Please grade Barack Obama's performance as president

[woo me with science]

39. What is being done to this country, under this administration and the last,

Last edited Sun Sep 28, 2014, 10:34 AM - Edit history (1)

is not just another flavor of capitalism within an essentially functioning democratic government.

It's not.

As a former president of the United States put it, we don't have a functioning democracy anymore.

Secret laws, secret courts, "Kill Lists"/indefinite detention without due process, and mass surveillance in the United States of America are extreme violations of our Constitution and should not be considered "moderate" positions in any sense of the word. They are extreme, even fascistic policies, yet the politicians who espouse them are permitted by us to describe themselves as "moderates."

I think we need to start using the words, "corporatist," "extreme," and even "fascist" to describe what is happening in this country under the corporatist/neoconservative/neoliberal/Third Way agenda. We are witnessing a malignant merger of state and corporations and the active dismantling of important Constitutional protections. The corporate state is pouring our tax dollars into propaganda and marketing for their agenda, and IMO the vast majority of Americans, while aware of their own economic pain, have little understanding of the peril facing our democratic institutions and basic Constitutional protections.

We use words that suggest the current neoliberal and neocon policies are business as usual in America...just another flavor of policies that Americans can trust still fall safely within the boundaries of a democratic, constitutional, representative political system. They are "centrist" or "moderate." But they really aren't...and I think we need to adjust our labels to drive home the seriousness of the crisis we face.

We are witnessing an ongoing process of merger of state and corporation (one definition of fascism) that is truly frightening. The very foundations of our democratic system are being actively dismantled by the corporate politicians you defend.

We have lost much of the Bill of Rights. There is a secret, unaccountable government operating alongside the one we are taught about at school, and it has the power of mass surveillance and dossiers on citizens, secret laws and secret courts, the power to smear and lie and disinform, to suppress protest and political dissent, and to indefinitely imprison and even murder American citizens without transparency and without due process.

Our intelligence and security agencies have been co-opted and are being used to surveil peaceful domestic protest and to engage in corporate espionage. Our purchased government actors are using every means possible - the courts, "trade" agreements, legislation, executive actions - to restructure and rig the system to pass power to corporations that used to belong to the people of this nation.

Journalism has been hobbled through intimidation/abuse of espionage laws and by active consolidation and purchase by corporate entities that parrot the party lines....and our precious internet is being handed over to those same corporations as we speak. Whistleblowers and potential government whistleblowers are under unprecedented surveillance and assault. Our police departments have been militarized, and peaceful protests federally surveilled *in cooperation* with Wall Street and brutally suppressed.

Legislation coming out of our corrupt, purchased government bears no resemblance whatsoever to the popular will and hasn't for a long time. And the wealth of ordinary Americans is being looted, and our commons are being looted, to fill the pockets of the billionaires, bankers, and corporations who are building this new corporatocracy hurtling into fascism.

We hear a lot of lies and propaganda and Newspeak, most likely funded through our own tax dollars. We are told that our system is functioning, that we need only vote harder next time. We are told that the politicians perpetrating these assaults on our nation are "centrists" or "moderates," with the safe, warm connotations of those words. How could anything "moderate" or in the "center" be dangerous? But these are extreme, even fascistic policies, and it is time we called them out for what they are.

They are assaults on democracy itself in the service of corporations. This is the result of the corporate money that floods Washington. They are assaults on our Constitution. They are assaults on every one of us.

And it needs to stop now.

The record shows aggressive, proactive pursuit of a corporate agenda.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3202395

CUT THE CRAP! Your Month in Review from the most "progressive" administration ever.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025006297

Just a Republican thing, huh? Assaulting the Constitution itself
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5554112

Study: Obama's "Trade" Deal (TPP) Would Mean a Pay Cut for 90% of U.S. Workers
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/09/the-verdict-is-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-a-sweeping-free-trade-deal-under-negotiation-with-11-pacific-rim-coun.html

Obama’s Latest Betrayal of America and Americans in Favor of the Big Banks: TISA
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/26/1309671/--Obama-s-Latest-Betrayal-of-America-and-Americans-in-Favor-of-the-Big-Banks-TISA-by-Bill-Black

Bombing Syria: The next step in the PNAC playbook, remember?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025520459

The "Justice" Department
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025587151
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025586874

You want facts?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1842895

When the DLC connections to the Koch Bros. became well known, they just rebranded the infiltration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4165556

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5535960