Jamie Foser on Obama's 'center-right' mandate

On Tuesday, Americans chose as their next president an African-American named Barack Obama who campaigned on a near-universal health-care plan, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and a move away from the belligerent foreign policy of the past eight years. Republicans, and some journalists, had spent months (falsely) saying Obama is the single most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -- and maybe even a socialist. The American people responded by electing him in a landslide.

This, naturally, is very good news for the Republicans, according to many pundits. It proves once again that America remains a "center-right" nation.

Right about now, you're probably scratching your head, wondering how the election of the "most liberal" member of the Senate, a man who campaigned on a promise of near-universal health care, could possibly be described as evidence of a conservative country.

To be sure, it requires some creative thinking.

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This is something I noticed almost immediately and no one, and I mean NO ONE, in the main stream media has batted an eye.

How do you go from being lambasted as a Marxist, a socialists, a terrorist and a muslim to a 'center right' figure cut loosely from the mold of Ronald Reagan within the space of hours? Furthermore, how do you do this on national television before an audience of millions and no one even bothers to note the discrepancy?

Long ago, I trashed my television. I receive almost all my news through 'pull' sources, video clips online, articles, pundit's columns in newspapers etc. The folks who put a face on our major TV outlets (both cable and broadcast) are demented. I don't just mean FOX whose intellectual value is outweighed by the thoughtfulness of the crows I have swooping over my garden; but folks like Tom Brokaw whose blossoming ignorance becomes more telling every day. He managed to suggest that John McCain had actually done pretty well in the last election because the land mass that voted for him on a county by county basis was greater than Obama's. Got that? The rocks and fields of Idaho far outweighed the millions of citizens who, you know, actually vote. Now I don't smell some nefarious bias here, I just think Tom is an idiot. Most of television is ruled by a supreme principle of stupidity, which is why conservatives do so well on television. It's not about erudition, it's about appearance. That's why Ronald Reagan, one of the dumber presidents we've ever had, has done so well.

Ocassionally when I've had the misfortune to have an intimate conversation with a conservative, I'm struck by their intellectual vanity. Don't be fooled by the near black out ignorance of their candidates, they're a vain lot. And they think their smarter than everyone else, certainly smarter than liberals who aren't smart enough to know you must screw everyone else besides yourself and your buddies. They conflate rapacity and self interest and call it wise government and so do our TV pundits who are rapacious narcissists in their own rights.

And that's why our country now rest on the edge of a cliff. Because rapacity and self interests are not claims to wise governance, but economic chaos; the Hobbesian nightmare of man against man. You cannot rule on a principle of 'greed is good' and 'might makes right' year after year without engendering the worst kind of criminality and destroying whatever social fabric might remain. The two disasters now facing this country, our debacle in Iraq and our economic meltdown are directly related to the rapacious self interests and a ruthlessly bullying attitude--both encapsulating the heart and soul of modern conservatism.

Social conservatives will argue it's because we've lost 'God' in our heathen embrace of gay rights or contraceptives. I think it's wiser to locate the illness closer to home, 'God' may or may not give a damn about who I fuck or how (I tend to think an omniscient being might have more important matters on his hands): that's certainly up to debate. But I can tell you when you have CEOs pulling down 400 times what their lowest salaried employee makes, it's pretty obvious who is getting fucked. And it's that kind of distortion that will rip apart our social fabric--whether 'God' approves or not. That socially conservatives are blind to the obvious wealth disparity in our country, the rapacity of their own party and yet so put out at the possibility that a gay man might be happy with another gay man is a dementia in a class of its own. Keep this nonsense up and the proclamation of Diderot because more and more relevant: let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest.

Kenneth Galbraith once said this about the Hapsburgs, but I think it applies equally to modern conservatism: it's cruelty, tempered by incompetence.

And our media, of course, lost in the hall of mirrors that is their own self interested image will not tell us the truth. Good conservatives, they are all about making money for themselves and their corporate masters. They cannot tell us the truth, because truth telling is not what they are about.

We must do that for ourselves.

Below is a good place to start: