The snow-job Barack Obama campaign has succeeded in divorcing itself from any discussion of issues, thanks to the helpful hand of corporate media. Predictably, African Americans prefer a symbolic presence in the corridors of power, to a candidate that reflects their progressive outlook on the world. And many whites welcome the prospect of voting for a Black man who has made clear he will not acknowledge - much less challenge - their privileges. Still, Obama styles himself a "Joshua" who will lead his people into the Promised Land. In fact, he is the political heir of King Herod.
Barack Obama: More Like King Herod Than Joshua
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Black people don't want to hear about the substance of Obama's corporate politics; they would rather wish upon a star."
Barack Obama tries to get folksy by mixing scripture and recent history into a self-serving narrative in which he is the post-Civil Rights Era Joshua - the man who leads his people into the Promised Land that Moses never lived to enter. Obama, seeking authenticity on the cheap through shallow pop theology, is playing the Bible card, but as any really good preacher can tell you, that card can often be a joker. Rather than a successor to Moses or Dr. Martin Luther King, Obama most resembles the Jewish King Harrod - a servant and vassal of Rome.
It was King Herod who, the Bible says, left it up to the Roman overlord Pontius Pilate to decide if Jesus Christ would be crucified, or not. Harrod bowed to power. Barack Obama's back is just as crooked. He is no progressive, and is only made to seem so by a corporate media that cares nothing for issues, but only about personalities, money and "momentum." Obama's ace in the hole is the sad fact that African Americans are so hungry to see one of their own grab the brass ring - the presidency - that they wishfully will him into being the "brother" that, by all the evidence, he is not.
But Obama's main constituency is not Black; it is white people that want to absolve themselves with one vote of the guilt for centuries of racial oppression. In other words, Black folks crave a symbolic victory - even one that has no substance to it - and a significant number of white people would celebrate an Obama presidency as marking the end of the race "problem" in the United States. Forget about mass Black incarceration; the decimation of the Black middle class through loss of manufacturing jobs; gentrification that is dislocating the dark populations of inner cities; school systems that are more Jim Crow today than ever before, and even less functional; and a war budget that destroys all hope of domestic social progress in our lifetimes.
"The costs of Obama's militarism will ensure that there will be no Marshal Plan for the cities, no universal health care, no social safety net."
Barack Obama cannot claim to be a progressive by any stretch of the imagination. He wants to add almost one hundred thousand new soldiers and marines to the U.S. military machine - to do what? Obama wants to thicken the U.S. military, so it can put more "boots on the ground" in more countries where the United States does not belong. The costs of Obama's militarism will ensure that there will be no Marshal Plan for the cities, no universal health care, no social safety net.
Obama gets three-quarters of his campaign money from the rich - from the huge corporations that recognize their own interests will be protected by a President Obama. He told them so, in no uncertain terms early in his Senate career, when he voted to limit citizens' ability to sue corporations in state courts. Obama made sure that his corporate donors understood he would be a loyal servant - a King Herod to Wall Street - when he voted against an amendment that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Barack Obama has no problem with predatory lenders - the people who are foreclosing on the Black middle class.
I have no doubt that a vast majority of Black people will go with the Obama flow. They don't want to hear about the substance of his corporate politics; they would rather wish upon a star, and imagine that King Herod is really Joshua. It ain't necessarily so. In fact, it's a lie.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR contributing editor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from Ethiopia.
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