| While there are many facets of Obama's shift to the right, I want to focus on one that may not seem all that significant, particularly since it is not directly tied to any policy position. Yet, as we'll see, increasingly as this series advances, it provides a a multi-layer insight into how Obama sees America's political landscape, and his doomed attempt to put the culture wars behind us.
But I want to go beyond the surface stupidity, blindingly obvious though that may be. I want to probe it's deep structure. And unlike the surface manifestation, whose illogic Huffington so deftly dissects, that deep structure is actually nothing new. It's only newly clarified. And the best example of that comes with Obama's speech on patriotism and his latest attack on Vietnam Era anti-war protesters--one of whom, of course, was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the one man who did the most to make it possible for Obama to run for President in the first place.
Obama's repeated 60s-bashing is just as contradictory to his big-change future-oriented message as is his embrace of petty-minded pandering that Huffington lays bare. But it's roots run much deeper in our history, and our collective dysfunctional psychology that Obama repeatedly fuels, rather than challenging.
Obama's Contorted Patriotism And The Logic of "Balance"
Here's the passage of Obama's speech on patriotism where he casually smears the protesters of the Vietnam War, embracing the logic of "balance", while, quite typically, going overboard in attacking the left :
In other words, the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic. Still, what is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s - in arguments that go back forty years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic. Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day
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Most Americans never bought into these simplistic world-views - these caricatures of left and right. Most Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic, and that there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America's traditions and institutions. And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments - a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.
Of course Obama was still being patently vague here, though not entirely so. He is very clearly echoing rightwing rhetoric in the deceptive guise of evenhanded centrism. Contrast the narrow time-frame and bland description of:
In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic.
with the vividness and ongoing offense when he speaks of protesters:
attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day. [Emphasis added.]
This is a very deeply confused passage, if one tries to analyze it logically. What exactly is "the very idea, of America itself" that Obama thinks some protesters were attacking? The "symbols" are clear enough--he's talking about the (actually very small number of) flags that were burned. But where is "the very idea" of America in the passage above? It is, quite simply, nowhere to be found. Implicitly, perhaps, Obama is equating "the very idea" of America with the "veterans coming home from Vietnam". But this is clearly ludicrous. Individuals, however nobel, remain individuals. They are not ideas in any way, shape or form.
Were the protesters attack "the very idea, of America itself" by "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world"? This, too, is incoherent. Such blaming--even in the exaggerated extreme rightwing form that Obama expresses it--is not attacking the idea of America, but rather the veracity of that idea as an accurate description--especially when invoked by those who are doing everything possible to make a mockery of it.
Enter Langston: Getting Patriotism Right
Indeed, arguably one of the most patriotic poems in American history takes exactly this view. I am speaking, of course, of "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes.
That poem begins with two voices, the main one expressing the naive faith in America that sees current troubles as a falling away from an idealized past, and a second voice, bounded by parentheses, that calls that naive faith--but not America itself--into question: Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
In the course of the poem, the sidelined parenthetical voice, seemingly a lone dissenter against the sweeping tide of the main voice, emerges not as a single voice, but as a Whitmanesque multitude:
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
And that multitude questions the very premise--not of America, but of the naive faith that words can substitute for reality:
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
Yet, no sooner has Hughes laid out the failings than he immediately shifts to affirmation. The very next lines read:
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
And from there on the poem builds to its conclusion:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
To be sure, Hughes was a superb poet, and the great mass of those who railed against the Vietnam War as a betrayal of what America should be did not have his eloquence. But is it fair to say they lacked his motivation? Particularly when he saw that same motivation in the teeming and diverse masses he identified with?
No, it is not fair. It is both false and mean-spirited. And it is, in fact, a rightwing lie.
What Obama moved toward saying in the passage above--but then drew back from--was the full articulation of that lie, the claim that anti-war protesters commonly spat on returning veterans.
I will take up that lie, which Obama implicitly embraces here, in the following diary. But for now, I will simply close by noting that Obama's speech is, at bottom, an unbalanced reflection of Hughes's poem. To his credit, Obama does point out the role of dissent as a patriotic act. He says:
But when our laws, our leaders or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expression of patriotism.
The young preacher from Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr., who led a movement to help America confront our tragic history of racial injustice and live up to the meaning of our creed - he was a patriot. The young soldier who first spoke about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - he is a patriot. Recognizing a wrong being committed in this country's name; insisting that we deliver on the promise of our Constitution - these are the acts of patriots, men and women who are defending that which is best in America. And we should never forget that - especially when we disagree with them; especially when they make us uncomfortable with their words.
But he also says:
I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.
Which is, when you think about it, directly contradictory to what he just said about dissent. Indeed, it's precisely the sort of thing rightwingers have repeatedly said in order to squealch dissent.
Obama also says:
We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period.
So, we must express our profound gratitude for Captain Medina, Lt. Calley and the men who followed their orders in carrying out the My Lai Massacre?? According to Obama, we must. According to his formulation, they are as worthy of honor as Hugh Thompson, Jr., the helicopter pilot who risked his life to directly intervene and stop the killing, as worthy of honor as the other two members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn.
Somehow, I don't think so.
Winter Soldier vs. Sunshine Patriot
In fact, to "express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period." is not so much to honor those who serve honorably--they need no such blind admiration. They can stand proudly in the full light of day. No, what Obama is calling for is to write a blank check to those who would forever disgrace us, by dragging us down into the pit of barbarism. There is, quite frankly, no aspect of our public life as citizens of a democratic republic, that is immune to public scrutiny and criticism. For that is the very essence of a democratic republic--that we are accountable to one another for what we do.
Now, of course, it is true that war is a terrible thing, and many otherwise honorable people do things in war of which they are not proud. And that is precisely one of the most compelling arguments why we should be extremely reluctant to go to war. For to do so is to subject otherwise honorable people to the almost certain fate of betraying their inmost selves, their most cherished sense of who they are, for the defense of a country that does not even want to hear about it, and thus degrades their sacrifice into something base and squalid that turns their stomach even to think about it.
This is the horror that men face in war--not the horror of death, but the horror of killing, not just another human being, but their own sense of self and the higher cause for which they have sacrificed themselves.
This is what a young and not yet compromised John Kerry meant in 1971, when he reported on the Winter Soldier hearings, where soldiers who witnessed and took part in war crimes offered their testimony as a first step toward hoped-for redemption and transformation, and he said:
Several months ago, in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit--the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term "winter soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776, when he spoke of the "sunshine patriots," and "summertime soldiers" who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel, because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done, and all that they can do by this denial, is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission: To search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war; to pacify our own hearts; to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so, when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
This is what true patriotism means. True patriotism. Not nationalism. Not jingoism. But patriotism. True patriotism.
It is not turning a blind eye. It is not striking a bargain between truth and lies. It is looking truth squarely in the face, and doing what must be done to set things right.
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