False Hope
There comes a point at which compromise for the sake of political expediency carries with it consequences, intentions aside, which negate any possible benefits such compromise might purportedly advance. Barrack Obama’s decision to back the vilest of Bush administration policies, the permission to wiretap American telephone communications without a warrant and relieve the collaborating telephone companies from any legal liability, provides, at best, an excellent example of this. Perhaps just as likely however, is the possibility that Mr. Obama’s political views and ambitions do not differ from the current US President’s as drastically as one might first assume from images the mainstream media has presented us with.
Even a cursory examination of his voting record in the US Senate, though, would indicate that such a vote was fairly predictable. Obama has, after all, voted to approve nearly every dollar of funding that Bush has requested for the ongoing US war against Iraq, only voting against one such funding bill when competing for the Democratic presidential nomination, and in June of 2006 voted against setting a deadline for ending the Iraq war. He also voted in March of that year to renew the USA Patriot Act, which abolishes basic civil rights and protections for US citizens.
Many Democrats and others on the political Left are quick to excuse him for such votes, presuming, or perhaps simply wishing to believe, that such compromises were necessary for a variety of political reasons. If, however, these compromises are the best we can hope for, to be the lesser of two evils by only the slightest margin, it seems more than prudent to build alternatives to the perpetuation of such a system, or at least to withdraw in protest from participation in it.
Barrack Obama, in all reality, offers neither the “Hope” nor “Change” his carefully managed, yet vague political campaign has promised through catchy logos and Mao-like posters designed by the likes of lip-service, pseudo-radical Shepard Fairey. But there are enough of us so desperate for something better, reeling in horror from the past eight years of war profiteering, torture and poverty that even the clearly superficial face of hope and change that is Barrack Obama seems alluring. For those of us willing to accept reality over false hope, though, the change we’re seeking can only result from the complete dismantling of the political system that has failed us for the past 232 years, and the decision to finally create real alternatives.
