If Only

At the end of more than a few episodes of “Get Smart,” Maxwell Smart would say something like: “if only they had done all that for niceness.” Those words keep coming to mind as millions throng Washington for Obama’s inauguration. If only they had come to stop Bush’s wars or to demand single-payer health insurance or to demand that the United States force Israel to stop visiting death and destruction upon Gaza.

Even so, there is much to celebrate today. It has to do with race. After all, Obama will be sworn in as President in a city that, just sixty years ago, was still officially segregated! That he won the election shows not only that “change” is possible. It also shows that, despite our not very democratic electoral institutions, we the people can bring it about – at a pace that our political class and their media flunkies can hardly comprehend.

That Cheney and Bush are about to be dispatched is also something to celebrate. May we see then next in shackles and orange jump suits! That’s an exhilarating thought for persons with a sense of justice, but also a sobering one. The Forgiver-in-Chief is likely to let his predecessors and their underlings get away with worse, much worse, than murder -- for the sake of “bipartisanship” and “moving on.” It’s the same mistake, magnified, that Bill Clinton made when he assumed office at a time when it was still possible to prosecute Reagan and (poppy doc) Bush and their underlings for the crimes of Iran-Contra. But, of course, Clinton, like his wife, was and is an opportunist slug. One hopes (still) for better from Obama. But as he relentlessly reempowers Clintonites and pals around with Republicans, the chances of getting more get dimmer by the day.

Maybe, though, just maybe the throngs will take consciousness of their power in numbers. Then, maybe, they’ll be back to stop the war in Iraq that Obama may not end or the one in Afghanistan that he vows to make worse (under the guise of waging it more “wisely.”) Maybe, they’ll be back to demand a sane health insurance policy!

On Inauguration Day in 1993, hardly anyone thought that the Clinton administration would continue the “Reagan Revolution” (actually, an anti-New Deal, anti-Great Society counter-revolution). But it did – as much as it could. We must take care to assure that Obama doesn’t do something similar by attempting to realize the neo-con’s vision for the Middle East – projecting U.S. and Israeli military power to divide, weaken, and conquer the peoples of the region. Should matters drift that way, the Democrats, as always, will be worse than useless. Only we the people, united and in immense numbers, will be able to stop him.

Today’s celebrations will be truly “historic” to the extent they encourage a sense of that power, peoples’ power, to emerge!

Savor the Moment

It was profoundly moving to see Pete Seeger, along with Bruce Springsteen, sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” at the Lincoln Memorial; at 89, this is probably the closest a genuine national treasure will get to “laying his hammer down.” The rest of the concert wasn’t half bad either – hell, Bono even got to put in a plug for Palestinian freedom, after putting one in for the country that has just visited murder and mayhem upon them.

So I resolve, for the next day and a half, to set reality aside -- to “bracket” the Clintonite appointments, the toadying to Wall Street, the abject and self-defeating “bipartisanship,” even the impending escalation of the war in Afghanistan -- and to feel good that the Bush/Cheney nightmare will soon be over, and that at last we will have a capable, intelligent, eloquent and, yes, African American leader. There will be more than enough time to pick up the hammer again when Obama lets Bush and the others get away with worse than murder, and when it becomes even clearer than it already is just how meretricious his vaunted “change” will be.

Excuse This!

It is becoming harder, even for the most deluded liberals, to maintain that Obama’s charm offensive – directed first at Clintonites, and now at Republicans -- is a skillful strategy for “change,” undertaken by a progressive super-hero capable of putting the Forces of Darkness to work in behalf of Truth, Justice and (a sanitized and humane version of) the American Way. What super-hero would stoop to dine with such a motley band of pompous pseudo-thinkers as George Will, William Kristol, David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer? Lex Luther is one thing, but a super-hero has standards.

Then there’s the hullabaloo about to descend upon those of us living in the Belly of the Monster. Despite some well-publicized efforts to include the hoi polloi who put Obama in office, the inauguration will hardly be “a festival of the oppressed” such as has always accompanied genuinely transformative moments. As inaugurations always are, it will be a festival of the over-dressed, tripping the light fantastic in obscenely glamorous “balls” (while the moral equivalent of Rome burning takes place everywhere outside). Evidently, Obamamaniacs are so dense or deluded or both that they somehow don’t find this offensive.

There are better ways to celebrate the swearing in of our first African American President, and to rejoice in the fact that our “one President at a time” is no longer a criminal of historical dimensions: rallies against institutional racism, for example, or to demand that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld et. al. be brought to justice. There will be some of that, but far too little; and watch what little there is get co-opted into the Obamamaniacal frenzy.

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What does it say of liberals that they are not appalled by the stench of sanctity attaching to the inaugural events? To counter a spate of bad PR and as a sop to his high-minded admirers, Obama, at the last moment, invited Gene Robinson, the gay Bishop (of the splintering Episcopalian Church), to pray at an inauguration event. It’s the least he could do after inviting Rick Warren, a homophobic (and anti-abortion) mega-church evangelist to deliver the invocation. But in a country that rightly prides itself on “separating” church and state, what business do any of these snake oil salesmen have there at all? The same goes for Joseph Lowery’s benediction. Invite him, of course, for the Martin Luther King reference, and have him speak as much as he wants. But the least Obama could do is dispense with his “blessing.” It’s bad enough that he will be sworn in on a Book of Holy Writ. That Honest Abe took the oath on the same tome changes nothing.

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Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton slouches towards confirmation – amidst a chorus of praise from Democratic Senators and liberal commentators. As I wrote months ago, Mamie Eisenhower had better qualifications, if only because she had a better husband to learn from. But regardless of her very dubious, though highly trumpeted, fitness (or lack thereof) for office, the tragedy is that she’ll be bringing back with her all those Kissinger wannabes like Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke. The even greater tragedy is that, compared to the miscreants they’ll replace, this actually will be a change for the better. It’s almost reason enough to join the liberals as they praise the Lord for giving them a leader who, whether they realize it or not, will soon be passing the ammunition down Afghanistan way, and writing up yet another blank check for the ethnic cleansers of the Promised Land.