The audacity of somnambulant stupidity

I normally don’t read books by Washington insiders, as I find them boring. I have tried. I once worked my way through a book by the actor who played a journalist in the Watergate affair, Bob Woodward. The book, Plan of Attack, was awful – he had Bush saying things he could not possibly say; Bush all by himself deciding to invade Iraq, as if he was in charge. The book had glossy black and white still photographs, obviously posed, of administration officials talking, one in particular where Bush was looking officious and others standing around listening with serious faces. Does anyone ask how that camera got in the room? Not Woodward.

Does anyone ever ask why he is even granted such access? If he were a decent journalist, he’d never get through the front door. Journalism, as Assange and Manning well know, is illegal.

I did find Plan of Attack useful – I hollowed out the middle and used it to hide spare credit cards and cash. I thought if anyone was looking for a book with significant content, that would not be that one. My valuables would be safe hidden in garbage.

This came to mind as I read a Glenn Greenwald piece (Democrats and Bain) in which he quotes from one of Obama’s books. I haven’t read either of them, and won’t, though I am told they are quite good.

This is wisdom after the fact, of course, but like “Profiles in Courage” and “Six Crisis, books written by future presidents often magically appear as part of the grooming process. Obama is a smart dude, and may well have written those books (JFK’s was ghosted), but the process by which he came to our attention and eventually became president was scripted. It fulfilled American fantasies about people of ordinary origins rising to great heights.

Long before Obama gave his first inaugural address, he was vetted. It was not an open process, nor was it formal. He was not taken into a room and grilled by billionaires. But powerful people needed to know if he presented any threat to power. Were his bombs defused? He passed the test, and was presented to us as “viable.”

If not deemed reliable, he could easily have been taken out early in the primary season. He would be ignored as passed over as a minor candidate, the usual practice. If he brought such energy to the table that he could not be ignored away, other means can be used to destroy the candidacy. He could be treated as Howard Dean was, made to appear ridiculous for doing an ordinary stump speech. People are highly suggestible.

John Edwards was ignored in full during the Obama/Clinton affair, even when he led in the polls. He might now go to prison – I never knew what to think of that guy, and now realize that he actually threatened power. His punishment is a message to others as well. After all, his sins are as common as houseflies in DC. Many do what he did, few are called to task.

Back to Obama – no bombs, no threats, speaks well, fulfills fantasies of ordinary man rising to great heights, and is black, an added twist. His only real opponent was Hillary Clinton, and she too was smart, non-threatening and defused. So we had a real contest – that is, puppet masters were not needed, as both candidates were deemed acceptable. The primary battles were real, with little scripting. Personal lives and gaffes were ignored, and they were allowed to duke it out.

Either one would screw us thoroughly and serve power well. That’s all that mattered.

Not having read Obama’s books, I can only offer Greenwald as a credible source that the following quote from one of them, The Audacity of Hope, is real:

Increasingly I found myself spending time with people of means – law firm partners and investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. … As a rule, they were smart, interesting people, knowledgeable about public policy, liberal in their politics, expecting nothing more than a hearing of their opinions in exchange for their checks. But they reflected, almost uniformly, the perspectives of their class: the top 1 percent or so of the income scale that can afford to write a $2,000 check to a political candidate. … They had no patience with protectionism, found unions troublesome, and were not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives were upended by the movements of global capital. … I know that as a consequence of my fundraising I became more like the wealthy donors I met.

Indeed he has, the conversion is complete now. His connection with common people now is a matter of stagecraft – his speechwriters, the ad agencies and PR firms that design his ads are in charge of making sure he has kept his common touch. They are very good. I cannot imagine that he will not win a second term. He has done nothing in his first that has made trouble for power. Mitt Romney, who offers an identical agenda, has a lot of money behind him too, but as with Obama/Hillary, there’s nothing in it for us.

It’s an amazing spectacle now to watch Obama carry forward with the “Bush” agenda, which is really just the power agenda. He’s not even trying. The Greenwald article I referenced above is one in a long series about how Obama has magnified and codified the surveillance regime, and gone even further in murdering American citizens, making new wars, preserving Pentagon war and military aggression spending and claiming the right to disappear us. He’s carried forward with Bush tax policies, and during the Kabuki debate about shutting down the government last year, put Social Security and Medicare “on the table.”

Don’t be fooled – our cherished public safety net is not safe. The threat from Democrats is far more serious than that from Republicans, because those goddammed Democrats are all snoozing, happy that their guy got elected. It’s unsettling to watch and listen to them. Give me a Republican or Tea Party member anytime. Full frontal aggressive stupidity is so much easier to digest than the somnambulant inbred variety offered by Democrats.