Joseph Marohl

I’m getting a new look at The Wizard of Oz. Right now, a fair-sized section of “hope you can believe in” has been pulled back to reveal the old quack Professor Marvel, who was hidden there all along—torture, surveillance, high finance, and (despite a recent epistolary assurance to the contrary) the same old same old in health care reform. (I don’t make predictions, but my guess is a good chunk of “reform” change will wind up in the pockets of insurance companies and big pharma—mind you, just a guess.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to deny that Obama has brought some Technicolor rays to our black-and-white world.

Sure, as far as same-sex marriage is concerned, we see some encouraging changes—on the state level (not federal)—from which, shamefully, in my opinion, the new wizard is holding himself just as aloof as the old wizard, under whose watch these state legislative and judicial reforms emerged. And, to be fair, the religious right no longer feel quite as empowered as they did a year ago in resisting these changes, despite a monstrous, shocking victory in California six months ago.

(It is good news indeed that my gay sisters and brothers who want to get married are increasingly enabled to do so—though, I should add, I personally have no desire to get married, and legal and economic inequities towards single people—gay or straight—remain unopposed.)

And while not having quite gotten around to dumping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—and even continuing to enforce it (ask Lt. Dan Choi!)—Obama still promises further inroads on gay rights … “some time.”

And, sure, the Guantanamo prison-slash-interrogation center is scheduled for closure in just eight months. Fantastic news for those of us with a feeling for human rights fresher than the year 1215! But, at present, closure of the infamous (and barely legal) detention center has no funding.

On the other hand, we have seen a proposed 15% cap on credit card interests defeated this week 60-33 in the Senate—denying indebted consumers the type of safety nets Washington is shitting itself to give to failing banks and other lending institutions. Twenty-one (21!) of the nay votes were Democrats; five more Democrats did not vote at all.

Not to suggest that, for one minute, I placed much confidence in the Democratic Party to stand up for the people against big capital … much less to Republican bullies and loudmouths.

Now, just like Bush, Obama is trying to block disclosure of photographs of Americans’ torture of detainees, on the understandable grounds that they may “inflame anti-American sentiment” (but only just as understandable now as when the Bush White House made the same argument). Meanwhile, the nation engaged this week in the “single deadliest US airstrike” on Afghanistan since 2001—one of a series of attacks designed ostensibly to weaken al-Qaeda while politically proving Obama’s commander-in-chief cojones. So 100 civilian lives have no anti-American propaganda potential?

Also out from behind the curtain is Obama’s indifference to US and international conventions in choosing not to go after the high-level members of the previous administration who blighted America’s global reputation and moral integrity by promoting and condoning inhuman and ineffective techniques of torture (including Cheney and Bush—as well as culpable Democrats).

The media, meanwhile, have responded to these revelations with little heart, brains, or courage … with the continues-to-amaze exception of stand-up comics!

Obama—God help me, I still like him (and do not in fact believe in God)—needs to put some ruby slippers on his rhetoric. And fast!

I admire the man’s style, manners, and his political savvy. But only what he says appeases the left; what he does appeases the right. In trying to show he’s no “socialist,” he panders to war-mongering, corporate capitalist interests. He panders with a great deal of dignity and wit, I have to admit, but it’s time for him to make direct and deliberate domestic and international policy changes of substance.

I can’t help but worry that Obama is squandering the window of opportunity he has had since February. The good news is that, for now, the far right and religious right are in shambles—but they are regrouping … fast … and with a vengeance.

My worst fear (hopefully groundless) is that their present whining over socialism, terrorist threats, higher taxes (after a tax cut, no less), teleprompters, and Dijon mustard will turn the tide entirely back to the dark ages many of us were hoping to escape.

The wicked witch could still use a good bucket of water—and the flying monkeys need a good talking to. Americans are ready for change, equality, liberation, hope, whatever you want to call it. But it (none of it) will come by following the same road we’ve been on for decades now already.

Joseph Marohl

On Sean Hannity’s Wednesday radio program, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an “orderly revolution” to offset the “economic Marxism” of the Obama administration, in particular citing Thomas Jefferson’s much quoted call for a periodic revolution to keep one generation of Americans from being enslaved to the laws and constitutions of previous generations.

For a while now, for a couple of decades anyway, conservatives in the Republican Party have co-opted the terms “rebel” and “revolution”—words that still resonate positively with a good number of Americans. So pundits can remember Ronald Reagan as a “rebel,” and nobody raises an eyebrow.

One more sign of the debasement of the American English language, Bachmann’s call and similar calls promote turning back to the same business models and social roles we have followed into hell thus far and ignore that Obama’s “recovery” plans so far have done little that would please Marx (the real one, not the one that lives in the right wing’s imagination) except, perhaps, throw a few bones to programs that benefit the poor and needy. Those bones, apparently, are tantamount to all out “Marxism” to those whose notion of helping the poor and needy is to help the rich and grasping—so it’s no wonder that they might imagine “revolution” in terms of preserving the status quo.

Of course, these wannabe revolutionaries have had little to say about the previous administration’s eight years of assaults on human rights and the U.S. economy. And, for a while now, I have given up my dream of George W. Bush and his arrogant gang’s ever being brought to trial for any of a number of crimes against the nation, its Constitution, its laws, its reputation in the world, its security, its defense, and its wealth, certainly not from the Republicans and not from the Democrats, Bush’s willing accomplices from the beginning. That dream was mere fantasy.

Year by year, I am convinced of George Orwell’s acuity in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” in which he claims that dying metaphors (among which “orderly revolution” must surely be listed), verbal padding, and hype effectively empty language of its content, leaving us with catch words and catch phrases incapable of holding any meaning whatsoever. So what becomes important about a word like “revolution” is not so much what it means as how attractive it sounds—and, used thus, it may be appropriated not only by those who promote change and progress but also by those who promote the obstruction of change and progress.

In summarizing these “swindles and perversions,” Orwell decries writing and speech that “consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.” Copy-and-paste language results in copy-and-paste intellects. Familiar word combinations please the ear and may even excite emotions, but they fail to draw fine distinctions or clarify exactly what the speaker means to say. As a teacher of writing, I am often impressed with how effortlessly some people can fill five typewritten pages with clichés and jingoism without ever saying anything in particular.

Such use of language hides rather than reveals. It abstracts rather than depicts.

Again, Orwell: “In our time [Orwell was writing in 1946], political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Of course, Orwell, a supporter of labor and non-totalitarian socialist change (while strongly opposing fascism and Soviet communism), is better known for his novel Nineteen Eighty-four, in which governmental “newspeak” proposes that “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength.”

I’m repeatedly reminded that we now live in a world which newspeak has swept clean of definition and meaning. Just yesterday I watched a movie rated “R” for “pervasive language.” In previous posts, I’ve mentioned my consternation at debaters of abstinence-only education, both pro and con, declaring their concerns that children today may be learning that “sex is OK.” What the hell does that mean? When I ask students to explain the precise qualities they most admire in their friends, most of them respond with identical phrasing: “My friends are there for me.” Well, OK then, that explains a lot, thanks.

When I express concern that they are not expressing themselves clearly, students often reply, “But you know what I mean.” Not exactly—and, besides, clear communication is more than the rhythmic accumulation of platitudes and tropes—and the burden of clarification and definition belongs primarily to writers and speakers, not readers and listeners.

I propose that “orderly revolutionaries” like Bachmann and Hannity and even Obama and Clinton are, while indeed interested in change to varying degrees, principally involved in preserving “order,” equivalent in their minds to making minimal and perhaps merely nominal changes to the status quo. Now, I am not opposed to order—not at all—but neither am I convinced that it is synonymous with stagnation and obscurantism.

Those in power still want us to swallow the “trickle-down” theory of economy, under a new name. They are appalled and frankly scared of reports of widespread malcontent and anger—for them, it’s “class warfare” only when the underdogs fight back.

Savvy politicians are trying to co-opt some of the rage percolating in our culture with calls to revolution, all to pursue their own political ends—which are (guess what?) to sustain and perpetuate the powers that be.

So, to paraphrase Bachmann and others, let’s have a revolution that manages to change nothing, except perhaps the removal of the modicum of anemic “hope” poor and otherwise disempowered voters had in electing Barack Obama as President in the first place—a “hope” that the Obama administration has already watered down and sugared up to suit the sensitive palates of AIG, Chrysler, GM, Bank of America, and hedge-fund billionaires.

Kelly

With the transition process from George W, Bush to Barack Obama already in high gear, liberals everywhere are filled with a tenacious hope that this moment in time is the beginning of a new era, a new dawn. If you voted for Barack Obama, then greatness is upon us, or in the very least, the need to believe that greatness is upon us is still fresh in the hearts of the Obama supporters. I cannot blame them. When people so fervently believe in something as broadly defined as ‘change’, and then put a man at the forefront of responsibility to create that ‘change’, it becomes increasingly difficult to be critical of their well-oiled, well-groomed, hypnotic leader; in much the same way that Christians are not particularly inclined to be critical of their leaders or beliefs.

Barack Obama has become a brand name, packaged and sold to the masses. There were promises made, like so many before, of a better, more efficient government that would end ‘politics as usual.’ The leading product, ‘Change,’ sold because we were told that we ‘could believe in it.’ Though, there is little doubt that the Bush Administration laid the groundwork, brick by brick, for change to become the word so desperately sought. It seems the time was never more ripe, the stars never so well aligned.

The Bush Administration led an invasion of Iraq with promises of “cake-walk” that quickly went from ridding America of the threat known as WMD’s to a war campaign based on Iraqi freedom and the deliverance of democracy to the Middle-East. And lest we forget the atrocities that followed; numerous Executive Orders, the warrant-less searches and wire-tapping (only to be feared if you’re not doing anything wrong), the private security forces of Blackwater, Walter Reed Hospital, Katrina, FEMA, Guantanamo, water-boarding, Attorney General Gonzales, and the more recent mess on Wall Street- the Bailout. ‘Tis no wonder Barack Obama is now our President-Elect.

The so-called value-voters were outnumbered this November 4th, at least as it pertains to the Presidential election, since the moral high ground seems to have gained something in all of this as the gays went from wedge issue to bargaining chip (California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas.)

In 2004, moral values outnumbered the Iraq war as Americans stood at the ballot box. In 2008, it was ‘the economy, stupid.’ Focus on the Family was won out by Focus on the Globe, as President Elect Obama is promising to change the world (Civilian National Security Force, anyone?) Though, I suppose it’s fair to say that every administration has changed the world in one form or another, whether it has been for better or worse is completely subjective.

Clearly, eight years under neo-conservatism was enough. But, where will we go from here? The American citizens were seeking change, and with good reason. But, is another stimulus check the only thing on the minds of a shrinking and sinking middle class? If so, then one could only conclude that the ‘hope’ that backed the 2008 election is an empty idea at best and by this time next year ‘hope’ will surely return to the apathy from whence it came. Or, are the Obama-ites truly enticed by the farce of a luscious utopia, sprouting with entitlement and more government powers, sprinkled with redistribution of wealth and the consequential loss of liberties? I’m afraid that too many believe that they can have their cake and eat it too, but one can hope that a return to apathy is just around the bend.