The president and vice-president have openly declared – after all - that they are accountable to no one and to no law and that they can, and will, do anything as long as they say the magic words “national security “ and the “war on terror.”
The Congress has – after all - repeatedly said that Bush and Cheney may continue to pass GO and COLLECT billions of dollars, wage unjust and immoral wars involving mass murder, that individuals can be picked up, abducted, held incommunicado and tortured, for an indefinite period of time, both citizen and non-citizen alike.
The White House and Congress have said – after all - that the NSA and CIA have the right to suspend due process, torture and murder people in custody, and to spy on literally all of us.
The airwaves are filled with open and thinly veiled threats of violence and murder against even the soon-to-be Democratic Party presidential nominee, and from even the other Democratic candidate!
WTF?
The nature of these fascist norms are such that in order to hold the ship of state together and not see it spin out of control, the powers that be must play a two-sided game of high stakes. The powers that be are not monolithic. The leadership class has differences and splits within their ranks. They battle each other over who will be top dog.
On the one hand, emerging from the increasingly openly fascistic right wing within the GOP and its fascist social base, are thuggish calls for lynching (NRA president Charlton Heston called for Al Gore to be lynched in 2000) and other acts of savagery such as torture against their “unsaved” adversaries, those who will not, presumably, be gathered up by the Rapture.
On the other hand, you have the intense efforts by moderates/liberals and the DNC to corral the majority of people in this country into the confines of politics as usual, with nostrums of “change” and “hope” and Obama borrowing liberally from the phrases of groups such as World Can’t Wait such as “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” and “we can’t wait,” trying desperately to keep the lid on the boiling pot and prevent the masses of people from stepping outside the constrictive terms of electoral politics and engaging in popular, independent actions.
Obama’s candidacy and his popularity are premised on the fact that the whole American empire is in a time of restructuring and rupture and therefore great danger.
Obama is not sitting on the verge of becoming the Democratic nominee principally because he is charming, smart and articulate. He has received, from the start, exceedingly generous attention by the mass media and the Democratic Party leadership’s blessings. It has now become even more apparent than before to them that another privileged white male or even a privileged white female isn’t going cut it for a majority of the people.
The Democrats have had to reach further, much further this time.
But they will not go to the point where the fundamental premises and nature of the empire that they share with the GOP are called into question. No one gets to this point in a race with a real chance of winning a nomination without being vetted by the individuals and organizations that actually run things in this country.
White supremacy has been, and continues to be, a central factor in the nature of American imperialism.
The solid social base for reaction that the Bush regime has been cultivating – the plutocrats and the white racists, the ones who think that Ann Coulter is hot – are fit to be tied over Obama’s candidacy, and also, the fact that Hillary’s a woman. For these people, there’s Bush’s Third Term Replacement: John “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” McCain.
Many people, especially black people, are alarmed by this talk of assassination, and fear for Obama’s life.
Who can blame them?
