Freedom Rider: When Republicans Attack

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Why defend Obama if he won’t defend us?”

The Republican party is always the party of the evil doers. When they aren’t stealing from the public trough to enrich the already rich, they are stealing elections or subverting the Constitution in order to steal our civil liberties. They always lie. They will lie about the rationale for war or about the nature of the worldwide financial crisis. It is absurd to claim as they do, that a president in office for less than two months is more responsible for unemployment, a crashing stock market and the demise of major banks, than the president who served for the previous eight years.

It is tempting to defend the president and congressional Democrats when Republicans set out to destroy and make illegitimate their electoral victory. Republican legislators in Missouri and Tennessee have publicly questioned Barrack Obama’s American citizenship, joining up with the right wing “birthers” who continue to make hay out of an issue that is dead to everyone else. When CNBC attacks the Obama stimulus plan while neglecting to mention that it served as a lying mouthpiece for failing financial services companies, it is easy to want to take the Obama side.

The attacks are insidious, and are meant to weaken Democrats’ ability to pass legislation that has already been eviscerated by a misguided desire for bipartisan comity and the Democrats’ usual propensity to be spineless. Yet for all the storm and fury playing out on cable news networks, it is important to know that none of this drama really matters. The corporate media always prefer sensationalism and distraction over substantive news reporting. Democrats should be less upset about Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh rants and more upset because the economic crisis is showing the tip of a very deep iceberg and because Obama doesn’t want them to look below the water line.

“Americans cheer because Obama proposes the type of high speed rail system that has existed in Japan and Europe for decades.”

The economic meltdown will continually worsen and it will do so in large part because the Obama administration will not do what it needs to do in order to stop it. The financial system could be saved if the nation’s military budget were to be drastically reduced. The only things that America produces in abundance are guns and bombs. The result is a country with a military budget that is larger than that of every other country on earth combined, but with an almost non-existent manufacturing capacity. Americans cheer because Obama proposes the type of high speed rail system that has existed in Japan and Europe for decades. There are no resources left for innovation when defense spending eats up the budget. It is truly pathetic to celebrate when “the greatest country in the world” finally catches up to the 1970s.

The mortgage relief proposed by the Obama administration is woefully inadequate. It will help only a small fraction of homeowners in danger of foreclosure. That fact is of greater significance than CNBC’s attempts to discredit the plan.

In short, why defend Obama if he won’t defend us? He wouldn’t even defend his own attorney general, Eric Holder. Holder recently made a statement that Americans were “cowards” because of their unwillingness to discuss race. “I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my attorney general, we would have used different language.” Keep the boss from hell smack down in mind when tempted to fight for Obama’s honor.

In the midst of financial failure and high unemployment, there is no one in Washington willing to fight for and defend American workers. It isn’t clear how much public money AIG will need to stave off collapse. The $160 billion it has already received is apparently insufficient and countless billions more will go into that black hole before the average working person gets any consideration from their government.

“Obama and the Democrats won’t propose a sensible and profitable change that the country needs because they are beholden to corporate interests.”

When Republicans attack the Obama administration remember that Democrats could have done the same thing to George W. Bush. Even in the minority, Senate Democrats had enough votes to hamper any and all Bush administration initiatives. They refused to do it and now the Republican minority has no qualms about showing them the art of political war.

Bush foisted a radical agenda on the American people, an agenda that destroyed their country and the world’s economy too. Single payer health care would be a radical departure for this country, but it is what most people want, it would provide an efficient stimulus to individuals and business and it is what the rest of the world already has. Obama and the Democrats won’t propose a sensible and profitable change that the country needs because they are beholden to corporate interests and 300 million people continue suffering as a result.

Don’t worry about Fox news, or Limbaugh or crazed wing nuts. When saving crooked banks is the first priority, and saving homes and health care don’t even make it onto the agenda, then Obama and his oh so brilliant team are on their own. If the issues that would truly help this nation’s citizens are taken off the table there is nothing and no one who is worthy of being defended.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.

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