Postcards from Ulysses

Obama: Yes we can–WHAT?

“The magic of eating a hair of the dog which bit you in order to cure hydrophobia is as nothing to the magic involved in the belief that those who have privilege and power will remedy the breakdown they have created.”  John Dewey

    Can we drive further into double binds, all the while smiling, thanking those who perpetuate the contradictory commands?  Yes we can.
    I’ll try to keep this short.  I have reasons for wanting to keep it long.  Like, it hurts.  This is painful stuff to watch, and it’s too easy to recoil rather than looking directly and deeply into the pain and asking how we can move beyond it.  I do not think we can move beyond it through clever speeches, through a broken electoral process, through cosmetic changes.  I should preface by saying I don’t know enough about the world to even vaguely call the following analysis “right.”  If you have reasons for thinking I’m way off base, please send them to me, with pretty ribbons.  
    In the previous blog, in which I laid out the idea of the cultural double bind (surely not original . . . I’ll do a search later to find out who else has used this lens), I put near the end a reference to a surprising eruption from the depths of our madness.  It came from Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa.  I couldn’t believe my senses when I saw this clip.  My jaw became plutonium, my eyes became expanding apertures for the absurd.  
    Recently Hillary Clinton delivered a similar eruption.  Heres the quote:

Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill up your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night. My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions.

I discovered this quote on an alternet blog posted by Mike Lux.  Lux seems to have sailed right over the surface, ignoring the depth of the psychic dissonance revealed here.  Without diving in, he simply criticizes Clinton for, in his view, arguing that “I don’t give good speeches, so I will make a good president.”  I was as shocked at his rhetoric as he must have been at Clinton’s.  If we look closely we can see that Clinton is screaming what Philbin did: “How can you let us get away with this fluff?!  We’re a couple of windbags!  We’re all rhetoric!  Pick me anyway!”  We should of course refuse to accept rhetoric as an argument for rejecting rhetoric.  
    This does not end the story though.  To really confront this eruption, we need to ask about the nature of this rhetoric and how it plays into what we call “democratic elections.”  While writing the original double bind blog, one of the examples of a schizophrenic trigger I encountered also came from alternet.  This post comes from Steven Rosenfeld, and it dropped my jaw as far and as fast as the Philbin clip.  It also made my head spin.  I still need to call an exorcist.
    The post is titled: 'Yes, We Can' -- The Magic Behind Obama's Message.  It’s magic alright.  Magic of Disney (Baudrillard fans, feel free to let that sink in).  Here’s the lead:

There is a simple -- but profound -- reason why Barack Obama appears headed for the Democratic nomination, and it comes down to three simple words: I, we and you.

Hopefully someone out there feels their intestines wrenching.  But it gets worse, because Rosenfeld asks us the following: “Have you seen Obama lately? Or heard him speak? Or listened carefully?”  He implies that he has indeed listened carefully.  He will now reveal the secret to Obama’s magic:

George Lakoff, who has written many books on political communication, psychology and how both parties frame and win elections, said Obama's use of "we" and "you" -- and his gift for making people feel good and that they are being heard -- makes all the difference.

Later in the post he writes the following:

Ironically, while the Republican candidates have been falling over themselves to compare themselves to Ronald Reagan, the one candidate who seems to be making Americans feel good about themselves with an assured, easy manner and clear values -- as Reagan did -- is a Democrat in the race, Obama.
    
    "Remember what Reagan was about," Lakoff said, agreeing with the comparison. "It's why people vote for candidates. Obama gets it."
    
    "In the brain, there are two pathways for emotions," Lakoff said, offering an explanation for Obama's charisma. "There is a negative one for fear and anger. And there is a positive one. What Obama does and Reagan did was activate the positive pathways. George Bush activates the negative ones. Obama is activating the positive ones. He makes people feel physically good just by looking at him. The guy looks upbeat. He looks relaxed. You look at him and you feel upbeat, you feel relaxed. He feels empowered. You feel empowered. That's charisma."

As for charisma, Rosenfeld gives us the following from Lakoff: "It is not a mystique," he said. "It is real. Charisma is real. It is tangible."
    Rosenfeld’s analysis supposedly comes from his having listened carefully.  Can we listen with our eyes now?  Can we look into this “magic” and ask what it might imply?  One thing that emerges from the smoke and mirrors: Obama is manipulating us, but it’s okay because it’s charisma and clever linguistics.  You pop the red pill, and suddenly you see the matrix.  However, Lakoff and Rosenfeld seem to like living in it.  I don’t.  And I find it dismaying to read what Lakoff and Rosenfeld have to say.  
    For one thing, it strikes me as odd that Lakoff could have been analyzing any charismatic leader at all.  Mutatis mutandis we could be reading an analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric.  Making people feel good is not a leader’s job.  Making them feel listened to isn’t either.  In our society, it’s supposed to be about actually listening to people, and then following their will.  In our country, elections should be about having informed and informing discussions about the issues, and then a presentation of plans that do at least three things simultaneously: fulfill our moral and ethical obligations, accomplish the will of the majority, and further the realization of human potential.  We are so far from this ideal that I find it grossly inappropriate to call the game we play an “election.”
    It seems to me that we should prefer an uncharismatic leader who will do the right thing over a charismatic one who makes us feel good about not really doing anything that great.  This feeling good is a horrific problem.  Human beings long to feel good.  But when we are in a muddle, we have to realize that the right thing may in fact feel bad, because our internal compass has gone a bit haywire.  We get so used to the wrong that our sense of what feels right must be retuned.  In the meantime, we are very susceptible to being manipulated.  That last notion stands on its own, without dependence on this notion of an out of whack intelligence.  So let’s stick with it.
    I want to take a look at some of the manipulation that’s going on in this “yes we can” spellbinding.  One of the most saddening things I have seen is the Obama “yes we can” music video.  Lakoff and Rosenfeld could probably give us a nice analysis of why people will be so effectively manipulated–I mean “moved” by this piece of propaganda.  Likewise, I’m sure they can explain why the propaganda produced by Goebbels worked so well.  I do not mean to say that Obama or these celebrities are Nazis.  I mean to say manipulation is manipulation.  
    Let’s look more carefully at the speech that “inspired” this video.  Early on in the speech, Obabma says:

But in record numbers, you came out and spoke up for change. And with your voices and your votes, you made it clear that at this moment – in this election – there is something happening in America.
    
There is something happening when men and women in Des Moines and Davenport; in Lebanon and Concord come out in the snows of January to wait in lines that stretch block after block because they believe in what this country can be.
    
    There is something happening when Americans who are young in age and in spirit – who have never before participated in politics – turn out in numbers we’ve never seen because they know in their hearts that this time must be different.
    
There is something happening when people vote not just for the party they belong to but the hopes they hold in common – that whether we are rich or poor; black or white; Latino or Asian; whether we hail from Iowa or New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, we are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction. That is what’s happening in America right now. Change is what’s happening in America.

Change is what’s happening, eh?  What a vacuous political rallying cry.  Hitler could have used it.  Napoleon could have used it.  In and of itself it has no meaning, yet the people at this rally chanted, “We want change!  We want change!”  No one chanted, “We want an end to homelessness!  We want an end to polyarchy!”  These would count as substantial changes.  Too substantial I guess.
    We can find an alternative explanation for the “inspired” response of the voting public: bread and circus have never reached such levels of excess–well, at least the circus part hasn’t.  Indeed, this ridiculous concept of “change” amounts to nothing more than another act taking the center ring.  Consider the gratuitous and immoral scale of this circus.  According to opensecrets.org, “The presidential field has dwindled significantly, but not before the candidates raised more than half a billion dollars in 2007.  By some predictions, the eventual nominees will need to raise $500 million apiece to compete—a record sum.” [They also ask the following question: “As the Democratic Party's superdelegates decide whether to support Clinton or Obama, will they take into account the $900,000 they've received from the candidates?”] One BILLION dollars to run an “election”?!  Plus we have to add in all the money spent by the losers.  We come up with an insane amount of circus, so much circus that we should feel deeply saddened, a sadness made more grave when any candidate fails to begin or end most speeches with something like, “I am so very sorry that we are spending so much money.  I am only allowing myself to participate in this so that, when elected, I can make it illegal.  But that does not make me feel that much better.  I do not think we should run our state on the basis of an ‘ends justify the means’ mentality, and I am truly sorry for all the people who will be sleeping in the streets tonight, who will go hungry tonight, who will have their car or home repossessed, who will lose their job while we spend millions on propaganda.  Please forgive us all, and please allow me to accomplish your will by making the following reforms which, based on speaking with you and on reading intelligent polls of your opinions, I believe you strongly support: ______.”  If Obama said something to that effect, followed by specific policies he would get passed, I would run to the voting booth at record speed, and I wouldn’t mind so much if now and then he indulged in “there is something happening” rhetoric.  It would MEAN something.
    In a circus, on the other hand, a statement often means the opposite of its rhetoric.  A good political circus gets the masses to accept the fulfillment of the elite agenda, something akin to making sure the sacrificial beast bows its head before the slaughter.  We get some water poured over our heads, and part of us thinks we have accepted things.  A truly great political circus goes one step further: it gets the masses to CHEER the fulfillment of the elite agenda.  So the real “Yes We Can” in this part of the speech is, “Can we make you think you WANT this system?  Yes we can.  Can we squander hundreds of millions of dollars, most of it yours, in an effort to appease you by trimming the edges of this wild poisonous vine while leaving the roots in tact?  Yes we can.”  Remember, Hitler represented a change, and millions cheered for him.  Once again, this does NOT imply Obama is a Nazi.  That’s foolishness.  It just implies that “change” is a ridiculous campaign principle, and “there is something happening” applies to everything, so it applies to nothing in a serious political context.   
    Let’s look a little further:

You can be the new majority who can lead this nation out of a long political darkness – Democrats, Independents and Republicans who are tired of the division and distraction that has clouded Washington; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that’s stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there’s no problem we can’t solve – no destiny we cannot fulfill.

There are a lot of issues bound up in this “inspiring” passage (I hope it is clear that “inspiring” is to be read as “manipulative”).  First, this rhetorical turn of making the people responsible for leading the state reminds me of the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign.  What was THAT about?  David C. Korten explains it clearly:

Keep America Beautiful attempts to give its sponsors, the bottling industry, a green image by funding anti-litter campaigns, while those same sponsors actively fight mandatory recycling legislation.  The strategy is to convince the public that litter is the responsibility of consumers–not the packaging industry.

There are similar initiatives coming from all corners of power.  Korten summarizes the development:

Corporations began to create their own “citizen” organizations with names and images that were carefully constructed to mask their corporate and [sic] sponsorship and their true purpose.  The National Wetlands Coalition, which features a logo of a duck flying blissfully over a swamp, was sponsored by oil and gas companies and real estate developers to fight for the easing of restrictions on the conversion of wetlands into drilling sites and shopping malls.  Corporate-sponsored Consumer Alert fights government regulations of product safety.

It would be all too easy to ignore this bread and circus tactic.  Though it might be a nice sentiment to empower every U.S. citizen to become a leader, it doesn’t speak to any real “change.”  The people have long had to fight for what politicians would not give.  Dr. King and those who worked for that great cause were real leaders.  People chanting, “We want change!” are simply made to THINK they are leaders (which does nothing to diminish their efforts or sincerity–it just makes it more comic-tragic).  I would prefer Obama to say, “You will be the first majority in a long time whose opinions will be represented, and whose will shall be accomplished!  Because of this we will drag ourselves out of a long political darkness.  But that darkness requires light, so for that reason I must talk to you about things no one else is talking about.  You need to become informed so you can tell your leaders what to do.  And then they must do it.”  But the real “Yes We Can” version of this is, “Can we make you think you have taken control of this system that operates so far beyond real human need and human potential?  Yes we can.  Can we sound very agreeable, and even inspiring, as we fulfill the elite agenda?  Yes we can.  Can we tell you we can accomplish anything you want, using words like “change” and “destiny,” while we offer policies that do very little to actually give you what you want or change the unhealthy structures we have in place?  Yes we can.”
    He goes on:

Our new American majority can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable health care in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together; and we can tell the drug and insurance industry that while they’ll get a seat at the table, they don’t get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now.

Let’s rewrite that straight away: “In our time?  Yes we can.  During my presidency?  No we won’t.”  How about that part where he says: “they don’t get to buy every chair”?  Let’s rewrite that, too: “They don’t get to buy EVERY chair.  As in, ‘I did not have “sexual relations” with that woman.  We just had a good time.’  EVERY chair?  Heavens no.  Just the important chairs.  Yes, in the plural.  What?  What do you mean when you ask me, ‘Since when do they have a RIGHT to a chair at all?’  I’m trying to inspire you.  What I’m saying is, Can we convince you that the corporations should have any rights at all when human flourishing and moral obligation are at stake?  Yes we can.”  It boggles the mind–and perhaps insults the soul–to hear him speak of “we” and of “majority” when the majority of people in this nation want a single payer health plan and he refuses to come up with one, when the majority want to have a planet at the end of the century and he refuses to make it a central issue of the election.  I am sure we the people, we the majority, we the ones who want the darkness to end, would be told that we aren’t being realistic.  That’s when things get truly horrifying:

. . . . But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.
    
. . . . It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
    
Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

Is this the audacity of hope, or the audacity of rhetoric?  Are we supposed to cheer when Obama lifts up the noble work of Martin Luther King and puts it on the same plane as his “universal” health care plan?  Let’s really ponder this.  Let’s compare what Dr. King was saying to what Obama says and is likely to actually do.  Here is a segment of Dr. King’s speech:

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
    
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
        
. . . . I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
    
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
    
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
    
I have a dream today.
    
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
    
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

THAT is INSPIRING.  I do not feel manipulated.  I feel moved with genuine emotions, I feel open to wisdom and compassion.  I feel like standing up for something--no matter what the odds.  I feel like we can look each other in the eye and say, “Yes we can.  We can make something happen, something true and meaningful.”
    If a politician is going to invoke resonance with words like these, we should unleash a discerning eye so we can see clearly as we listen.  Is he taking us further down this bold path of human flourishing?  Is he demanding that we fulfill the dictates of our own most precious beliefs?  What kinds of things should we expect to happen when we cash this check to which Dr. King referred?  Should we expect to:

Put an end to homelessness?  Yes we should.
Put an end to poverty?  Yes we should.
Have the finest single payer health care system in the world?  Yes we should.
Stop the plundering of the planet?  Yes we should.
Establish peace in the Middle East, establish peace, once and for all, in every corner of the globe, make peace, once and for all, a serious focus of our policies?  Yes we should.
Fundamentally reject our consumer anti-culture, reject it because it is completely antithetical to our most honored values and beliefs?  Yes we should.
Create a society in which goods and services are exchanged based on their ability to promote human flourishing, rather than based on our ability, by any means, to get people to pay for them?  Yes we should.
Put an end to basic human cruelty, including cruelty toward animals and the more-than-human world?  Yes we should.
Peel back more layers of racism and inequality?  Yes we should.
Not only pull out of Iraq, but pay some form reparations to the Iraqi people?  Yes we should.  
Nurture the spiritual and cultural evolution of humanity?  Yes we should.

Can we do these things with Obama or Clinton?  No we can’t.  Maybe we should put our foot down here.  Maybe we should just not accept it when someone provokes the memory of Dr. King and associates it with empty rhetoric and with policies falling squarely with the bounds of the current anti-culture.  The Kennedy reference is almost as annoying, though perhaps less wounding to the soul.  Consider this from Kennedy’s speech:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.  No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

Wow.  He's no Dr. King, but he really lays it out there.  “We’re going to do this, people!”  Amazing.  How can we tolerate anything less?  Why on earth don’t we take to the streets when Obama fails to say,

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before my presidency is out, of creating the finest single payer health insurance system in the world, so that not a single person living in this country ever has to worry about their health care.  We should treat this as a basic human right.  Nothing less.  No single health related project in this period will be more impressive nor more important for the long-range well being of our citizens.  None will be more difficult to accomplish since there are many who will try to fight it.  Ultimately, it will save us all a lot of money, though.  And ultimately, it is the right thing to do.

But we let him get away with “universal” health care, without batting an eye.  We let him explain the merits of implementing NAFTA policies in Peru.  We look right at him while he tells us that, “when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.”  Then we cheer that we want change.  Then we accept that we’re not ready to take care of everybody, we’re not ready to get what we, the majority, have said we want, we shouldn’t try.  Finally, in a moment of double bind bliss, we sing in chorus, “Yes we can.”  It doesn’t get stronger than this: Yes-we-can-No-we-can’t.  It’s one word, one movement of the psyche chipping away at its own stability, its own discernment, its own wisdom and compassion.
    I find Danny Glover’s comments rather interesting in this context.  He participated in a roundtable discussion on Democracy Now and explained some of the reasons he has for not supporting Obama.  I include an extended quote here, but if you want to skim, I’ll nutshell the point: if Obama really represents “change,” why on earth do so many elites support him?  Though Obama can work his rhetorical magic on us, the corporations and other elites close their ears and look at their pocket books.  They are not fooled, and their support should make us ask more questions.  Here’s how Glover framed this problem:

And yes, the issue of race is always there. The fact that in this particular—in this country, when you talk about America, there is no escape from the awareness of color. There’s no escape out from the awareness of color. The question is, it also becomes that—which is almost a contradiction in itself when you have a black man running with the condition of black people in this particular country, where half the prison population is black, where the disparity between those who work and those who are unemployed or underemployed always leans heavily toward black, where the situation where—that’s happening in the educational system, and it affects black people—it’s very interesting, in some sense. And we need to look at this, that here’s a black man that’s had so much white support, in this sense, when clearly, clearly, if you look at all the indicators, in terms of healthcare, if you look at poverty, if you look at education, if you look at the incarceration rate, death row rate, all those lean toward situations that are unfavorable for black people.
    
Now, it was very interesting, in a situation where we have more public—more black elected officials than we’ve ever had in the history of that in this country, so there’s some real clear, interesting dynamics that we have to look at, in terms of how we frame this. I’m sure King would have talked about, yes, a poor—when King left here—Dr. King left here in fact in ’68, he talked about a poor people’s march and poor people organizing to deal with the systemic change. Are the changes we’re going to fight for systemic change and real progressive changes, or are they kind of cosmetic changes? Those are real questions.

The raison d’etre for elections is to make us feel good, to make us feel we are being heard, to make us feel we have a government of, by, and for the people, and then for those elected to go on to fulfill the agenda of the elites.  Clinton has perfectly legitimate strategies for this: she tries to make us think she has policies that embody our needs and wants.  She has solutions.  She works hard for us.  It’s a practical rhetoric, perhaps in response to the general feeling that elections are not about real solutions, and perhaps in anticipation of resistance to her gender.  She was probably a bit blind-sided by the sheer volume of idealistic rhetoric coming out of the Obama camp.  Who wouldn’t have been?  But we are blind if we don’t see the game, and see it as ONE game.  For instance, you can check out this discussion on Democracy Now in which independent journalist Allan Nairn and American Conservative correspondent Kelley Beaucar Vlahos discuss the fact that both Obama and Clinton chose the same old warmongering advisors who have operated in Washington for DECADES–for BOTH parties.  It is deeply dismaying to hear Obama’s speeches while knowing some of his advisors can be linked to grave atrocities.  One of his advisors, General Merrill McPeak, can be linked to East Timor.  That should be enough to make our heads spin.  But that’s not all.  Another Obama advisor, Anthony Lake, can be linked to the invasion of Haiti.  That should make our guts wrench.  
    Why, then, should we believe in some serious and significant difference between Obama and Clinton (or even the Democrats and the GOP, since at least one of Obama’s advisros, Dennis Ross, served under BOTH BUSHES)?  As Liliana Segura points out, “it's not news that Obama has surrounded himself largely with [Bill Clinton's] former advisors.”  Her article, The Sounds of Silence and Equivocation, is worth reading, because she takes a pretty close look at some of Obama’s rhetoric and asks just what kind of change we’re likely to see from him.  She highlights his “unwillingness to take a specific and uncomproming position when it counts,” and in general his positions are not easy to determine.  Quite a smoke and mirrors campaign.  By remaining vague, and with little voting history as background, “the people” have an easier time projecting what they want onto him.  I doubt they want warmongering, atrocity-linked advice guiding presidential action.  The warmongering strikes me as quite disturbing.  Segura gives us this quote from one of Obama’s speeches: "There are five ways America will begin to lead again when I'm president."  Now, think for a moment.  What would you pick?  What SHOULD we pick?  What does our moral compass tell us?  What are the dictates of our own most treasured beliefs?  Should we begin to lead by making peace?  Should we end the wars and atrocities in the Congo, in Darfur, in Palestine, in Iraq?  Should we heal the planet?  Should we make sure humanity can live sustainably?  No.  No.  No.  Segura tells us that, according to Obama, the first way America will begin to lead again, THE FIRST WAY, is by "building the first truly 21st century military . . ."  He had the gall to follow those words with these: “ . . . and showing wisdom in how we deploy it.”  Essentially an ABUSIVE and insulting statement given the background of his advisors.   He practically admits as much when he says that this wise military will "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar."  Not a peace keeping force, but a force of aggression.  What a refreshing change!  What magic!  Something’s happening alright. 
    As this “election” runs its inevitable course, I keep asking myself, Can we toss our cookies?  The answer, again and again, seems to be, No we can’t.  No matter how much sugar and fluff (or venom) our “leaders” have baked into them.  Maybe they’re clozapine cookies.  Maybe we should just eat until we explode.