New President -- Same Government
From SP Boston
New President -- Same Government
- 15 February 2009
- Socialist Party of Massachusetts
The dissonance between hope and reality with the swearing in of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States is truly an amazing accomplishment of modern propaganda. After eight years, the "anybody but Bush" crowd has finally gotten a new president. Unfortunately, the entire spectrum of political debate has moved to the right. Once we cut through Obama's fluffy rhetoric about change, and the irrational elation of his liberal supporters, we see very few campaign promises for which we would actually want to hold him accountable.
Under the pretext of a "War on Terror" the United States is fighting a war in Iraq, another in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sponsoring a third by proxy in Palestine. While oil companies and military contractors are making record profits, corruption and malfeasance in the financial sector has pushed the economy to the edge of an abyss. The capitalist economy and its primary custodian, US imperialism, have remained stunningly rigid despite growing pressure to adapt to this crisis.
While Barack Obama has said he would use more diplomatic tactics than the Bush administration, he has not backed away from the central purpose of US foreign policy: to subjugate the governments of other nations to allow for the easy extraction of natural resources and labor power. While he has spoken of reducing the number of troops in Iraq, he has promised 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan and remained silent while Israel used US made weapons to slaughter over thirteen hundred people in the Gaza Strip.
Barack Obama endorsed the first $700 billion bailout plan passed by Congress under Bush under the pretext that we had no choice. Now Obama and the new Congress have wrung another $787 billion from US taxpayers with little expectation for better results. Rather than holding Wall Street accountable, raising taxes on the rich, and creating much needed social services, these bailouts look a lot like the corporate welfare that led to our extreme economic inequality and the current crisis. Here in Massachusetts Deval Patrick and the Statehouse are playing the same game of using the crisis to push the same old agenda of cutting social services and spending our common wealth on corporate welfare. This staggering giveaway will bring higher taxes and further cuts in essential social services. Once again, working people are being coerced into rescuing the wealthy few from the disastrous consequences of their own shortsighted and insatiable rapaciousness.
As socialists, we must remind people that Barack Obama was pre-selected to serve the same ruling class that selected George Bush. He won the confidence of the financial sector and raised millions of dollars, propelling him to the ballot before voters had any say. With a cabinet full of familiar faces such as Larry Summers, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gates, there should be no doubt that we will not see a "New Deal" nor a "Peace Dividend." While some personnel have been shuffled, the system remains the same. We must not confuse a few scraps with real change. The more fervently we struggle for peace, justice, democracy, equality and socialism, the more we will find ourselves at odds with this new Democratic Party administration and their apologists.
Rather than reverting back to the demoralized malaise of the Bush era, we call upon working class people to find new courage and optimism in our ability to defend our own interests through united action. The Socialist Party of Massachusetts stands ready to be a vehicle for the real alternatives we need in this time of crisis.