The 1960s legacy is that mass movements are important, in fact, the most important form of democracy. Campaigns to save whales and seals captured the public's imagination and achieved bans on hunting. Today, environment apocalypse is pushing people to organize on many fronts, from fuels to song birds and frogs. "We will overcome," will never go out of style.
Which brings us back to the Great Dissimulator's legacy. Both Hammond and Petras are bitterly disappointed with his lack of legacy, his willingness to follow the 'yellow brick' road. Yet he promised so much.
He has left an environmental imprint, refusing the oil pipeline and lobbying to commit the US to a world agenda on climate change. He has also had a profound social impact, promoting greater black dignity, pushing through a national medical insurance plan, pardoning hundreds of prisoners, more than any other president. He is a conflicted person, and we will all look back on his checkered term nostalgically, at least as long as the Clinton dynasty continues to do what the empire requires.
Americans can go to Cuba now, and maybe even Iran, or at least trade with them. There is no room for all this in Petras's book as it is a polemic. There is none in Hammond's as his deals solely with US-Israeli relations, where Obama's distaste for Netanyahu is kept out of sight, and Israeli settlement activity and mass killing of Palestinians goes on on schedule.
However, Obama did defy the Zionist Power Configuration in his final year in office. He not only did not invade Iran, but negotiated an end to sanctions. He is breaking away now on Syria. Perhaps freeing Pollard in 2015 (done very quietly, thanks to the discretion of the mainstream media) was to massage bruised Zionist egos.
Obama's inability to do very much to dent the stranglehold the banks and the super rich have on us, is sad, if not frightening. Neoliberalism is deeply entrenched and is proving resilient despite its obvious disastrous effect on the 99%. Obama will go down in history as a tragic figure, the last hope that wilted on the vine. Is to be Petras's apocalypse or Hammond's hopeful enlightenment?
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* Humpty Dumpty to Alice. In Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (1871)
** Hammond, Obstacle to Peace, xix,
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