As a self-proclaimed Pacifist Socialist, I was wildly excited to see CNN finally acknowledge how distant from Socialism our President is. Now if only the rest of the country could get on board…

Also, can someone explain to me the roots of the Joker graphic for the Tea Party movement? Is it racism, painting Obama as a white guy? Do they think he’s not serious? What gives?

Anyway, if I were the type who really believed the Democrats and Republicans planned out the last fifty years of history together in a back room (note: I am almost this type of person), then I’d say the Obama presidency and its popular reaction were carefully crafted by the enemies of the middle and lower classes to kill equality conceptually in America forever. By labeling moderate Clintonesque corporate-friendly policies as “Socialsm”, one radically shifts the entire American discourse ten paces to the right.

I guess one could make the same argument that calling Bush’s policies “Fascism” did the same thing in the opposite direction, except that Obama’s approach has been to maintain and even extend those seemingly Fascist foreign policy approaches. Yes, he’s dismantling some nukes, but it’s sort of deck chairs on the Titanic at the point at which several countries could destroy the planet with their arsenal. Meanwhile, Gitmo’s still open, both wars are still going strong, sabre-rattling is increasing in Iran, and we have a new executive order enabling the assassination of American citizens. So even the (mostly justified) fearmongering about Bush’s policies hasn’t actually shifted the dialogue in America, mostly because of September 11th.

The parallel to September 11th (extreme fear-inducing event that creates political shifts) could have and should have been the financial crisis. This should have created the groundswell momentum for moving against America’s corporate overlords that ushered in a real change toward real Socialism. If Obama had a Socialist cell in his body, he would have capitalized on the momentum of the crisis to institute new regulations and actually make the world safe for the average American peon. Instead, just like his dithering on the public option, he let the moment of crisis slide and is now backchanneling some pretty weak regulatory legislation that will get killed because the stock market’s afloat again.

Obama’s becoming an expert at appearing to squander his timing so that corporate interests win out. But if he becomes the new standard of an uber-leftist, we’re going to have some scary Presidents in the next twenty years, my friends. If Obama’s the friend of the people and the enemy of corporations, I’d hate to see who his mirror image on the right might be…

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