Church of the Ascending Obama
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"The likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman
Brothers and Morgan Stanley early on paid for Obamite Church property, pulpit
and pews."
Obamamania might as well be a religion. Its African American
denominations are rooted in faith - not facts. In some respects the Church of
the Ascending Obama's dogma is the reverse mirror of those doomsday religious
sects that preach "the end is near" based on no worldly evidence whatsoever.
Like all belief systems anchored in faith and little else,
the Obamites scorn hard evidence and treat bearers of facts as heretics and
servants of Evil. The difference is, the doomsdayers take it as a matter of
faith that the end of the world as we know it is imminent, while the Obamites
rely on faith alone to predict that their spiritual leader will usher in a
glorious era of "change." You can't tell the Obamites any differently, even
though their Holy Man is hopelessly surrounded by and beholden to international
finance capital and their global protectors, the U.S. military-industrial
complex.
If African American Obamites and their purportedly
"progressive" non-Black brethren would get their heads of the clouds and survey
the earthly landscape, they would confront the fact that the forces opposing
change are far more influential in the Obamite church than the long-suffering
masses of voting congregants. The money-changers are in charge. The likes of
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley early on
paid for Obamite Church property, pulpit and pews, long before the multitudes
had ever heard of Obama or had a chance to tithe a portion of their hard-earned
wages to him. Obama makes regular pilgrimages to shrines of imperial hegemony
like the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs. There, in the bosom of the permanent corporate
rulers of the United States, Obama has repeatedly pledged to increase the
already obscene U.S. military budget.
"The money-changers are
in charge."
Do the Lords of Finance Capital fund Obama because they
desire change? No! They give millions in campaign funds now in order to secure
hundreds of billions in bailouts later, when The Obama has risen. That's their
idea of salvation. Do the bankers and global money manipulators seek a new
dispensation for the average citizen, a break from the past? Of course not. It
is they who were the architects of the mega-corruption of recent decades, and
who stand to lose the most from fundamental change, real reform. Have the
militarists and their factories of mass destruction been converted to "change"
that any peace loving person can "believe in?" Never. They want more of the
same, more money for weapons, more troops, more tools of global domination.
Obama blesses their gruesome enterprises - a benediction for the Anti-Changers.
The only change desired by the rulers of the United States,
is a change of face, a new-and-improved packaging of the same old corporate
domination and imperial lawlessness. And if not Obama, they will be happy with
John McCain. The only thing the average Church of the Ascending Obama
parishioner can expect on that Great Gettin' Up Inauguration Morning...is a cheap
prayer cloth.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
We discuss reproductive justice in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling which overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. Loretta Ross is co- author of the book Reproductive Justice, and co-founder of…
Gwen Debrow of the Campaign to Free Mumia joins to tell us what we can do to go all out for Mumia during the July 3rd nationwide actions.
On July 5, 1852 Frederick Douglass was asked to speak on the topic of the nation’s independence celebration. Now known as What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, the speech was a stinging…
The full extent of Democratic Party treachery was exposed when the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned. Only right wing Americans have any expectation of getting what they want from the electoral…
A 1980 speech by Black lesbian poet and activist Pat Parker provides a feminist, anti-imperialist blueprint for the present.
