All Over the Map

Where to begin? With Haiti? With the decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission? With what happened in Massachusetts? Or with the idea that the gravest danger to the United States is not the Taliban or al Qaeda or unfettered corporate power, but the short attention span and porous memory of the American electorate?

It’s hard to watch what’s happening in Haiti and not feel useless; sure, you can donate a few dollars and feel satisfied that you’ve done your part, but it will be a long, long while before Haiti is back on her feet. The earthquake is not a tragedy, as the mainstream American media intones over and over; Haiti’s history is the real tragedy, a history that includes numerous interventions by the United States. How many Americans know that the U.S. occupied Haiti for nearly two decades in the early part of the last century? Or that the U.S. was in bed with the Duvalier family, Papa and Baby Doc, and stood aside, mute and blind, while father, then son, looted Haiti’s wealth and terrorized the populace? Papa and Baby were anti-Communist – and that was the only criteria that counted with the U.S. No real surprise there – the U.S. pulled the same stunt all over the hemisphere, always under the guise of promoting democracy or protecting private economic interests from the red menace.

It’s absolutely ironic that President Obama tapped Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to spearhead fund raising efforts – two American presidents whose hands are caked with Haitian dirt and blood. The Bush Administration was deeply involved in the 2004 machinations that removed (some say kidnapped) democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power. The U.S. feared Aristide, you see, so democratically elected or not, he had to go.

After Katrina and Iraq, it’s difficult to imagine a reconstruction effort that isn’t fraught with political maneuvering, corporate greed, incompetence and failure. How many former residents of New Orleans remain dispersed, unable to return home because there are no homes to return to? Have the schools and hospitals that were damaged by Katrina been rebuilt? You can bet the corporate vultures are circling Haiti, angling to get in on the ground floor of the rebuilding effort, grab a share of all those donated dollars; get in early, hook up with influential Haitians, and get out with plenty of cash.

And if a mess is left in their wake, well, that’s just Capitalism, baby.

How long will it be before the world loses interest in Haiti, shifts its limited attention to the next natural disaster? When was the last time you saw a news story about recovery in New Orleans?

According to the Supreme Court of the United States, corporations have the same rights as individual citizens when it comes to free speech. This despite the fact that a corporate charter is a privilege, not a right, granted by the people (through their duly elected government), and that heretofore the court has held that corporations do not have the same rights as individuals. The five right-wing members of the high court put the myth of American democracy to rest for all time. There should now be no doubt in our minds that our elected representatives and appointed judges exist only to serve their corporate benefactors. We should now insist that they wear the logos of the corporations they serve. Yes, plaster those somber, sober judicial robes with AT&T, Verizon, DOW, Microsoft, Dell, ABC, NBC, Bravo, and Taco Bell. At least this way the people will know which team the whores really play for.

Ah, and old Massachusetts, cradle of American defiance and democracy, what are we to make of the fact that the Democrats somehow lost the senate seat owned by Teddy Kennedy for decades? Depends on who you get your news from. If you take your dose of truth and wisdom from Fox News and Limbaugh, you probably believe that the Democrats lost because their party has moved too far to the left. The facts don’t support this, of course, but Fox News and Limbaugh rarely bother with facts; they have an agenda to push.

If you read the New York Times and the Washington Post, you might think that the Democrats are in deep trouble, set up for major losses in the mid-term elections, and while this may be partially true, the Times and the Post attribute the reasons to the wrong source.

Barack Obama was elected because voters believed he could deliver on his promise of change, and with the economy in freefall and solid Democratic majorities in Congress, it seemed to many that bold changes were inevitable, and that these changes would help the millions of people ignored, penalized or forgotten during the Bush Era. Instead, Barack Obama, for all his eloquence and intelligence, has stumbled around like the ghost of Jimmy Carter, tripping over his own feet, kowtowing to miscreant Republicans, and pushing an anemic, uninspiring agenda. Perhaps most egregious of all, Obama surrounded himself with champions of the established order, the sort of players who sleep with the enemy by night and crow about their virtue by day.

Perhaps Barack Obama is too intelligent to become a great president; perhaps he lacks a street fighter’s mentality, the innate sense of when to kick butt and take no prisoners; perhaps, however well intentioned, he’s too detached and aloof, unwilling to scrape his knuckles and have his nose bloodied.

We can only hope he finds his way before it’s too late.