Eshu’s blues: Obamania one year after: a confession

michael hureaux perez

04 Nov 2009

by BAR columnist michael hureaux perez

Confession may or not be good for the soul, but at some point it becomes unavoidable when one takes stock of what one's vote has wrought. The author admits to the sin of having placed excessive trust in former mentors and gurus among the Obamites. Now he sees the fruits of his misspent ballot: “Even though there’s a black man in the White House, the white man’s burden must still be shouldered.”

Eshu’s blues: Obamania one year after: a confession

by michael hureaux perez

“Even though there’s a black man in the White House, the white man’s burden must still be shouldered.

Okay, it’s gotten painful enough that I have to confess. I was had, took, robbed, bamboozled. I voted for Obama, against my better thinking. I actually gave the benefit of the doubt to many of the people who work the internet, who insisted that they had built a political movement around Obama’s candidacy. I didn’t believe in Obama, but I believed in the folks who insisted they had built a mass political current that would “hold Obama’s feet to the fire.” I thought just before I cast my ballot last year, “Well, maybe there’s something going on here that you can’t see, because you really are a stuffy little old school nigra marxist, and maybe time and events have passed you by,” etc and so forth. So I shrugged off my old stale dogma and voted for the Oba Man and his army of Hope and Change bringers, and helped bring change to America.

A year after Obamania began to bring change to America, I and pretty much everyone else I know are bringing change to the American supermarket to run it through the machine that dispenses bills in exchange for the contents of those jars we all usually keep on the nightstand for a rainy day. And lately, it seems to be raining like hell. At least, the deluge of bills with the bigger interest rates seems to be non-stop. It’s good for the economy, which is picking up marvelously, according to all sources.

“I believed in the folks who insisted they had built a mass political current that would 'hold Obama’s feet to the fire.'”

Such sources are not hard to find. Throw a rock in any direction these days and you can hit an economist rife with the wisdom of classic boojwah economy. Things don’t change that much with the bankster crew, everything old is new again. The economy’s doing great, it’s only people who are suffering. But don’t whine. If you think it’s bad here, check out the colonies. As the Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuno- I’m not making that last name up- told 17,000 public sector workers, including school teachers he fired a few weeks ago, “Sorry about your jobs. You’re looking for work? Go pick coffee.” And public sector workers, being wasteful as well as ungrateful for the opportunity to live the Horatio Alger myth, got mad and threw eggs at Governor Fortuno wasting perfectly good food in the exchange. See how we are?

Anyway, if what you’re hearing in economic reports everywhere, from talk of a “jobless economic recovery” to reports of a “natural and permanent unemployment rate of double digits” is sounding a lot like Marie Antoinette’s old nostrum “let them eat cake,” it’s because you either have a bad attitude or you’re pre-diabetic. And some people even say there are a lot of things people shouldn’t be expected to endure just because most people in this country aren’t yet in a mood to trot the ruling class off to the guillotine. And I confess there are moments when the thumpety- thump sound of boojwah heads rolling into a basket has a certain appeal to me.

“The economy’s doing great, it’s only people who are suffering.”

But, as that sterling shot of postmodern wisdom would have it, our moment in history “Is what it is.” One must be patient, and accept the wisdom of the Obamian Trend which believes that it’s best to give full license and hand trillions of dollars to powerful banking thieves and war criminals who are positively foaming at the mouth for the sake of a future posterity. Even though there’s a black man in the White House, the white man’s burden must still be shouldered. And by gosh, by golly, change has come to America. Loose change. Spare change. Shiny dimes, like the ones John D. Rockefeller used to hand out to street urchins.

Maybe if you stand in line and wait long enough, you’ll get one, too.

BAR columnist michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: [email protected].

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