All great world-historic facts and personages appear… twice…the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” [Marx and Hegel]
The Obama cabal has done it again! Almost two decades after their first stroke of marketing genius, in 2008, when they catapulted Barack Obama, a lowly first term senator into the first black president of the U.S, they (and he as leader) did it again. This time building a monument to himself following in the tradition of FDR who was the first U.S. president to indulge in self-glorification. FDR’s successors including Obama took their cue and built their own vanity projects which evolved into the presidential library system. A classic example of putting lipstick on a whole collection of pigs.
Exploiting his bona fides as the ex-leader of a powerful but declining hegemon, he commissioned the monstrosity known as the Barack Obama Presidential Center —the most expensive presidential library or museum ever constructed, surpassing all others by a wide margin. The George W Bush library came in second at a paltry $500 million. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was a real piker—his library tipped the scales at a mere $165 million. Maybe he’ll ask for a do-over.
About that $850 million which the Obama lackeys announced had been totally funded by private donations. What they “forgot” to mention was the $123 million Illinois taxpayer money that Chicago and Illinois government leaders ponied up and “donated” to the Obama Foundation to beautify the surrounding area. Millions in upgrades it must be added that were not available when “ordinary folks” lived, worked and played in the same space.
Before deciding whether this billion-dollar spectacle of pomp and circumstance bears the slightest resemblance to the achievements of the honoree, let’s go back to November 4, 2008 in Grant Park, Chicago when Obama, using his genius for inspirational rhetoric, made a lot of big promises to the people as he became the 44th president of the U.S. “This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to … promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm…that while we breathe, we hope.
“Promote the cause of peace?” Admittedly a biggie. How did he do? Aside from the two wars he inherited (Iraq and Afghanistan) and continued, his administration initiated five more military campaigns including Libya and Syria and significantly expanded the use of drone strikes as killing machines. Along the way he also managed to kill two American citizens, one a teenager. His excuse? Without even a hint of due process, he deemed them terrorists at his “Terror Tuesday” hoe downs.
He did much better with a second set of promises which his team made sure didn’t receive the publicity of the ones he had no intention of keeping. These he made to his billionaire buddies promising them, among other guarantees, the freedom to rip off ordinary Americans’ healthcare— “Healthcare is a desirable industry for PE investment, given its potential for high revenue which leads to significant returns on investment for the firms.” [University of Chicago Business Law Review].
The people who get their phone calls returned are the same ones who are the beneficiaries of a grateful administration. They more often than not are the owners of private equity criminal organizations (aka shadow banks). Under Obama the flood gates of money and power swelled their bank accounts and produced 935 American billionaires. Borrowing a page from the Mafia time-honored system of reciprocity where mob bosses return favors, protection, or loyalty to individuals who have aided their operations, these gangsters showed their appreciation by pouring almost a billion dollars into Obama’s Presidential Center aka the “beacon of hope.”
Here’s Michelle Obama explaining to those of us too dim to get how mightily Obama labored for one segment of Americans, the folks who would bankroll his retirement while they were bankrupting the rest of us: “The Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope…aa monument to our unshakeable values, the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life—equality, honesty, empathy, inclusion, fairness…
For fact checking purposes, let’s look at two of his greatest “achievements—” the ACA which helped pave the way for private equity’s increased role in healthcare and Americans’ steady decline in longevity. This disaster was reflected in his response to the foreclosure crisis once again rewarding his billionaire bros at the expense of everyone else by helping private equity buy the nation’s private homes for peanuts then turn around and rent them back to their former owners. Ironic isn’t it that the hope in that silly “beacon of hope” metaphor turns out to be the same hope (partnered with change) that Obama used to convince the American people that his agenda was different from his predecessors when it wasn’t No surprise that the three living former presidents — Bush, Clinton and Biden attended the goings on. It must have been a real meeting of the minds for these would-be members of the “shared values club.” The question we should all ponder is: shared with whom. Ask Jeff Bezos or Oprah Winfrey or a gaggle of CEOS who lead some of the world’s wealthiest corporations why they are willing to part with millions (for Bezos it was $100 million, admittedly chump change for him) to express their gratitude for the president whose policies made them billionaires.
Ten years ago in 2016 as Obama was wrapping up his second term, Suspicious Angels published a piece (“Legacy: Obama and Ours”) documenting Obama’s care and feeding of the people most important to him — the parasites who populate the American oligarchic class.
For those of you who might not have been able to vote in 2017 and especially for those of you who even today cannot believe how those “hopey, changey” promises melted before the ink was even dry on his presidential seal, click on the link below to read the whole shameful story of Obama’s time in office. Like the Wizard Oz who hid his fakery behind a curtain, Obama hid his duplicity behind slogans and catch phrases like “because of what we did… in this election…change has come to America”…, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers… the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. It still sounded good until we discovered that all the happy talk was just that. The real winners of the Obama presidency were the folks he cared most about —his campaign donors aka the lifeline of the Obama presidency
The metaphorical curtain has now been lifted to reveal the crony capitalism that like some killer parasite has invaded all of our “democratic” institutions —the American healthcare system which puts profit far ahead of patient care, an education system which doesn’t educate and a financial system that leaves forty percent of Americans unable to afford a car repair.
Where does that leave us?
Back at Michelle Obama’s “beacon of hope” trope and those “unshakeable values.” The ones she attributed to her husband—the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life—equality, honesty, empathy, inclusion, fairness” Unfortunately too late the American people learned it was all part of an elaborate scam: first to get the scammer-in-chief elected, second to keep him in the oval office long enough to change the face of America and finally to insure a wildly profitable retirement. Check, check, and check again. Obama’s holds first place in the pantheon of fakes, frauds. And phonies. His real unshakeable values — dishonesty, lack of empathy, unfairness of treatment in all parts of the fading American dream, soaring inequality, and zero inclusion in the era of “haves” and “have nots” aren’t really worth celebrating at all.
Will America ever be ready to elect a president who won’t be coopted by big money hooligans?
Click here to read the story of the Obama presidency 2009 —2017
