The Revolution will not be Barack Obama !

The Revolution will not be Barack Obama | Anarchist news dot org

The Revolution will not be Barack Obama
Submitted by worker on Fri, 2008-04-04 13:41.
Tags:

* Opinion
* Politics of the State
* The Left

From Infoshop - By bigg

Barack Obama is a figment of your imagination. Okay, I’m pretty sure he really exists, but the point is this: the messiah, the progressive dream candidate who is going to magically save the United States and return us to the good old days of being a benevolent, peace-loving world power— wait, was this before or after Vietnam? Before or after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Before or after the war with the Philippines? The war with Mexico? Slavery? The Indigenous Genocide? Anyway, that’s not the point— Barack Obama is not who you imagine him to be.

Let this in no way be mistaken for an endorsement for Hilary “the Hawk” Clinton or John McCain— a man who actually found it funny to sing about bombing Iran, a bombing would result in the deaths of untold innocent children, women and men— nor is it an endorsement of any third party candidates: green, socialist or otherwise. This is simply an honest talk about Barack Obama.
[A real revolutionary dies young]

Americans of all stripes are lining up behind the myth that is Barack Obama. Why is this? Well, he represents “change”, he gives us “hope”, oooh, and he talks so well. That me be good and fine in so far as running a campaign, but what does this man really represent? Okay, you say he represents “change”, but what changes will he make?

As an anarchist (and, I hope all anarchists reading this will agree) I would never support a candidate and I think as such all anarchists are in a unique position to view this Obama cult worship as exactly that— a cult, a fiction, a nice little story to fit in your ballot box.

Okay, the guy is black— okay, half-black, but hey, in our country one drop counts!— but does that mean he will magically make the United States a better place for all African-Americans? For all minorities? For that matter would having Hillary Clinton in the White House mean sexism will magically cease to exist? Were that the case I would gladly vote for the dynamic duo of Obama/Clinton in ’08 and sit proudly (idly by) as our new masters were sworn in and racism and sexism became something of the past. But having a black man in office will not change the facts of racism, much as a woman in office will not rid us of sexism. I’m Irish (and Italian) and I am pretty sure that having John F. Kennedy elected did little to change the status of the Irish (or Catholics as a whole) in the United States. He did get shot, though (fuck me— imagine the cult of Obama post-assassination, I shudder at the thought).

Time to get real. Barack Obama isn’t going to help realize my dreams of a world without hierarchy, coercion or capitalism (duh) but, will he accomplish the dreams of even a liberal democrat? No, no he will not. Why? (1) Because he has consistently voted in favor of continuing the war in Iraq, (2) Because he is not going to repeal NAFTA or other free trade agreements, strip corporations of their powers or give any real leverage to the American working class, (3) Because he is obviously unwilling to address real discrimination based on race (or gender, or class, or sexual orientation), (4) Because he will not grant consenting adults the right to marry, (5) Because he consistently resorts to taking hard-line stances against Iran, (6) Because he will not address the fact that car culture (fuck it, industrial capitalism as a whole) is destroying our landbase and forcing us to wage wars against sovereign nations, (7) Because he will not seriously alter the prison-industrial complex or declare an end to the war on drugs (i.e. a war on communities he claims to represent), (8) Because he will not end government funding of the military-industrial complex (i.e. the war on brown people world-wide), (9) Because he voted in favor of reauthorizing the Patriot Act, (10) Because he will not end the Green Scare, the war on “eco-terrorists” (i.e. the only sane people left in this country) nor will he end his support of the real terrorists (read: corporations) destroying what little remains of the natural world here in the United States.

I could go on, but by now you’re probably bored (I know I am) and you probably get the point. Barack Obama does not represent change. He represents the standard quo. No, he isn’t George Bush, but he is part of the same machine, and you know what? They need one another. Because without the labels Republican and Democrat, what do we have? Just a bunch of candidates fighting to be the spokesperson for the only political party America has ever known: the Capitalist Party.