[Peace-discuss] Rep. Rodney Davis responds on Dent-Price Iran diplomacy letter

[Carl G. Estabrook]

From my earliest readings in history - long before I read any Marx - I was skeptical of "great-man" theories.

That view was solidified for me by an author of whom I was otherwise not very fond, Elias Canetti, who wrote, "For every great name in history, a hundred others might have been substituted: there is never any lack of men who are talented and wicked." That still seems right to me.

In this case, that means that, if the infant Obama had been blown to bits in his cradle (wherever it was) - as some of his victims were - the current crimes of the American government probably wouldn't be much different.      

That's not to say that we can't analyze the role that Obama has actually played. Only some vulgar Marxists (if they exist) are purported to believe in a priori history. But Marx himself wrote, "People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past." 

I admit that I was skeptical about Obama from early on. It was a dispute about him that led to a schism in AWARE in 2005, a schism I exacerbated by describing it to a yet-unknowing world in the pages of the News-Gazette and CounterPunch ("Illinois Anti-Warriors and the Attractive Senator" <http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/09/29/illinois-anti-warriors-and-the-attractive-senator/>)

Examining one's conscience and recalling one's sins is a salutary exercise, but as I review that article, all I would change would be the obvious errors, like the name of the new Chief Justice. Or no, not all: Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), as Congressional representative from Montana, was the only person to vote against US entry to WWI and WWII; asked late in life if she had any regrets, she said, "I wish I'd been nastier."

Since I think the poets often get there first, I thought then (and do now) that Obama was prefigured by Melville's 1857 novel 'The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade.'

So I do think that one of the most surprising American political facts of the moment is that so many people - primarily in the American political class - are NSAO. Who would have thought that Obama could have taken the most despised policies of his predecessor, make them more vicious and widespread (become "the more effective evil," as Glen Ford says) - and be praised by the very people who excoriated his predecessor? That seems to me unparalleled, at least in recent American history. When Nixon tried to do something similar 40 years ago, he was forced to resign.

"A major, major criminal," Chomsky calls Obama (along with the other living US presidents).

The late Alex Cockburn used to ask, "Is your hatred pure?*" Mine never was, another way in which I failed the standard he and others set.  

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.  --CGE

_____________________________
* Which reminds me of a story from the much-missed Alex, three years ago:

'...I blame the progressives for pumping Obama up in the first place.  Realism is the first, best tool in politics.

'Which brings me briefly to Ed Miliband, now chosen to be the leader of the British Labor Party. The last time I saw Eddie he was an intern at the Nation in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Round the corner from the Nation when it was on Fifth and 13th st in Manhattan was Zinno’s restaurant and amid a pleasant lunch with JoAnWypijewski, my own intern Richie McKerrow and Eddie, I asked the future leader what I asked all interns as a matter of form, “Eddie, is your hate pure?” 

'...It was a good way of assaying interns. The feisty ones would respond excitedly, “Yes, my hate is pure.”  I put the question to Eddie Miliband. He gaped at me in shock like Gussie Fink-Nottle [a P. G. Wodehouse character] watching one of his newts vanish down the plug hole in his bath. “I…I… don’t hate anyone, Alex,” he stammered. It’s all you need to know. English capitalism will be safe in his hands, assuming he ever grasps the levers of what passes for power in 10 Downing Street. It is very hard to imagine him as prime minister. He’s forever Fink-Nottle to me.' 

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/01/obama-s-dud-svengali/>


On Jul 22, 2013, at 3:38 PM, "Szoke, Ronald Duane" <r-szoke at illinois.edu> wrote:

> As a sometime student of sophistry I too was puzzled by the weird taunt  of Bob N.  But the trajectory of Carl's recent posts appears to be in the direction of ever-more obsessive accusations against almost everybody that they are not sufficiently anti-Obama (NSAO).  I think this is why more & more people report resentment at being bullied in this way & ignoring Carl's posts, or deleting them on  sight (or asking to be taken off the mailing list). 
> 
> Note that is note will be followed in a few minutes (seconds?)  by another "soft on the child-killer Obama" rant & sneer-jeer-smear routine in which Carl has the last word. (Watch this space.)  The iron determinism with which this operates is remarkable.  Carl will then believe himself to have refuted & discredited someone else in a completely definitive & dispositive way, even if nobody else does.  So it goes . . . .
> 
> -- Ron
>