were such an 
>> alternative, there could be an argument for not voting or for voting 
>> for the third alternative. But it's a delicate judgement. On the 
>> other hand, there is nothing immoral about voting for the lesser of 
>> two evils. In a powerful system like ours, small changes can lead to 
>> big consequences./
>> …
>>
>> If only Carl were as equally nuanced and careful  as his professed 
>>  intellectual mentor! He is in my view despoiling this list serve 
>> with vitriolic rants.
>>
>> On Nov 2, 2008, at 12:50 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>> Look, gang, let's get one argument out of the way up front.  As soon 
>>> as The One is elected President, there are going to be a lot of 
>>> self-styled activists after him NOT to do the things that he's 
>>> promised to do -- like killing people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 
>>> continuing the occupation of Iraq, delivering money to Wall Street, 
>>> and paying off insurance companies for a health program that won't 
>>> even cover everybody (while leaving most people subject to their 
>>> employers in order to get it).  The crazy leftist filmmaker Michael 
>>> Moore (while not of course really criticizing The One) actually said 
>>> that he hoped Obama would break his campaign promises!
>>>
>>> Now we've gotta understand why Obama can't do that.  First of all, 
>>> it would be dishonest.  He's campaigned all along as the anti-war 
>>> candidate who would expand the war and the military and kill more 
>>> people in the Middle East -- including places where the Bush 
>>> administration is just taking baby-steps in killing, like Pakistan.  
>>> He's the candidate of "ordinary people" who lobbied for the Wall 
>>> Street bailout while explicitly excluding help to people losing 
>>> their homes. And he's the advocate for health care who has a plan 
>>> that will provide less coverage than the plan that Republican Mitt 
>>> Romney put in place when he was governor of Massachusetts.  Obama's 
>>> got to pay off (so to speak) on these promises.
>>>
>>> But the second reason is even more important.  Think about what the 
>>> Republicans are going to do in four years.  They're going to 
>>> nominate someone for President who will be even WORSE than John 
>>> McCain -- someone like Sarah Palin, who's disgusting because she 
>>> doesn't even have the right background (the progressives say 
>>> "class") to be a government official. (Do you know she barely 
>>> graduated from any college at all?!)  Think about how terrible it 
>>> would be if someone like THAT became president.
>>>
>>> So, you see, of course Obama doesn't want to do that killing and 
>>> looting that his campaign promises commit him to, but once he gets 
>>> into office, he's gotta do that -- TO GET RE-ELECTED!
>>>
>>> --CGE
>>>
>>> PS--And please don't bother me with any more talk about how 
>>> three-quarters of the population want the Mideast war to end, don't 
>>> want the banks to be paid off, and do want real healthcare for 
>>> everybody without paying more to insurance companies.  Those are NOT 
>>> the people Obama's working for.  They're just the people he promised 
>>> that he could bring around to the interests of those whom he is 
>>> working for.  And with John McCain's help, he's done it -- a little 
>>> bit, for the moment...
>>>
>>> ###
>
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