Why Obama Failed: The U.S. Political Process and the Power Elite
The voters who elected Obama in 2008 did not have a clue about what he had or had not done in the past besides the few details that got out during his campaign via the media (mostly through the opposition as negatives). That is, his "record" did not get him el...ected. The voters elected him for one thing and one thing alone: change, based on the widely held belief that the actions of the political institution through the presidential office in particular could cause change. Why people went for change was because they were hurting economically by what they saw as the "work" of the previous administration.
Did the voters know the exact details behind the economic downturn? Did they know, for example, that such downturns are part of the capitalist system, a system their political institution only facilitates whether it is Democratic or Republican? The fact that we see voters shifting from voting Republican to Democratic to Republican whenever they feel the pain of the economic system's workings is because their choices are restricted. The choices that are given to them are based on an "institutionalization of opposition" by the capitalist system within acceptable limits, those limits are the ones that will not alter the system in any major way and therefore will not fix people's problems but deflect blame from the system towards individuals, and if that individual happens to be a minority member (as an exception), towards the entire minority group.
What Obama did after being elected to office was one compromise with the system after another, knowing full well his limitations, and the limitations of the office of president within a capitalist system. He turned more conservative after the elections compared to his message during the campaign and how did the voters respond to his conservative turn? They responded by electing those who are even more conservative than him! Wanting less of the same they voted for more of the same. Does this not tell us of the mental instability of the voter caused through media manipulation (of information) and mind control?
The reason why Obama "lost" (as the current congressional elections were portrayed by the media and acknowledged by him) was because the power elite successfully convinced the US public that their economic woes were related to Obama and his actions in office, rather than the capitalist system and made them successfully forget (through media induced psychological manipulation) that the origin of these problems lay in the previous administration's tenure and most importantly that the political institution by itself without the support of the military and the economic order cannot achieve any "change". Since the long term interests of these institutional orders cannot be achieved outside the system, a system rigged with periodic crises that both Democrats and Republicans conserve, voting and change in the ruling party are mere pressure release valves of a manipulative order.
It is not the voter who decides who the political elite are going to be or what their agenda will be but the power elite who decide both. They decide what the voters are going to do and how they think (through information and mind control), as well as which politicians are going to be pushed up through the corridors of power (whose gatekeepers they happen to be).
M. Asadi
http://blog.asadi.org/
11/06/2010
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment