[Peace-discuss] Another Obama seduction

[C. G. Estabrook]

Obama spoke tonight of "...our need to earn back the trust of the American people that has been lost over the last few weeks..."

It's an interesting phrase. Compare its use in his audition piece for the presidency, "Audacity of Hope," where Obama wrote that “the greatest casualty of that war [in Vietnam] was the bond of trust between the American people and their government.” 

(Paul Street, who quotes the remark, comments, “as if the deaths of millions of Indochinese and 58,000 U.S. GIs were secondary and as if popular American skepticism towards the designs of the U.S. foreign policy establishment isn’t a sign of democratic health.”) 

Obama sees his job accurately as to restore that “trust between the American people and their government” in regard to his war-making as well as his exploitative economic policies. The problem is that those vicious policies serve the interests of the 1% and are directly opposed to the interests of the great majority, here and abroad. 

His job - and in some sense, he understands it - is to lie to the American people and pretend that that is not the case. "Earning back the trust" means nothing less than hoodwinking the American people once again.

<http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/10/16/full-transcript-president-obama-remarks-senate-vote-reopen-government/XQQLH9hE1vosGTJMVm7hFI/story.html>