Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Good News: It's Not About Race















From the page to the screen: Hawk (Avery Brooks) and Spenser (the late Robert Urich), as portrayed in the television series Spenser: For Hire.


"You know what I like here? There's a bunch of black guys waiting in cars to shoot it up with a bunch of white guys, and it's not about race."


Leave it to Spenser, the irrepressibly sarcastic Private Eye from Robert Parker's durable series of detective novels, to find the ironic humor in a potentially lethal situation.



"Be about power and money, mostly," agreed Spenser's fearsome ally, Hawk, employingthe economical street patois he employed while on the job (and abandoned, when it suited him, when he found himself in refined company).



In this instance, as described near the climax of the 2005 novel Cold Service, the duo was quietly preparing for the first volley in a multi-ethnic gang war in a Massachusetts village called Marshport, the government of which was run by a Ukrainian crime ring controlled by the Mayor-cum-mob capo Boots Podolak.



Hawk's motive was revenge: He had nearly been killed in the ambush arranged by Podolak's men, an attack that claimed the life of a man Hawk was supposed to protect. Spenser's motive was primarily loyalty to his friend and comrade from many previous campaigns.



Some of those who assembled for battle did it for purely mercenary reasons, working as subcontractors for Spenser. Others were simply in pursuit of what most people in such conflicts seek: Control over turf, and the apparatus necessary to exploit it through the creative use of duress. To obtain it, Podolak and his clique had to be removed.



In all of this, as Hawk pointed out, power and money played a much greater role than any atavistic attachment to ethnic or tribal loyalties.



That's
a gun: The Colt Python .357 Magnum, Hawk's preferred instrument of persuasion.
Excuse me while my eyes glaze over with lust.



As the USA careens toward bankruptcy and, perhaps -- hopefully -- some variety of schism, I find myself taking ironic consolation in the fact that the conflict won't be defined by racial or ethnic divisions, despite the best efforts of our rulers to cattle-pen us into such categories.


Granted, this could change very easily. Madame Obama could change her name to Winnie and start hanging around with a murderous "football club." The Holy One Himself (peace be upon him) comes under armed attack by some disposable dimwit with a conveniently conspicuous paper trail through Klan and neo-Nazi groups and a jones for The Catcher in the Rye.



But there's ample reason to believe that the Obamas -- despite their successful shared career in racial shakedown politics and their cynical use of race to make themselves a marketable brand -- aren't interested in pursuing identity politics.



To judge from the composition of the Obama transition team, the Exalted Apostle of Change (we pause to tug on our forelock) is interested in little more than the standard politics of corporatist plunder. Obama's signature touch is to transpose that agenda into the key of cultural Marxism, as opposed to the pious militarism that remains in favor with what remains of the Republican Party.













Oh, yeah, this guy's just
itching to rule:

For the record, there is no such
"office" as "President-Elect" --
and this dude's
not even
officially entitled to call himself
by that title until after the Electoral College casts its votes.



For Obama, the collapse of our financial system was a politically fortuitous event. For reasons that defy rational understanding, the public perceives Obama as a transcendent figure who can cast his gaze upon the turbid markets and command them, "Peace -- be still."



The fact that the markets have reacted to Obama's election with something less than confident relief has yet to register with the True Believers, who likewise remain untroubled by the fact that those whom The One has gathered as his inner circle of disciples include many of the architects of our ever-deepening financial catastrophe.



Rahm Emmanuel, the issue of terrorist loins and one-time servant of an obnoxious foreign power chosen to be Obama's Chief of Staff, made a cool $200 K in 2001 through a sinecure at Freddie Mac; this happened at a time when that government-sponsored entity (GSE) was one of the chief engines inflating the Housing Bubble. Three of Obama's key economic advisers -- Anne Mulcahy, Richard Parsons, and William Daley -- enjoyed similar posts at Fannie Mae.



Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, another prominent figure in the Obama transition team, was a master chef at cooking the books on behalf of Citigroup and a consulting gourmet for Enron when that company's degenerate corporate elite was looking for just the right recipe to use in swindling its shareholders. And more than a third of the spots on Obama's transition team -- which is a farm club for both ambassadorships and more consequential executive branch posts -- are the most successful "bundlers" of corporate donations to His Holiness's campaign.
















The imperial guard:
Secret Service agents armed with machine guns prepare to swarm a car that ventured too close to the auto carrying the sanctified personage of The One.




Already assuming the mien of a dictator before formally inheriting the mantle of dictatorship, Obama, asserting the suppositious authority of the non-existent "office" of president-elect (a status he won't actually enjoy until after the Electoral College meets next month), Obama "is pushing Congress this year to approve as much as $50 billion to save cash starved U.S. automakers and appoint a czar or board to oversee the companies," according to a Bloomberg report.



This proposed nationalization of the auto industry, which has the support of the Wee Emperor, has been urged upon Obama by two of his key advisers, former Federal Reserve commissar Paul Volcker and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers -- two veterans of the entrenched Establishment Obama supposedly seeks to de-throne.



In defining how Obama will rule, his practical connections to the entrenched corporate socialist oligarchy are much more important than his cultural Marxist background. There is little danger of Obama instigating a proletarian revolution; as John Derbyshire wryly pointed out, Obama can't incite a worker revolt to seize control over the means of production, since all of our factories have already moved to China.



Besides, what's the point of staging a revolution from below to consolidate power in the state, when the Bush administration has already done all of the heavy lifting? The most tangible accomplishment of a generation of Republican rule is the creation of an apparatus of regimentation and wealth redistribution that Lenin would have coveted.


The Commissar in the cowboy hat: Jeb Mason, former flunky to White House political hack Karl Rove, now supervises the delivery of plundered taxpayer "bailout" money to corporations.


There is not a particle of hyperbole in that statement. Witness the observation offered by Jeb Mason, the Treasury Department's liaison to corporate lobbyists seeking a portion of the $700 billion in "bailout" boodle. Under siege by supplicants, Mason, a 32-year-old GOP apparatchik who served under the feculent Karl Rove, commented to a friend: "This must have been how the Politburo felt."



As I've noted before, the mechanism of wealth redistribution from the middle and working classes into the hands of corporate parasites is now fully autonomous: With the Treasury Secretary and the Fed Chairman able to create "money" in any volume they please, and disburse it as they see fit, with no oversight or accountability, Congress really doesn't have a role -- other than that of misdirecting the public.



Those actually in charge of looting the country before its collapse -- whether in the commanding heights, like Comrade Bernanke and Herr Paulson, or in the trenches, like K-Street Pimp Jeb Mason or the Wall Street bagman bearing the deliciously Dickensian name Neel Kashkari -- are entirely unaccountable. From their perspective, the uninitiated have no right so much as to know how much is being spent, let alone for what, and for whose benefit, the sums are being spent.



The $700 billion that raised the public's ire and attracted the attention of corporate lobbyists is merely a small bucket drawn from the immense pool of "liquidity" flowing from the Fed. The ruling economic Triumvirate has actually taken on $5 trillion in liabilities since the financial collapse began last March, and I would be surprised if that figure didn't at least double before Obama, sitting astride his magic unicorn, stages his triumphal entry into the Imperial Capital next January.

Cryogenically cool: "That man Hawk is one baaaaad mutha-" "Shut yo' mouth!" "I'm just talkin' bout Hawk!"



Once again, as Hawk might put it, all of this "be about power and money, mostly," even though the racial aspect of Obama's impending advent is quite useful to the Power Elite that created his campaign, and are eager to exploit him as a human shield.


When The One acts as a conduit for policies created by the same gang of parasites that have ruled our nation for decades, every criticism will be cynically supplied with a spurious racial subtext. This tactic will inspire critics on the left to stifle themselves. It could eventually be used to imprison critics on the right.




On sale now!










Dum spiro, pugno!




18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing would please me more than
to watch a proud black American
pull down the rotten establishment
in D.C.

So far it is the same crew.
When comes the change?
...wait mode...

(in all truth, I do not consider
Obama to be "black" but this is
what his disciples insist upon.)

Anonymous said...

Obama would be OK with me if he would invite Charley Pride to sing at his inauguration bash.

But I don't think Obama is into country music. It shows.

Doc Ellis 124 said...

Cool post.

Anonymous said...

WNG, are you some kind of racist hater or something? Just kidding.

Anonymous said...

You can't silence a revolver.

William N. Grigg said...

That's actually sort of profound. :-)

I offer that observation without reference to the hardware oddity you mention, btw. I can't account for the photograph. But I'm in LOVE with that gun.

Anonymous said...

Our fine host Mr. Grigg and wife: Congratulations!

- Beloved of the King

William N. Grigg said...

Sharp-eyed Beloved -- thank you so much!

As I've told several good friends, this development was unexpected, but hardly inexplicable. :-)

Korrin has been home from the hospital since about March. Her condition has obviously improved, but she's not entirely well; that's the nature of schizophrenia, from what I've been able to learn.

The prospect of having another child is a source of great joy to all of us, but particularly for Korrin. All she's ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother, and to teach her own children at home.

Anonymous said...

Jeb Mason, a stunt double in the movie 'Bentoverback Mountain', looks gay.....not that there's anything wrong with that. -RW

Anonymous said...

Thoroughly analyzed and I agree to a point - until the results are in, Obama-Bush-Dog Catcher of the week, it really holds no value as who is 'the president'.

The presidency is a joke, it's become not about doing what's right, it's about how much crap will the herd believe. The biggest B.S. artist wins...and if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, it's what you use to baffle them!

There has never been a scarcity of Uncle Tom's in this country, it just goes to show you to what heights can be reached by choosing it as a career path.

Will Obama make a difference? Bush made a difference. It isn't about the color, it's about who will get hurt when the chips hit the table. We're all waiting to see...and some of us have our bags packed with an aged passport, just in case.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to post info about Obama's White House counsel, though not sure is the right place to do that...

Greg Craig has been chosen as BO's new white house counsel. Interesting. Craig's resume includes:...

--Representing Elian Gonzales' father in Cuba in the custody dispute (for those of you who don't recall, machine gun-wielding police stormed little Elian's home in Florida and took him from his family by force)

--Representing General Kofi Anan in the U.N. "oil for food" corruption investigation

--Representing William Jefferson Bligh Clinton during the impeachment trial.

Anonymous said...

Obama is a total Marxist. We shouldn't be surprised.

Neutrino Cannon said...

"In all of this, as Hawk pointed out, power and money played a much greater role than any atavistic attachment to ethnic or tribal loyalties."

Or perhaps tribal identification and loyalty are means to the end of power.

liberranter said...

Nothing would please me more than
to watch a proud black American
pull down the rotten establishment
in D.C.


I just spent a weekend with several of my Black in-laws who, to a person, all believe that this is exactly what Jesus's Little Brother (to hear them speak of him) will do, plus heal all of the world's ills. It absolutely broke my heart and turned my stomach, in combination, to think of 1) how thoroughly deluded these poor, naive,trusting souls are, and 2) how deeply disappointed, even enraged they will be in less than four years time when they realize that their New Lord and Savior, their Second Messiah, is merely another marionette, the latest in a long line of agents of the status quo busily tending the machinery of kleptoligarchy and that they will be four years poorer and their futures four years bleaker than they are today. But denial isn't just a river in Egypt; it is one of the most powerful of human emotions and I expect that it will assert itself to new degrees of power as reality asserts itself for the next four to eight years.

(BTW, would anyone care to make an early prediction as to who the Republicans, or what little is left of them, have already chosen to run as token opposition against Emperor Barack I in November of '12? If the trends of the last two decades mean anything, it has already been preordained that His Holiness will be a two-term president, just as it was determined in advance that Slick Willie and Dubya would each serve two terms. Therefore, the minority party is obliged to put up an untenable candidate for the "mid-term" election who is sure to lose. There's simply no other way to explain the Republicans putting up Bob Dole in '96, or the Dems chosing John Kerry in '04.)

Anonymous said...

OK. You know the problems. What is your solution?

Anonymous said...

I super heart Avery Brooks. A tenured professor of thetre arts at Rutgers, he used to come right off the set of Deep Space Nine into the classroom, still in his Starfleet uniform.

Even though Star Trek's future is way too statist and militaristic for my tastes, I can't help but love it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and of course, congratulations.

If you keep this up, you are going to run out of inspirational figures from the pro-freedom movement for names!

WorthNoting said...

Well, this article was certainly thought provoking!:D
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS
/11/17/eichengreen.obama/index.html