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Obama’s libel against the American people
The phrases in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech that have evoked the greatest enthusiasm across the political spectrum of the US establishment, from the Republican right to liberal Democrats, were those suggesting that the American people are responsible for the present economic catastrophe. “Our economy is badly weakened,” he declared, “a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
Precisely what those “hard choices” are Obama did not specify, but he made clear they in no way involve a challenge to the capitalist market system, declaring that “its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.”
He broadly hinted that the “hard choices” he would make involve sweeping cuts in social programs, including ending programs that don’t’ “work.” This policy of austerity, which, as he had previously indicated, would include cuts in bedrock programs such as Social Security and Medicare, was summed up in his call for “a new era of responsibility.”
The implicit demand for greater sacrifice from the American people was hailed by liberal commentators such as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who praised Obama for telling the people that the crisis was “partly our fault.” He continued, “We all know the Pogo line about how ‘we have met the enemy, and he is us.’ Obama implicitly seemed to embrace it.”
Right-wing columnist George Will in his Washington Post op-ed piece enthused over the same lines, writing that one of Obama’s themes “was that Americans do not just have a problem, they are a problem.”
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j23.shtml
He broadly hinted that the “hard choices” he would make involve sweeping cuts in social programs, including ending programs that don’t’ “work.” This policy of austerity, which, as he had previously indicated, would include cuts in bedrock programs such as Social Security and Medicare, was summed up in his call for “a new era of responsibility.”
The implicit demand for greater sacrifice from the American people was hailed by liberal commentators such as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who praised Obama for telling the people that the crisis was “partly our fault.” He continued, “We all know the Pogo line about how ‘we have met the enemy, and he is us.’ Obama implicitly seemed to embrace it.”
Right-wing columnist George Will in his Washington Post op-ed piece enthused over the same lines, writing that one of Obama’s themes “was that Americans do not just have a problem, they are a problem.”
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j23.shtml
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