Obama As Lesser Devil

LET’S BE ZEHR KLAR: I DID NOT VOTE ROMNEY.

In 2010, a black lady, an accountant, in a town hall meeting, declared she voted for Obama, but now regretted it, as nothing much had changed. Obama, on automatic, flashed his standard mile wide smile, before realizing, too late, that his beaming attitude was not appropriate to the serious mien of his interlocutor.

Telegenic does not a genius make. Obama’s tenure was abysmal, compared to what should have been. Obama was awed by current of thoughts that were pretty much bipartisan, long established, revering Reagan, plutocracy. The buttler approved of them.

Serious People Fleece Together
Smile & The Sheep Shall Follow

(Un)democratic and (Un)republican controlled congresses both signed on all these policies for years. And therefore the deficit! What did Obama start? Obamacare aka Romneycare?

The auto rescue (good), rescue of the banks (good), just as the sinking of homeowners, rescue of the banksters, Patriot Act, drone strikes on civilians, tax cuts for the rich (all very bad): all started under G. W. Bush.

The question of love is a vast subject. Obama’s sycophants, feigning love, did not help him, nor did they help the polis. I do not see myself as unloving, nor do I see myself as angry. However, I think passion is important to generate creative thinking. Broadcasting abstract creative thinking, when not connected to profit, is intrinsically mass loving, because only to the masses it is addressed, and only love is present as the gift that keeps on giving.

Obama needed a greater aura he could trust to counter-balance the errant oligarchies, but, differently from Pericles, had apparently none. Thus Obama presided over the wreck that fakes intellect.

I met an American in Paris. “My compatriots are such fools,” she grumbled, “they say France is a 2.5 world country. They do not realize everything was invented here, even most of the laser.” Me: “You mean Alfred Kastler discovered Optical Pumping at the same Normale Superieure lab where, 50 years later, Haroche discovered how to see light with atoms, earning him the 2012 Physics Nobel Prize?” “Yes, that’s what I mean. without optical pumping, there would be no laser.” Me:”But Kastler got a Nobel prize all to himself.” The American PhD in Paris:“Yes, well, occasionally those infeodated Swedes in Stockholm have to recognize the truth.” 

Me: “Is not the French social system too expensive?” Connie shrugged:“Well, France buys nearly all its energy outside. The oil from the Middle East, the gas from Russia. Even the uranium comes from Africa. The rare earths are bought all over the planet, France has nearly none. The USA is fortunate owning such a rich continent that it could out-Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia itself, as the right wingers have been arguing.

Plus the French president told, at the Elysee palace on Monday, the CEO of Google that Google had an outstanding tax bill of more than a billion euros. Americans have to understand they cannot go around the planet like vultures around the savannah, picking the bones of their victims clean.”

So much with the big argument that Obama is a dangerous socialist who wants to turn the USA into France. The USA uses lasers all over because Alfred Kastler in Paris found how to make optical pumping. Americans may have invented mother and apple pie, but even the laser they use on Mars is made in France (by the French defense giant Thales).

Haroche succeeded to see light with atoms, a proposition so insane that no firm would ever support it (be it only because it’s not ready for showtime in the economy). Several Physics Nobel Prizes at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for  the good and simple reason it’s associated with NCAR (National Center Atmospheric Research) where Federal funding for farfetched ideas is steady (the Connie above worked at NCAR on sun physics).

CERN, Kastler and Haroche were not financed by private plutocratic friendly universities, but by state institutions. I know lots of Nobels are attributed to American universities, in a feat of lucrative self glorification. But the judgment of history is clear: the deepest basic research tends to be state funded (something Obama somewhat violated because he got confused between medicine men trying to make a buck (Solyandra, Musk, A123, Fisker, etc.) and fundamental science… and thinking.)

Another, and very important, example are the giant governmental budgets for archeology in France. They allow us to know the ways and means of the past, hence ourselves, today (in turn they entice the rest of the planet to research archeology too).

What of the reproach Obama is a socialist? Misspelling: he is rather a socialite, the best friends banksters could have had. If Romney had been president, giving, as Obama, $8,000 billion to the banksters so they could pursue more of the same conspiracies, the democrats would have been in the streets, and Romney would have had to arrest banksters. But, with the Obama put, banksters were protected.

All economies are socialist, and they have been in the last five millennia since the West’s representative democracy exist (I’m thinking of Sumer). More or less. Why did the Papuans not develop civilization, whereas the West did? Because the West was full of socialism, whereas the Papuans concentrated on human meat recipes, however delicious, not enough a socialistic end. [See note Egypt versus cannibalism.]

What to do with the elections in the USA? I already voted, and it was NOT for Romney. The big argument in favor of Obama is that he represents the devil we know.

The Obama we have now makes us believe that he is less in love with banks and Wall Street. That is partly corroborated by Wall Street, which was the main contributor to Obama’s campaign in 2008. Apparently Wall Street is now heavily supporting Romney.

In most states, there are other candidates than Obama and Romney, such as Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The establishment, to celebrate her candidacy, arrested her several times in the last few weeks.

Evil is the label attached to the mental system that allows to override love, the human mental default state. Due to changing martial, social and environmental circumstances, all we need is NOT love always. Sometimes, evil deed is all you need, nothing else will do.

Obama could say:”I told you so! Did I not read this all over your sites? Practice evil, do what’s necessary. I love it.”

Well, no, Barry-Barack, your problem, precisely, is that you mostly did easy war, with CIA robots in Eurasian mountains, or in a senseless Afghan built-up. You, Obama, as president, did not do the hard war against mad, terrorist finance. Instead, when the banksters were on their knees, you practiced bankster worship, as your cultish association with carnivorous Wolf (UBS) and daemon Dimon (JP Morgan) amply demonstrated. And when you finally reluctantly paid lip service against mad finance, hiding behind, of all things, the financial criminal Buffet, who you personally adulate, mad finance dropped you like the sloppy butler you revealed yourself to be.

Michelle Obama:”I am confused. Patrice, are you in?” Me:”Ask not, Michelle, whether we are in or out, but whether your mind is plugged in, or not.”

***

People such as me are advocates of civilization, that is, the state that makes it possible. The state of the state is both problem, and solution. Nothing else compares.

When Obama set-up his lamentably small stimulus, he forgot, or did not know, rule number one: if it is not big enough, it may well have no effect. Rule number two is that one should have an effect that can be used as a symbol.

Say as the Hoover dam. As I asked:”Tell me Mr. big time socialist (as alleged by republicans) president, where is your Hoover dam? Obama should have concentrated on making one (North East corridor) or two (California) High Speed train line(s) work. Another symbol would have been to equip the financial damnation capital, New York City, with sea gates. Even London, another financial pirates’ den, has sea gates. And London is not threatened by hurricanes.

New York was lucky this time: it did not take a direct hit from a force five hurricane, with sustained 300 km/h winds and a fifty foot storm surge rushing in at 20 km/h. But it is sure to happen, in the fullness of time, considering the CO2 built-up. So Obabla could talk about this, and not just look smart, but be smart. Of these sort of intelligent forward thinking does the survival of civilization depend. Big time government thinking. Not just hanging around the small bore sharks in Silicon Valley, who confuse technology they did not invent with civilization they cannot stand.

Obama did not do anything much when he became president, because he was a house divided between what he knew he had to say, and his self interest, his “navigation”. Romney would certainly not fall in that hypnotic self glorification. Romney would do a lot, change everything in a few weeks. Thus, he may make a much better president. Or then Paul Ryan, his ideological VP candidate could be unleashed, and full regression yowards the jungle applied. We don’t know. 

Some have called my acerbic sounding critique of Obama “nihilistic”, and have even compared me to PM Chamberlain (supposedly too nice with Hitler, as I am supposedly to Romney). Three points about that:

1) I am not nihilistic. Quite the opposite. Obama has a high nihilistic index relative to me.

2) Chamberlain was not the worst PM of the 1930s, far from it. He was from the other side of the pro-Nazi divide (after the UK got rid of those who were too clearly pro-Nazi in 1936). In his argument with Chruschill about the Air Force, Chamberlain was right about developping the new planes versus mass producing the old ones, as Churchill wanted. Simply, at Munich in 1938, the UK was strictly unable to go to war… having no Air Force, and no Army, among other problems. Churchill was rather pro-Nazi in the 1920s, BTW….

3) What is needed in USA politics is normal people getting in it, not through elections (that’s close to hopeless, see prop 37 in California), but through everyday awareness and protest. As long as USA politics is the exclusive province of a few thousands professionals instead of 200 million citizens, the march towards plutocracy will proceed…

With Obama in power, one may always dream that the left would finally wake up, and help him with a spine. Probably we would just get Romney light. That’s more survivable than Ryan strong. Outside of swing states, I would recommend the Green Party. Greens, worldwide, have often had a positive influence when they start to look threatening to the established order.

There is also a more general problem in the Obama versus Romney choice. Let’s rise above the individuals involved. ever since Reagan, the motto has been that:”The government is not the solution, the government is the problem.” This is a very erroneous notion. So bad, that Reagan himself did not believe in it.

However, the slogan was removed from its context, namely the caveat that Reagan did not exclusively believe in it, and the slogan took a life of its own. A new generation was brought up, and learned to believe in that slogan as if it were the gospel (Obama, and certainly Ryan belong to that naive crowd).

The truth is pretty much the opposite.

To many deep problems in society, only the government can bring a solution. Civilization cannot exist without government.

An article in Slate argues the obvious: socialist Europe is better for families than plutocratic USA.

This, let it be said in passing, has been my argument, since ever, against Price Purchase Parity: PPP takes the price of hamburgers into account, as if child care did not matter. (Or does the heartlessness of the conventional PPP mean that children should be turned into hamburgers, or are not any better than hamburgers, or are best represented as hamburgers?)

Some could say:”Government should not do child care.” Answer:”The government always did child care.” Indeed, in prehistoric groups, there was child care. Even wild dogs packs have child care. A fortiori humans. So the healthy adult parents forage, and the rest of prehistoric society took care of the children. Civilization had to reproduce that prehistoric set-up, because that is who we are, as we evolved under these circumstances, those of child care.

It’s not just child care. Running through the Lyon train station in Paris, my sick American spouse who had flown the preceding day from California was given antibiotics by the pharmacist. (OK, not given: a ten day course cost nine dollars.) The antibiotics did wonders. The same scene is unimaginable in the USA (one would have had to make an appointment with a doctor first, and the doctor would have been indoctrinated with the notion that only fowl, sheep, cattle and pigs should get antibiotics) .

I argued above that a more socialist system does wonder for deeper thinking, even in, say, physics.

Let alone mathematics, philosophy, sociology.

Hence by supporting Obama one supports the idea of the state that has been vehemently criticized by plutocrats and their obsequious servants, and attributed, by them, to him.

Romney is not a bad person, and could have been a much better president than many of the recent ones (including the dissembling Clinton). However, the election has also turned into an implicit referendum on ideas of the Tea Party, and some of those ideas are very bad.

The truth is often quite the opposite of what the partiers having tea hold. Namely, in truth:

No government, no civilization. No socialism, no civilization. It is not the state that is a problem, but the state of the state. And to the gravest problems, only the state can bring a solution.

Ironically, Obama, who did so little progressive, when he did not apply full reverse, with the extravagant powers conferred to him by an obsolete constitution, has been transformed into the vainglorious knight symbolizing civilization.

***

Patrice Ayme

Tags: Election, Lesser Devil, Obama