Re: [Pen-l] James Petras on Obama

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> FWIW, Petras sounds like he feels betrayed by Obama. I don't think I
> ever had any illusions in the first place, so I can't feel betrayed.
>
> (BTW, one of the many things I don't like about the Trotskyist
> tradition is the "revolution betrayed" trope, seemingly with a big
> admixture of personal animosity toward the "betrayer.")
> --
> Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
> way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.

There's no evidence that Petras had any illusions in Obama.

In fact, he was a Nader/McKinney supporter:

http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1760&more=1&c=1
The Elections and the Responsibility of the Intellectual to Speak 
Truth to Power: Twelve Reasons to Reject Obama and Support Nader/McKinney

    The presidential elections in the US, once again, provide an 
acid test of the integrity and consequential conduct of US 
intellectuals. If it is the duty and responsibility of the public 
intellectual to speak truth to power, the recent statements of most 
of our well-known and prestigious public pundits have failed miserably.

. 10.29.2008

Instead of highlighting, exposing and denouncing the reactionary 
foreign and domestic policies of Democratic Party candidate Senator 
Barack Obama, they have chosen to support him, 'critically, offering 
as excuses that even 'limited differences' can result in positive 
outcomes,and that 'Obama is the lesser evil' and 'creates an 
opportunity for a possibility of change.'

What makes these arguments untenable is the fact that Obama's public 
pronouncements, his top policy advisers, and the likely policymakers 
in his government have openly defined a most bellicose foreign policy 
and a profoundly reactionary domestic economic policy totally in line 
with Paulson-Bush-Wall Street. On the major issues of war, peace, the 
economic crisis and the savaging of the US wage and salaried class, 
Obama promises to extend and deepen the policies which the majority 
of Americans reject and repudiate.

(clip) 

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