[Peace-discuss] Obama's UIUC speech

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Os-kee Wow-Wow, Illinois.

... the yell that always thrills me
And fills my heart with joy
Is the good old Oskee wow-wow
That they yell at Illinois...

C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote:
> In a speech Friday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 
> former President Barack Obama publicly joined the escalating offensive 
> against President Trump being mounted by sections of the ruling class 
> and the state. The speech, directed at channeling both popular 
> and ruling class opposition to the Trump administration behind the 
> Democrats in the fall midterm elections, marked Obama’s first direct 
> attack on his successor.
>
> Obama’s speech came as the culmination of a series of extraordinary 
> events over the past two weeks that have brought the acute political 
> crisis in the US to a new and explosive level of intensity.
>
> First came the week-long spectacle of bipartisan hypocrisy and 
> political reaction occasioned by the death of Republican Senator John 
> McCain, one of the most ferocious war-mongers in the US 
> political establishment. Democrats sought to outdo the Republicans in 
> eulogizing McCain as an “American hero” and model statesman.
>
> Within two days of McCain’s burial, the media was ablaze with 
> revelations from the forthcoming book on the Trump White House 
> by Washington Posteditor Bob Woodward. Woodward, citing 
> anonymous interviews with high-ranking Trump officials, paints a 
> picture of turmoil and dysfunction in which figures such as Defense 
> Secretary James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly call 
> Trump an idiot. Woodward recounts incidents of Trump administration 
> officials countermanding orders from the president, a 
> situation Woodward characterizes as an “administrative coup d’état.”
> This was followed by the New York Times’ publication of an op-ed piece 
> by an anonymous “senior official” in the Trump administration 
> describing the activities of an internal “resistance” to Trump within 
> the White House. The piece cited discussions among Trump aides about 
> seeking his removal on the grounds of mental incompetence, as 
> stipulated in the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. It made clear 
> that the “resistance,” promoted by the Timesand the Democrats, 
> supports Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, removal of 
> corporate regulations and increase in military spending. It attacks 
> Trump for his “softness” toward Russia and North Korea and his overall 
> impulsiveness, unpredictability and recklessness.
> Obama’s speech was along similar lines. He presented an absurdly 
> potted history of American progress on the basis of the “free market,” 
> with, he acknowledged, some imperfections—such as the wars in 
> Vietnam and Iraq (which killed millions of people). His administration 
> was supposedly part of this march of progress.
>
> He cited as evidence of his own progressive record the extra-judicial 
> murder of Osama bin-Laden and his engineering of the “recovery” from 
> the 2008 financial crisis. He reiterated his theme of 2016 that 
> “things were great” in America by the time he left office.
>
> “And by the time I left office, household income was near its all-time 
> high, and the uninsured rate hit an all-time low, poverty rates were 
> falling. I mention this just so when you hear how great the economy 
> is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started.”
>
> Obama made no attempt explain why, despite his tireless efforts on 
> behalf of ordinary Americans, the Democratic Party lost control of 
> both houses of Congress during his administration and disgust with the 
> Democratic Party was so intense that the billionaire conman and 
> semi-fascist Trump was able to pose as a friend of working people and 
> win the 2016 election.
>
> The reality, of course, is that Obama presided over the funneling of 
> trillions of dollars to Wall Street to rescue the financial oligarchy, 
> carrying out the greatest redistribution of wealth from the bottom 
> to the top in history. This was paid for by wage cuts and the 
> destruction of decent-paying jobs, replaced by poverty-wage, 
> part-time and temporary employment, the gutting of health benefits for 
> millions of workers under “Obamacare,” pension cuts, the closure 
> of thousands of public schools and layoff of tens of thousands of 
> teachers, and a general lowering of the living standards of the 
> working class.
>
> Trump’s attacks on democratic rights were prepared by Obama’s brutal 
> policy of deportations, his continuation of indefinite detention and 
> the Guantanamo torture camp, his support for mass domestic spying and 
> his program of drone assassinations, including of US citizens. The 
> wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were continued and new wars were launched 
> in Libya and Syria.
>
> According to Obama, however, Trump was a radical departure from this 
> wave of “progress,” a “symptom” of the “politics of fear and 
> resentment.” It was the “powerful and privileged” pushing back. 
> Obama criticized Trump for “cutting taxes on the wealthy, unwinding 
> regulations and shrinking the safety net,” focusing however on the 
> swelling of the deficit.
>
> He did not try to reconcile this account with his own reaction to the 
> 2016 elections, which he called an “intramural scrimmage” between two 
> sides of the “same team.”
>
> Obama saved his most biting criticism for Trump’s supposed softness 
> toward Russia, appealing in the process to the tradition of cold war 
> anti-communism.
>
> “They’re undermining our alliances,” he declared, “cozying up to 
> Russia. What happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing 
> principle in foreign policy was the fight against communism, and 
> now they’re cozying up to the former head of the KBG.”
>
> Alluding to the concocted narrative of “Russian meddling” in US 
> elections, Obama denounced Trump and congressional Republicans for 
> “actively blocking legislation that would defend our elections 
> from Russian attack.”
>
> The central focus of Obama’s speech was an appeal to disaffected 
> Republicans and conservatives to vote for the Democratic Party in the 
> fall. He went out of his way to denounce Trump for attacking the 
> Justice Department, which is spearheading the witch hunt against 
> immigrants, and the FBI.
>
> He declared: “But I am here to tell you that even if you don’t agree 
> with me or Democrats on policy, even if you believe in more 
> libertarian economic theories, even if you are an evangelical and our 
> position of certain social issues is a bridge too far, even if you 
> think my assessment of immigration is mistaken and the Democrats 
> aren’t serious enough about immigration enforcement, I’m here to tell 
> you that you should still be concerned with our current course 
> and should still want to see a restoration of honesty and decency and 
> lawfulness in our government. It should not be Democratic or Republican.”
>
> In making this right-wing appeal, Obama took a swipe at the Sanders 
> wing of the Democratic Party. “I’ll be honest,” he said, “sometimes I 
> get into arguments with progressive friends about what the 
> current political moment requires. There are well-meaning folks 
> passionate about social justice who think things have gotten so 
> bad, the lines have been so starkly drawn, that we have to fight fire 
> with fire… I don’t agree with that.”
> These events have underscored two basic facts: there is absolutely 
> nothing progressive or democratic in either of the warring camps, and 
> the methods being employed by Trump’s ruling class 
> opponents, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, are themselves deeply 
> undemocratic. They are the methods of a palace coup.
>
> In so far as the resolution of the political crisis gripping the US 
> capitalist class is left in the hands of the warring factions 
> within the ruling elite and its state apparatus, the outcome will be a 
> further turn to the right, intensified attacks on democratic 
> rights—the Democrats are already spearheading the drive for internet 
> censorship—more brutal austerity and an escalation of 
> war internationally...
>
> --Barry Grey <wsws.org <http://wsws.org>> 8 September 2018
>
>
>
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