I don't know. There may be a fair number of people in other countries where we aren't dropping bombs who might be seduced by the superficial stuff. Obama isn't an obvious moron like Bush---he has a fair amount of charisma, for people who like that sort of thing. Correct me if I'm wrong (because I might be wrong), but wasn't Bill Clinton fairly popular overseas?

It seems to me that this piece about how Obama intends to keep America strong and lead the free world (ha ha) fits perfectly under the headline about personnel changes at the WashPost: "Meet The New Boss; Marginally Better Than The Old Boss?"

His appeal is very similar to that of Clinton, only more vacuous.

I agree with your sentiments.

THIRD CHOICE hint, hint, hint. Thus the reason to promote DIGBY. (STILL voting for Michael Meyer as ALWAYS) Something different from marginally better and marginally worse i.e. Obama/ Maccain. I want to promote THE INTERNET POLITICAL PARTY, what better way than to start some competition for office. DIGBY hasn't said YES or NO yet, but she dearly wants a woman president, which I figure the world is due, why not DIGBY.
ITS THE NET is where YOU WIN AT.

Sorry, your choices are, essentially, Obama or a right-wing theocracy that'll last for the foreseeable future. I'm surprised it took you guys this long to work out that in large part he has a standard "foreign policy", i.e. the continuation of the military subsidy system. How would he get anywhere if he didn't? How would he have got the support of "superdelegates" without promising them some military-grade pork? And if you're resourcing that system, it makes little sense to make an enemy of it. Have any of you seen the documentary "Why we fight?" http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/

I think you forget, also, what proportion of people are still under the sway of Republican and other corporatists' lies. They may oppose the war, want to uphold the constitution, etc, but that doesn't mean they don't buy into a whole load of other bullshit: conspiracy theories, aliens, fundamentalism, Al Qaeda = Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda = George Bush, gun ownership as a form of defense (either personal or against the state), narcissistic and infantilist individualism or whatever. You can often reason with people who have such beliefs, but it's harder to do, and easier for others to feed them more bullshit.

The quotes seem a little dubious to me. This is rather selective, for instance:
"... reiterated Obama's support for the overwhelmingly disproportionate Israeli response to Hezbollah's cross-border raid in the summer of 2006, when Israeli bombing of Lebanon killed up to 1,000 civilians. "
Who reiterated? Who claimed that about Obama? Is the claim accurate? Is the report of the claim accurate? A lot of these assertions (I'm assuming the quotes are kosher, if somewhat sound-bitten) are unsourced (here, at least), and are the kind of semi-true distortion, akin to the (false) claim Al Gore said he invented the internet or that Bill Clinton bombed Bosnia to distract from the Jennifer Flowers "case", the McCain camp will come up with to trim more left-wing voters off. GOP party activists will claim *anything* to make Obama look bad. And they fully understand the left wing view, particularly that of frustrated actual leftists(*). They well know how to concoct a narrative within it. And I'm sure they appreciate the shifts that Google, blogs and other on-line mechanisms for fact sharing and verification have brought to the typical leftist viewpoint. I'd be unsurprised if there's some conscientious shareholder, a young buck looking to get on in the GOP or similar reading this right now. Hi there, cryptofascist scum!

(*)As these are the easiest to persuade to speak against an incumbent government. Then all they have needed do is turn the amplifier on and off. This is changing, but it could revert, and tried and tested methods are usually the most predictable.

Oh my god Obama's actually trying to win an election and isn't running as a socialist!!!

We are SHOCKED!

DG: Because simply refraining from dropping bombs on anything that remotely objects to US oppression is your definition of "socialist" ?

David, as I'm sure you well know, the problem is that once he wins the election, people like you will justify the exact same Republican-lite behavior as being necessary to consolidate gains when midterms come around, and then it'll be another excuse, and on and on.

Yet, we're supposed to believe that our only chance of ever getting this country lurching leftward is to keep wasting our time supporting these slightly-more-liberal-than-the-other-guy candidates, because, ostensibly, once they're safely in office they'll be free to let their inner socialist shine.

I do believe I see a problem here.

Hi there, cryptofascist scum!

Hi there back at you!

Anyway, in the speech Obama repeats the standard lie discredited by Human Rights Watch that civilian casualties in Lebanon were all the fault of Hezbollah

Well sure, you could go that way, but who ya gonna believe -- HRW or NYT/WAPO/CNN? What channel is HRW news on?

You gots to find them reliable sources else one is prone to get categorized as living life with gusto in The Age of Ignorance.

"keep wasting our time supporting these slightly-more-liberal-than-the-other-guy candidates"
How should we be wasting our time?

Butbutbut...Obama will save us all! It must be true because I read it on dkos! And anyone who doesn't vote for Obama is a racist and a socialist andandand a lefty leftist who doesn't want our team to win win win!

Once Obama announced that his foreign policy advisors would include Madame Halfbright, Sam Nunn, David Boren, Warren Christopher & Lee Hamilton, I knew the game was over If this is change we can believe in, I'd rather forget it.

Once Obama announced that his foreign policy advisors would include Madame Halfbright, Sam Nunn, David Boren, Warren Christopher & Lee Hamilton, I knew the game was over If this is change we can believe in, I'd rather forget it.

Once Obama announced that his foreign policy advisors would include Madame Halfbright, Sam Nunn, David Boren, Warren Christopher & Lee Hamilton, I knew the game was over If this is change we can believe in, I'd rather forget it.

Guys,
So is this post saying, "I believe Obama's not going to change our politics/country/society in any fundamental way"?

Who was arguing that he was? Who was arguing that he COULD? The US has been an empire since 1918. It will act just as cruelly, and stupidly (and occasionally wisely) as empires have throughout all of human history. Sooner or later, conditions will shift and the US' place at the top of the heap will be taken by some other country, which will then ladle ITS folly all over the world.

I swear--this site is full of people who rail against American exceptionalism, yet froth at the mouth when Americans act just as all people with power have. It doesn't matter to me what everybody thinks, but stop beating yourselves up on BOTH ends. It's almost as if the whole point was not the mutual investigation of reality, but the stoking and maintenance of pointless indignation and outrage.

Empires do not act like enlightened and aware individuals. Nor do politicians. Their actions will not fit with your morality. Perhaps it would be better if they did, but they never have, and expecting them to is a pointless distraction from the incredibly difficult task of determining one's OWN correct action.

Can we just agree that, apart from the color of his skin (the significance of which should NOT be undersold), Barack Obama is a mainstream politician, running for the mainest of mainstream offices in a manner which is growing more mainstream all the time? And if he wins, it will be because the various loci of power which comprise this empire decided that he was mainstream enough to support?

With all due respect to the posters--Jon, Bernard, whomever--these type of posts are the political version of doing a crossword puzzle; harmless, but not nearly as useful as, say, a realistic, comprehensive vision of how things might be different. And I'm not talking "this house is a Nuclear Free Zone"--I want you to tackle the hard stuff. Let's start from basic principles: How might someone be able to get elected President without having to appease the military-industrial complex? And how that person might stay alive once elected? You're a brilliant guy, Bernard. Put your mind towards that, not how Barack Obama's policy people are the same old crooks and liars, pushing the same old flawed and immoral plans. OF COURSE THEY ARE. THEY ALWAYS ARE.

It's silly to sit at the end of a machine built to make Twinkies and be outraged because you want a Ho-Ho. I understand, and to some degree share your frustration, but more than that, I want a Ho-Ho. I don't think meticulous, well-argued blog posts (or comments on posts, for that matter) get us any closer to that--they only SEEM like they do. What will? I'm not that smart, but I say: let's move on to the next thing.

Mike of Angle: Just BUILD a HO-HO machine or co-opt one that CAN produce what YOU want.(THE NET) The Net is a military product so YOU get to hang on to and support a military industrial complex by DIRECT COMMUNICATION with them. Militaries ARE a fact of life and one MUST compromise with them at sometime. BUT YOU DON'T NEED the same old crooks and liars, just get some NEW ones. NEW POLITICAL MACHINE WITH A CLEAN SLATE and a chance to keep it clean.

How might someone be able to get elected President without having to appease the military-industrial complex?

You'd need social dissolution. What conditions can bring about this dissolution? A catastrophic downturn -- the failure of the global financial system, wholesale realization that anthropogenic climate change is barreling at us, and perhaps global geopolitical isolation due to our parochial priorities.

The main reason that people put up with us is because they're looking for a handout, and think we have it to give. Once our currency gets so thoroughly devalued they may not kiss up as much. When people stop kissing up, we may come to the conclusion that for the sake of existential survival we may need to cooperatively get along, and our policies will reflect it.

National borders are the problem because they encourage defense of things from the imagined potential threat of outsiders to the exclusion of obvious and common sense near term threats.

Labiche,
"National borders are the problem because they encourage defense of things from the imagined potential threat of outsiders to the exclusion of obvious and common sense near term threats."

That's 100% correct.

Still, I'm not rooting for the kind of dislocation you speak of. While it's true that "re-set" moments like that contain opportunity, without a fundamental moral change--on an individual level--those moments are more likely to create negative futures rather than positive ones.

As to the impending devaluation of the USD, there's a significant train of thought that suggests we're in for short- to mid-term inflation, followed by longer-term deflation.

But what do I know? I just got stopped-out of some positions. Serves me right for commenting when I should be paying attention!

Mike of E: I disagree with much of what you say:

>> "I believe Obama's not going to change our politics/country/society in any fundamental way"? Who was arguing that he was?

Virtually everyone who will vote for Obama believes he'll put an end to the nightmare years of the Bush era. That is as fundamental a change as one can get. So they think. You don't, but they do.

>> Sooner or later, conditions will shift and the US' place at the top of the heap will be taken by some other country, which will then ladle ITS folly all over the world.

This is almost certainly false. No country will acquire the imperial clout of the US in the foreseeable future. The world will almost certainly go back to multipolarity (historically its usual state).

this site is full of people who rail against American exceptionalism, yet froth at the mouth when Americans act just as all people with power have

Why the 'yet'? "this site is full of people who rail against murderers, yet froth at the mouth when they read about a murder." So?

>> but stop beating yourselves up on BOTH ends

Beating ourselves? You surely jest. You're a writer. You surely know that's not at all what's going on here. No need to quote Walter Benjamin's line that writing is to the mind what prostitution is to sexuality :-) but come on, you know that has nothing to do with "pointless indignation and outrage." We bring up the evidence and put it in context. We're the forensic examiners.

Not to mention that you're being self-contradictory.
We may all know that Obama won't change anything (as you claimed earlier), or we may be indignant about his betrayal. But we cannot be both.

>> It's almost as if the whole point was not the mutual investigation of reality,

Reality? My post culls dozens of specific quotes. Unreality can be truthful: unreality is the vague sense that Obama was always another pro-empire Bill Clinton. Reality is the set of quotes I give.
Maybe some of you knew all these quotes already. Maybe others have a ready-made theory that does not need to be encumbered by facts. But I find facts reassuring.

>> is a pointless distraction

It's a pointless distraction to know if Obama is closer to Kucinich than to McCain? Is it?

>> Can we just agree that, apart from the color of his skin (the significance of which should NOT be undersold), Barack Obama is a mainstream politician, running for the mainest of mainstream offices in a manner which is growing more mainstream all the time?

I think that was the point of my post. So can we agree that if it's OK for you to say it in a comment it's OK for others to write it in a post?

Your question mark, however, indicates that you know not everyone might necessarily agree. You recognize that some are smitten by Obama to the point of delusion. Is it your contention that curing them of their delusion is a waste of our precious time because empire is empire is empire?

If so, then why not vote for McCain? This would precipitate the end of the American Empire, which might be a good thing. Your comment leaves that option eerily open.

>> -these type of posts are the political version of doing a crossword puzzle

But what if someone reads my post with a prior belief that Obama would bring peace on earth? Wouldn't that count as a useful post then?

>> but not nearly as useful as, say, a realistic, comprehensive vision of how things might be different.

I have written a comprehensive essay on the American Left. Interestingly enough, that puts me in extremely rare company. The beauty about writing that piece was how little legwork I had to do for it, because no one writes such essays. Which came as a big surprise to me. It's the best thought-out piece I've written and the least read (I hate to think there's a correlation.)
So I find your statement rather puzzling.

>> I want you to tackle the hard stuff.

Exactly what my "Left" piece did. In fact its premise is that it's hard stuff, something most Americans on the left deny.

If, by hard stuff, you mean electorally speaking, I ain't got a clue. Not my alley.

But to go back to this post, which really is not mine: it's all taken from Dreyfuss's piece. I know few reading this blog have much illusion about Obama. I never did. (I wrote about that earlier.)
But I think that to put out the facts and quotations serves a useful role.

I suspect you misread the post as disappointment or Jon's as indignation and outrage. I look at it differently. I am collecting the evidence for the Nuremberg trials. Dirty work but someone's gotta do it.

Mike of Angle--

The following might sound snarky, but it's not intended to be. If you've got some good ideas about how to change things for the better, post them. Here in the comments or at your own blog if you have one, or maybe you could ask Jon to put them up as a guest post. Not that I can offer you space here, but Jon let me post, so standards are sometimes low if you catch him at the right time.

Bernard, I just wrote, then deleted, about a page of close commentary on your response. But as I polished it, I realized that it was one big intellectual indulgence.

Please accept my apologies if I seemed overharsh or dense. You and I differ on some points, but I feel there is a greater good to be served by my listening more and talking less.

Donald, I'm an ex-comedy writer with an obsession with assassinations and The Beatles. I make no claims about how this world should be organized, and think that people who do are probably candidates for institutionalization. The most I can do is share my experience in an honest and entertaining way, keeping my own flaws and fuck-ups in mind.

It's been my experience that people who obsess about politics are sublimating a trauma or other powerful emotional issue located in their own lives, and ultimately only resolveable in that arena. Posting to a blog is a relatively harmless way to deal with this issue, but my traumas are intense enough that this gives me no solace.

If you can avail yourself of this comfort, I am glad for you--as the guy who first encouraged Jon to make this blog, then hectored him until he did it--I think my posting privileges are pretty secure. But I am interested in ATR now (as I was interested in it then) solely as a coping mechanism. Others may consider blogs tools; most are not; and if they are, it is the reader's individual doing, not the poster.

I think I know what I should do: I will try to post and comment less, and send each one of you happiness and support in whatever you're dealing with. That's a more direct expression of my warm feelings towards the people who read ATR, and this beautiful but difficult world with live in, than any point I could make in words.

But I thank you for your suggestion!

PREFERABLY a treasurer with good bookkeeping skills. I have none myself.

Mike of Angle:

I'd be very surprised if there were in fact a fundamental disagreement between us.

But, yes, we seem to differ on various points and I hope to hear more from you on the subject.

No need to apologize for the harsh tone.

If anything, I am the one who tends to be cutting and harsh, and I hope readers are not turned off by my style. As a poster, I realize I have an added obligation to set a civil tone. I hope I do. And I hope people remember that my combative style is all about the ideas, not the people behind them.

"It's been my experience that people who obsess about politics are sublimating a trauma or other powerful emotional issue located in their own lives, and ultimately only resolveable in that arena. "

I think that's false if you mean it to be a general truth. Of course it might be true of the people you know and of many others.

But it's sort of a silly thing to say about some people, such as Gandhi, MLK, or Mandela.

YOU can leave politics alone but politics WON'T leave YOU alone.

I request that everyone here remember to be beautiful to one another. Please assume good intentions and don't forget the internet is not a perfect mechanism for human communication.

yrs.,
Blogmom

"If, by hard stuff, you mean electorally speaking, I ain't got a clue. Not my alley. "

Then why are you attacking Obama for his pursuit of electoral politics? 'Cause that's the whole point of the Military-Industrial complex. We've been pursuing military Keynesianism for at least 70 years now.

In case you're still reading, Mike of Angle, I don't want to sound too dismissive of your trauma theory for political obsessions. I think it's oversimplified--looking at myself, I'd say that when I've gotten into a really heated debate that's more primate-style chestpounding than anything else, it probably has less to do with a desire for love and peace and happiness and more to do with some deep-seated desire to rub the other guy's face in the dirt. And even when I restrain that, there is this desire To Be In The Right.

So yeah, there's probably a lot of personal crap that underlies political obsession. I just wouldn't say that it's 100 percent. Maybe more like 50-90 percent for many of us, possibly dipping well below that for a few (but not me).

Mike M.,
As much as I admire you in your indefatigable support for Constitutional government (I am sure Impeach the Bastards will be your epitaph) , I cannot agree that digby should head up a new party. She is a competent polemicist but cannot handle constructive criticism and is no friend of free speech (as many former admirers whose comments have been deleted can attest).
You are right that we need a new party, though. there is a liberal rump in the democrat (yeah, that’s what I call ’em now) democrat party that could be the nucleus of a new Constitutional Democratic Party. Such a party would make its’ platforms first order of business to spell out what a government shouldn’t be doing, as is already spelled out in the first ten amendments. I think on this basis they would find common ground with many libertarians.

john in california: The world won't wait ten years for a few CORE democrats to finally figure it out. DIGBY IS HERE TODAY. (she's deleted ME before, so I know)