WOW. Potentially damaging article on O here - from Asia Times. Not in US media (yet?)

[libbygurl]

Posted by newbie IowaGirl here (with reply from me):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=341223&mesg_id=341530


You can click on the link in that comment, or directly on the one one below.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html

No one in the US media has mentioned this aspect yet. I've read Asia Times online before, and it really goes pretty deep into its subject matter, more than the generally superficial treatment stories get in the US media. Has a more liberal/left perspective than usual. Very interesting opinion, and kinda makes sense.

[rodeodance]

1. don't blame anyone for not posting it in gd-p. I read atimes. like it.

[rodeodance]

2. "Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itsel"

no doubt we are in the mood for change---bo has tapped into that.
I am not sure I agree with all of this.


Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently <1>.

Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion's Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.

This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer are poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.........


Note
1. Obama bin lottery Asia Times Online, January 29, 2008.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa02.html

[libbygurl]

4. Hmm...

I'm not sure I fully comprehend what the last sentence means myself. I don't think that Americans want something for nothing, but it's the attitude of having change without people actually having to sacrifice (i.e., Bush's non-existent call to sacrifice after 9/11/01) elements in a lifestyle to achieve that change.

'When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over....'

[judaspriestess]

3. wow, is all I can say

has it been posted in GD-P?

I'm sure it would make some people's heads explode. I guess I'll start hanging around articles & editorials now

[libbygurl]

5. While I don't necessarily agree with the final part of the post...

...the analysis/opinion of O's motives and campaign thrust cannot be completely dismissed out of hand.

The view is quite different to the usual here in the US, which is why I find it fascinating. I believe there's some truth to what he says.

I won't be able to babysit the thread if I post it in GD-P, though.


Ed. for clarity.

[judaspriestess]

6. hypothetically if you were to post it in GD-P

you would be labeled a racist, Asians would be labeled a racist blah blah blah and the frenzy would begin. But I also found the article quite fascinating. I just "hope" that is not the case.

[libbygurl]

7. Oh, yes, I think you're absolutely right. These O supporters will pounce on you and tear you apart.

Interesting viewpoint the article puts out there. Rather radical, but Asia Times has been correct a lot of times about SE Asian governments, too.