On the whole US election/political situation, some personal ponderings:

I've been wondering whether there is a larger societal/sociological issue at work here, mainly, can nations go through an inverted evolution of the individual kind?

US started out as this benevolent, if a little myopic, giant, based by and large by the most forward and liberal of ideologies available at the time, handcrafted into a nation by some cerebral giants, who selflessly tried to inject as little of their own beliefs into the documents kickstarting the whole nation, namely the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Many of US founding fathers being atheists and deists, rationalists to a man, its remarkable how their intentions have been twisted along the years. But i digress.

The nation started as a creaking, venerable old man, passing sound judgement and sage advice to the world at large, lapsed into middle age, hold-onto-what-you-have-by-the-skin-of-yer-teeth around the time of the Civil War, into late teens while napalm and Agent Orange was flying about in the jungles of South-East Asia, into screaming-at-your-parents pimply faced adolescence during the 80's and 90's and has now devolved firmly into soil-yer-nappies-babehood crying at the lack of that soothing nipple that has been yanked away most rudely by the lack of thought to the ideals that founded the nation.

In truth, i now trust the US just as little as i do Russia. And thats very little. Most Europeans i know feel roughly the same. US has sold out all that made it great, the high horse rearing so majestically even as little as 50 years ago has now been sold for sausage, its entrails polluting the entire world, yet the politicos are still flogging that dead horse for all they are worth in hopes of appearing to still be in charge, as if the special interests and lobbyists haven't owned the saddle and the horse for many many years now. Even mounted on some borrowed wheels from China and Europe, dragged lumberingly forwards by the taxpayers, that horse is starting to smell, and maybe the people need to raise a new colt from some green pasture in the hinterlands of the nation.

Ramblerambleramble

There in my inbox, I recently spied
A link from Alterati of Non Serviam pride
a satircal movie for me to link here
before hitting the fridge and grabbing a beer.

How the grinch stole the election

So, Obama is in. Commence the Obama-rama!

Any thought that the election of Barack Obama was going to be an end to the many woes facing the US and teh world is, of course, sheer moral-consensus bipolar naivety. He may inspire hope, for sure, but don't forget that, when you cut through the self-contratulation, persona-spinning and media manipulation, he is, afterall, a politician.

After hitting google news for info on the obama-rama and reading my way through a few newspaper articles I struck upon an excellent discussion concerning the whole Foreign Policy thing. It's long, so I can only post an extract. click here for the whole damn thing.

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Amy Goodman:Today, we host a discussion on Obama's foreign policy, particularly with respect to hotspots in the Middle East, in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. We'll talk about the concerns and hopes of those who live in countries at the receiving end of American foreign policy.

We're joined on the phone and through video stream in studios by a number of people. First, Australian investigative journalist, bestselling author, documentary filmmaker, John Pilger, joins us on the telephone from Britain, just back from the United States. His latest book is called Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire; his most recent film, The War on Democracy.

And we're joined in our firehouse studio by Mahmood Mamdani. He is professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University and has written extensively on post-colonial African politics. His most recent book is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror. His latest article for The Nation magazine focuses on recent events in Darfur and is called "The New Humanitarian Order."

We'll start with John Pilger in Britain. You were just in the United States in Houston. You're back in London right now. Your response to the election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States?

John Pilger: Well, my response, Amy, is that really anyone was better than Bush and the Bush administration. Having experienced election night in the United States and then seeing the response here, I feel that it's time that analysis and critical thinking took over and that those of us who wish to think that way, who wish to think critically, really should start addressing the -- this rather manipulated emotional response. I don't, in any way, cast doubt on the sincerity of the way people are speaking about the election of Obama around the world, although I think the reaction that you just played from the Middle East is rather more near the realism that is close to truth. But I do think we have to consider President-elect Obama as a man of the system.

Michael Moore had it right when he said the other day, let's hope that Obama breaks all his election promises, as politicians generally do, because all his election promises, in terms of foreign policy, are a continuation of business as usual. And even if there is a return to what used to be called a multilateral world, I think there has to be critical analysis of the return to the pretensions of America as a peacemaker around the world. We had to endure this, and I mean endure it during the Clinton years, and I don't think that we, in the rest of the world, ought to have to endure it now through the Obama years, so that we have a continuation, if you like, of liberalism as a divisive, almost war-making ideology, being used to destroy liberalism as a reality, because that has gone on under so-called liberal presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, Democratic presidents. And President-elect Obama suggests to us, in his promises, that he is going to continue that, bombing Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Someone said to me -- in fact, I was talking to my daughter when I got off the plane from Houston this morning, and she said, "What was it like over there?" And we were discussing it, and I said, "Well, it comes down to, I suppose, asking an Afghan child how they feel when their family has been destroyed by a 500-pound bunker-busting bomb dropped by the United States and dropped by President Obama, as he continues that war. I think that's the reality that we really have to begin to discuss now, having celebrated, and rightly celebrated, the ascent of the first African American president of the United States.

JG: And, John Pilger, what sign would you look for in these early days now, as Obama begins to move into a transition period, that would indicate to you that he would be trying to break, in one way or other, from this neoliberalism of the Clinton years?

JP: Well, it's difficult to know. Breaking from the Bush years is going to be the first, and I suppose breaking from the Bush years means actually talking to people and negotiating. I think breaking from, let's say, the Democratic years -- the Bush, yes -- the Clinton years will mean giving us a sign that the ideological, rapacious, war-making machine that has been built over many years and reinforced, as perhaps never before during the eight years of Bush, that that ideological machine does not transcend a loss of electoral power. You see, that's really the central issue here, that a kind of ideological consensus has been built under Bush. Now, yes, Obama has been voted in, but will that vote, will that -- will a new president transcend this ideological machine?

You know, during the campaign, there was almost nothing between McCain and Obama in foreign policy. Indeed, Obama went further. I mean, he even declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. He threatened Latin America. He, at times, seemed to be going further than Bush. And, of course, people, realists, the so-called realists, would shake their heads and say, "Well, yes, he has to do that."

Look, in answer to your question, I think he has to -- in order to show that he is in any way different -- he has to start dismantling this machine, for example, going against his promise to continue the embargo on Cuba, to drop that; to reach out to the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia and Ecuador, each of which is under attack, subversive attack by the United States; to face the reality that Afghanistan is a colonial war; and to not let the so-called withdrawal from Iraq be a sham, that it leaves these so-called enduring bases. That, any one of those, any change in one of those, would indicate that Obama is truly different.


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Until next time!

[=Bass=]