wkmac
Well-Known Member
The Obama bandwagon is moving fast and furious, rolling over the few remaining pockets of dissent even as it prepares to take power. The mainstream media, particularly on television, has lost all sense of objectivity and proportion, and their reporting of the president-elect's doings has taken on a distinctly Soviet air. "Our Glorious Leader Picks the White House Dog" is the emblematic headline of a servile fourth estate. The political atmosphere is positively eerie: amid calls for "unity" and attacks on "toxic" language that is "divisive," there is an odd uniformity of thought similar to the virtual unanimity that gripped the nation in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Groupthink is all the rage, and the media has joined in the fun. Due to this love-fest, they're oblivious to the warning signs that worry us few and scattered skeptics. They somehow missed the Dear Leader's call for a civilian "national security force," for example, one that is "just as well-funded" and "just as powerful" as the U.S. military.
Media Matters for America, which is shaping up rather nicely as Obama's semi-official media shill, claims Obama's remarks were just about expanding the already existing Americorps program and the president-elect was taken out of context. Yet his words speak for themselves, as do the words of his recently chosen chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who declared in his book:
"It's time for a real PATRIOT Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service."
Some Republicans, Rahm brays, "will squeal about individual freedom." Well, let's hope that part isn't true. Because if it's only Republicans who object to this militaristic scheme to solve the unemployment problem by outfitting the out-of-work with spiffy new uniforms, then we're really in a lot more trouble than even I imagined.
If George W. Bush and/or John McCain had called for the creation of a domestic paramilitary force, the liberals and certainly the Left would have seen it as an ominous development, with the more excitable types raising the specter of fascism. Is it left to good old Joe Farah alone to point out the dangers inherent in such a far out proposal?
"If we're going to create some kind of national force as big, powerful, and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn't this rather a big deal? I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force put together? Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?"
and continuing:
Militarism has infected American life to an enormous degree: that's one of the consequences of 9/11 we're still living with, although in the Age of Obama it will be given a leftish gloss. The "battle" for economic recovery will be framed in military terms, as, amid calls for "national unity," a cult of personality forms around a charismatic leader. With government even more bloated with power and self-regard than ever before, this is a dangerous moment in our history, one that could easily see the country fall prey, once again, to the hubris of "idealists."
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2008/11/12/the-audacity-of-hype/