Re: [Marxism] Anti-abortion homophobe to deliver invocation at inauguration, (and also re: Why Third Way politics refuses to die)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The selection of Warren to give the invocation is rightly taken by oppressed
and beleaguered sectors of the base that voted for Obama as a slap in the
face, and it seems to send the message that types like Warren are central to
the coalition and they are, to coin a phrase, peripheral at best. 

They are right to protest, and all supporters of democratic rights should
identify with and support their protests. Just as I assume we would if he
had chosen an anti-Black racist in an effort to reach out to "middle
America." them.

I will be surprised if Warren makes anti-abortion or anti-gay-rights
statements in his call upon God to support the incoming president and the
class for which he governs, but if Warren does, it will certainly constitute
a fair warning.

Rev. Wright would have been a more appealing choice to me, to put it mildly.
He has never supported gay marriage, but has been a strong supporter of 
gay rights and women's rights. But Wright had disqualified himself out by
taking the name of the "white man" (i.e., US capitalism's history of racial
oppression at home and abroad) in vain.

This also poses the question of Obama's proclaimed desire to reduce
abortions. This can be pursued in two ways: at the expense of the rulers
(spreading knowledge and availability of birth control and also of
nonsurgical abortifacient drugs, expanding support of all kinds to families
and pregnant women, sane sex education in the schools -- not abstentionist
scare campaigns -- and so on).

Or it can be done at the expense of women's rights or all democratic rights:
more anti-abortion laws fired by scare propaganda; more threats of
prosecution of women who fail to meet certain standards of care for the
foetus; and more subjection of women who seek abortions to antiabortion
propaganda and psychological torture sessions called counseling, along with,
of course, turning those women who are intransigeant (and supporting medical
personnel) over to the secular arm to be burned.

As I said, the selection of Warren should be treated as fair warning.

But "this will wake up the liberals"! What a bizarre strategic objective for
revolutionaries today! Is that what all the Obama-foamic posts have been
about? It has seemed so, because the central theme seemed to be not that
Obama is an imperialist politician who serves the interests of imperialism,
but proving that he is not a liberal but a right-winger who is fooling the
poor liberals (center-right being the term of art, since it is also the
Republicans' self-description -- Bush would consider it an accolade).

But Obama is a liberal. And that's a good description of what is wrong with
him. There is nothing about occupying Afghanistan or keeping troops in Iran,
if possible, that defines someone as a non-liberal or anti-liberal. The
Clintons ARE liberals. So were both Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, Kennedy,
Carter and Johnson.

Although I think Obama is a full member in good standing of the liberal
imperialist heritage and establishment in this country, I think the
conception that Obama is "Clinton's third term" is a fantasy. A fantasy also
apparently governed by the strategic goal of "waking up the liberals" and
winning them to socialism or at least third-partyism through exposes of
Obama's supposed rightism.

I think the circumstances (political, economic, and in international
relations) have changed so much that a repeat performance of Clinton is
simply ruled out.

But Louis has now placed the idea that Obama is Clinton III in terms of such
generality that neither he nor anyone who agrees with him need ever modify
it by an iota, no matter what happensWhy Third Way Politics refuses to die.

For those who have been surprised by Obama's apparent determination to serve

in the capacity of Bill Clinton's third term, the evidence for such a 
proclivity was there all along for those with the patience to read 
through his gaseous prose. Obama wrote [in "Audacity of Hope"]: "In his
platform -- if not always in his day-to-day politics -- Clinton's Third Way
went beyond splitting the difference. It tapped into the pragmatic,
nonideological attitude of the majority of Americans"
(http://www.marxmail.org/msg54183.html).
)
Aside from the fallacy of treating this as a 100 percent endorsement of
Clinton's political course, which it was not intended to be and wasn't in
fact, this is a statement that would be signed onto without hesitation, I
believe, by every US president since the end of reconstruction (at least),
with the possible bipartisan exceptions of the unusually rigid Wilson and
Hoover. 

It certainly fits both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and so on. It even fits Bush in the essentials.
There are signs that he got caught up a bit in  American Triumphalism as an
idea for a few years, but he seems  clearly back on board now.

With this definition, there is no way that Obama can deviate from being
"Clinton's third term," without becoming a Morales or Chavez (excluded in my
opinion) or moving to the far right or fascism (only slightly less excluded,
in my opinion). 

More than "Clinton's third term," Obama by this definition becomes
"Clinton's" 30th term (apologies if my count of terms since 1876 minus
Wilson and Hoover is off). This definition of Obama's course is so general
as to be virtually irrefutable no matter what Obama does, and therefore is
worthless.

But perhaps not quite so worthless from the standpoint of the
(unfortunately, also worthless) strategy of waking up the liberals.

My approach to the election of Obama as a progressive historical event
(which is also irrefutable in a different way, from the standpoint of a
modest knowledge and comprehension of US history), and my support for
McKinney and Clemente was based on a strategy of reaching toward and seeking
a base for real fundamental needed change among the oppressed and exploited,
and especially among the working class -- particularly the oppressed
peoples, women workers, immigrants, and the young. From that standpoint
suggestions that I have been "opposed to criticism of Obama" (or that
Joaquin, Mark or Walter have been) is false, although, from the standpoint
of the strategy of waking up the liberals, I can see why people might think
so.

 



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