Buying Brand Obama, By Chris Hedges

[Echo In Light]

Buying Brand Obama
By Chris Hedges

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.

Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué art and progressive politics. It gave their products an edge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand with an experience.

“The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women’s and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully trained a generation of activists in the politics of image, not action,” Naomi Klein wrote in “No Logo.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/

[xchrom]

1. ...

:popcorn:

[emulatorloo]

2. We had this claptrap yesterday. It reads like "Leftist Criticism" written by a GOP operative

If you like people named Chris, I recommend Chris Hayes from the Nation.

Here is yesterday's thread:

"Chris Hedges on "the Obama brand"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8391733

[Echo In Light]

4. You're not actually claiming Hedges is a "GOP operative," are you?

[Captain Hilts]

6. Your ignorance of Hedges is noted.

I don't always agree with him, but don't call him a GOP operative, it just makes you look like an ignorant groupie.

[emulatorloo]

8. both of you Re-read my title -- what part of -->"Reads like"

don't you understand?

[Echo In Light]

10. What part of the question mark at the end of my sentence didn't you understand?

[emulatorloo]

16. "Reads like something written by a GOP operative" does not equal "Hedges is a Republican Operative"

So you really shouldn't put words in my mouth.

No doubt Hedges is sincere. However I find his argument about as convincing as a TeaParty rant.

[Echo In Light]

27. Oh, gee, sorry. Very outlandish to suggest you're all too obvious implication was intended

[Captain Hilts]

13. It doesn't "read like" a GOP operative. Why do you not like dissent from the left? nt

[emulatorloo]

17. Dissent is a great thing. Doesn't mean every dissent op-ed is wonderful

or valid.

[MarjorieG]

3. So there are limits as to what he can do, but why disparage the brand?

I don't think Obama likes many of the choices he's been given on the economy, or some of the legal messes he's been given. Now being asked for the first time in history to go after his predecessor. We know it's different than going after Bubba for a blow job, but listening to the non-stop rule of law issue, non-stop, that's how we appear to others who want their problems of jobs and foreclosures fixed first (and don't really get the ends justifies the means, keeping us safe arguments).

[grasswire]

7. bushwah

Your argument suggests that Obama can't do two things simultaneously.

[Echo In Light]

9. Okay...but what if it's not a matter of Obama "liking" one thing or another, but fulfilling a role?

[emulatorloo]

12. Far right thinks Obama is a Socialist. Far left is upset that he isn't a Socialist

You gotta admit it is kind of amusing. Maybe the two groups can get together.

[NeedleCast]

21. Those two groups usually want the same thing

They only differ in how they get there.

Your assessment is exactly right. The far right thinks Obama is to socialist. The far left thinks he's not socialist enough.

[bvar22]

30. Who is "Far Left" at DU ?

I have never observed a serious poster at DU advocate for the confiscation of all private property and the citizens organized into collectives.

I have seen (and I am one) those who support a European blend of Capitalism/Socialism.
In fact, the majority of DUers are in this category, and yet, there are posters here who brand that as "Far Left". I view this as Moderate, and when polled on the issues, the MAJORITY of Americans (Democrat & Republican) agree.

So who are you calling "Far Left"?

[Captain Hilts]

5. Again, as with the Great Depression, the first instincts are to reinforce existing power structures.

It might be the right strategy. It's too early to say.

But President Obama has NOT taken the FDR approach at all. He's being equated with FDR because of the times and the smile. In terms of policy, they're still worlds apart.

We'll see if this is the right approach.

Carry on...

[Psychic Consortium]

11. Obama knows that his opponents are slippery and dangerous....

he proceeds with caution and wisdom.
He will succeed, they will not.

[MadHound]

14. And another good leftist, Hedges, will be thrown under the bus in 4..3..2.. oh, wait, he already was

Much like Krugman and others, those who speak the truth now will be dispensed with. Too many people can't handle the truth, sad as that is.

[emulatorloo]

18. I'm ready for "thrown under the bus" to be thrown under the bus n/t

[Mari333]

15. SHHH bama is playing chess.

actually, i dont think very many inside the beltway have a clue whats going on in the vast wasteland beyond DC.and I agree with Gore Vidal, there is only one party, the party of corporations and military defense contractors. I have pretty much given up on them all.

[Echo In Light]

26. And when the propaganda breaks down, that's what we're left with, but at least it's honest

[MedleyMisty]

19. I admit that I enjoyed the happiness that other people felt when he won

When other people are happy, it makes me happy.

But I don't think I ever really believed that he would change much of anything. The happiness and tears were reflections of other people's happiness and tears and weren't really my own.

[Arugula Latte]

24. He's already changed things. Real science is back, for example.

And his Supreme Court pick will be 100 times better than the one McCain would have picked. And the world is starting to like us again. And the Gag Rule will be lifted. And hopefully he'll be able to close tax loopholes.

Etc.

Good change IS happening.

[SammyWinstonJack]

25. Same here.

[mopinko]

20. what has obama done?

put this on your bookmarks bar, so you can get the facts.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/obamatracker/

[emulatorloo]

22. Intersting link -- thanks! n/t

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mopinko]

37. one of the worst sites on the web.

yup, getting bumped.

[NeedleCast]

23. Chris Hedges Wrote It, so I best just shut my mouth and agree with it all

I suppose pointing out many of the good things Obama has done to reverse or move away from Bush politics will be met with a shout down from his fan-boi buddies. So I won't do that.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

28. Thank you for the post Echo In Light

As Emulatorloo points out, I posted this Tuesday, but it wasn't recommended by anyone last I looked. (But they did bring a link to the post to the greatest page, so I thank them for that.) I think we need a real debate on what is happening in this country. This morning I went to the link on Obama and Biden buying burgers. The video shows that whoever filmed it was in the motorcade. I think that reveals how the event was a "Managed" event. He went to a Chili Bowl place earlier and that looked more like just some stranger on the street might have filmed it. But now I have to think that may have been a "Managed" affair too.

Commenting on post 15 by Mari333, what you say sounds just like what the Sheriff in my EMT Class had to say the other day, he doesn't vote at all because he thinks all politicians are corrupt... and yet he works in the supporting arm of that group???? Bogles my mind.

I have some things in my earlier post about Ammo being bought up, here is a link to that happening in San Francisco:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/04/BA3817DSLR.DTL

May you all be well,

[Echo In Light]

29. Apologies if you considered the double post to be stepping on your toes...

I assure you it wasn't. Yesterday was both a frazzled day for me here at work, and I also was rubbed the wrong way over the degree of animosity within that nefarious Cynthia McKinney thread. So I wasn't even aware that this Hedges' article had even been posted. If you're unfamiliar w/him, some of his books are definitely recommended reading.

Take care :hi:

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

35. No apologies needed,

I was advised that posting in 'General Discussion' this would be better received. You proved that person right.
Thanks,

[alarimer]

31. I agree with this assessment.

But it could be made of any Democratic candidate. Obama is no better or worse than any of the others would have been. And it is also true of Congressional Dems, with a few notable exceptions.,

People who are "electable" are largely pro-corporate drones who will not shake things up. We all knew this; it is part of why I am no longer calling myself a Democrat. We have a two pro-corporate party system.

But Obama really is not the worst we could have gotten. He's simply the best of a really bad lot. Unless we change how campaigns are funded, all campaigns, all we will get is one flavor of corporatist or another.

[Echo In Light]

33. Yes, that's the larger point/focus, not merely singling Obama out...

...so many get stuck at that point not realizing the bigger picture. It reminds me of those oft heard cries of "Bush bashing" that one would hear whenever someone leveled a criticism of his admin based on objective institutional analysis; they refused to comprehend the criticism by way of dismissing it as "You just don't LIKE Bush!"

[scheming daemons]

32. Meh.

[Echo In Light]

36. Bumping