Obama'08 Mind

Drawing of Obama courtesy of Publius Pundit; Drawing of Lieberman courtesy of The New Yorker; Drawing of Reagan
courtesy of Daniel Morganstern; Drawing of Gore courtesy of France Belleville; Drawing of King courtesy of The student room 111.

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, who has an inspirational doublethink political style, is self-projected as a Joe Lieberman Democrat, a Ronald Reagan Republican, an Al Gore Democrat, and a Martin Luther King, Jr. Democrat. This attempt by a political leader to identify with all conflicting factions is a ludicrous error of judgment, exhibiting symptoms of multiple personality disorder. Political leadership is needed not to choose winners and losers, nor to pretend there will be none, but to facilitate value choices by the whole people to form a more perfect Union. The sovereign power to decide is the people. This requires integrative dialogue, which no public official can supplant with their own value judgments.

Obama'08 Mind, was posted at FINS World News, Tuesday morning March 18, 2008, with special emphasis on the first principle of the Preamble that I commented upon last January. It was, therefore, a perfect delight to discover that also on Tuesday morning the same democracy theme was emphasized in the (now famous!) Remarks of Senator Barack Obama "A More Perfect Union", at Philadelphia, PA (March 18, 2008). In his 37-minute speech on Race & Politics that are subjects of special concern to those who seek "a more perfect Union" what we heard was entirely devoted to the gifted spiritual leadership of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. This speech has been compared favorably by Gary Wills with another speech on race by Abe Lincoln.

Nevertheless, leadership of "We the People" that is our indispensable road map to a more perfect Union of the whole people, must be more than another sermon guided by manipulative crowd politics. This is leadership of the few. How can one man who is not insane pretend to lead hundreds of millions of Americans who are divided by incommensurable values? No way! Developing human capital and social capital, working toward OmniCapital, with control by "the People" and society over the state, is the American way. These concerns are greatly exacerbated in a global context. This is the "democracy crisis" Al Gore underscored, as an open question,
in his new slide show about the climate crisis.

We cannot secure the values of democratic sustainability advanced by Reverend King and Nobel Laureate Gore, while supporting the values of decadent capitalism advanced by Joe Lieberman and Ronald Reagan; these choices are between incommensurable values that are mutually exclusive. The crisis of democracy requires citizens and political leaders to support democratic sustainability to avoid the climate crisis and destruction of planetary life. Citizens favor this change but leaders -- right, left, and center -- are paralyzed. The crisis of democracy is a crisis of leadership. The style of leadership offered by Candidate Obama, asserts the control of leaders over popular control, guided by manipulative crowd politics. This style of leadership may have been acceptable in a democracy at the time of the Ancient Athenian Agora, when leaders spoke directly to citizens and citizens could respond directly. This is no longer the frame of the democratic Assembly.

Changing the 21st Century Frame
of the Democratic Assembly

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All citizens of ancient Athens during the classical period (480-323 B.C.) (their number might have been around 30.000 in those times) could take part in the Democratic Assembly, which gathered various times a year, on the Pnyx, a hill facing the Acropolis, from dawn to dusk. The Assembly voted the laws prepared by the Council of Five-Hundred. Among other matters, the Assembly could hear petitions from any citizen wishing to address it on public or private matters, as described in the Institutions of Athens in classical times, by Bernard SUZANNE (1998).

Similarly, all persons have a right under the Constitution of the USA to petition the US Congress for redress of grievances, as provided by the First Amendment. This right is further supported by the Republican form of Government under which, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled, "All power derives from the people," but effective exercise of democratic power requires an expression of the collective will of the people. The difference between the ancient and present political process is significant. The ancient democratic leadership strategy is especially obsolete in a planetary civilization of more than six billion people overall with more than three hundred million people in the USA alone, embracing progress of the human mind during our own time. Mass communications media has made the location of a political leader's address to the people into a mere broadcast set, from which the speaker's message is transmitted to tens of millions of citizens. No longer is the political process controlled by either the speaker or the citizenry.

The Golden Rule of investor driven politics dominates the political value system, under which investor owned channels of political discussion (i.e., electioneering communications by broadcast, cable, or satellite communications) determines both the speaker and the message to be transmitted. These conditions provide an open system for undermining and manipulation of the political rights of citizens. For example, the American people are now being subjected to psychological warfare operations of the mass communications media guided by the Pentagon information apparatus that has used familiar television and radio personalities appearing as "military analysts" in a campaign designed "to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush Administration's wartime performance," according to an examination by The New York Times (April 20, 2008). The sovereign power of the individual citizen in this communication scheme, to be master of their own lives, has been annihilated.

This contemporary political situation has given rise to The Frankenstein Civilization, framed by the evolutionary theory of Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest, in which raw instrumental power is the deciding factor, just as advocated by Adolph Hitler (1889-1945), and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945). This is the ideological basis of the most barbaric, murderous state in human history, which informed the generations who lived through the horrors of the twentieth century. The same dire ideological frame is now threatening the very existence of planetary life in the twenty-first century.

What is indispensable for the twenty-first century is leadership not of the few who desire to exercise power over others but of the many who have an ethical right to be masters of their own lives. This is the bedrock foundation of American republicanism, derived from the Declaration of Independence that recognized these truths:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ...

New World Order For Dummies
Courtesy You Tube

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Republican Government in which "All power derives from the people, has been destroyed by the power of contemporary mass media. This mass media system radically changes the relationship between citizens and leaders through investor dominated channels of political communications that filter out the great public interest so that Government is derived not from the needs and interests of the many but from the “iron grip of the entrenched moneyed interests who are strangling our government” , as the 2008 Presidential candidate John Edwards has exclaimed. In 2004, Ralph Nader, was blocked from his candidacy because of his pro-democracy, anti-corporate advocacy. In the Presidential campaign of 2000, presidential candidate Bill Bradley, assailed the "great stone wall ... between the people and their representatives." Big Media summarily dismissed Bill Bradley from the campaign trail after he made that statement. This scheme of corporate stranglehold on American democracy can no longer be classified by the name of Republican Government.

"We may define a republic " according to James Madison, in Federalist 39,

to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic."

A government derived from investor delegation of political powers to the mass media, to serve their tyrannical demands, Nixon (and Watergate), Reagan (and Iran-Contra), Bush II (and NY Twin Towers-Iraq); cannot claim the honorable title of republic, as defined by the Founding Acts. The essential role of the citizen in republican government, must be restored, to overcome radical changes in the channels of political communications that have essentially annihilated the sovereign powers of American citizens. The political process of the American republic must be redesigned to serve the democratic mandate. It is especially necessary at this time to make the Laws which "shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers" of the People, as provided by US CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 18.

The American Government certainly does not lack a systemic remedy for the existing situation. Corresponding changes in political leadership to serve democratic ends is made possible by the new dimensions of media first described by Vin Crosbie in an email message to this writer Sun, 19 Nov 95 22:44:56 PST. The changes in leadership following changes in the media have thus evolved:

• First, aboriginal dimension of media one-to-one;

• Second, original dimension of mass media aristocracy one-to-many; and

• Third, internet media many-to-many.

New Agora of Philanthopolis
Boundary-spanning Democratic E-mail Dialogue

The third dimension of media allows both mass media communications as well as meaningful group dialogue -- local, regional, and planetary -- supported by A Technology of Democracy. A spectacular new democratic group leadership style facilitated by Boundary-spanning Democratic E-mail Dialogue, is now emerging to reflect the new planetary realities of the New Agora.

Turning his espoused philosophy around, during the last decade, former Speaker Newt Gingrich has become an environmental advocate, now promoting a new environmental book, Contract With the Earth. In an email discussion related to the book, appearing in The Washington Post, April 21, 2008: Gingrich & Nuclear Power. Gingrich strongly supports the use of nuclear power as the way to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil. For example, he says, "if you are really worried about carbon loading of the atmosphere...if the United States produced the same percentage of our electricity from nuclear power as the French, we would take 2.2 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere a year, and that one step would be 15 percent better than the total Kyoto goal for the U.S." However, Gingrich does not inform online readers about the "financial fiasco" that the nuclear power industry has become. He does not mention the unresolved problem of nuclear waste disposal and the unresolved problem of dismantling the nuclear power plants because of their expected severe deterioration, as disclosed by the foremost conservationists. Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbien, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus (Bloomsbury, 2007). The distinctions raised by these well known environmentalists may be of questionable significance, however.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We live and learn from comparing our viewpoints. The Nuclear Energy option that is strongly supported by the former Speaker, Newt Gingrich, is fiercely criticzed by Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbien, but has been highly praised by James Lovelock, one of the environmental movement's elder statesmen, the inventor of the "Gaia Theory," in his latest book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" 105-118 (Basic Books, 2009). This is an eye-opener, on what Lovelock says with an extensive review of the controversial allegations -- "the concatenation of lies" -- about Nuclear Energy:

"There are now more than 442 nuclear power stations in the world and together they produce 17 percent of all the electricity used, compared with 2 percent from renewables, most of which are hydroelectricity. The safety record, their cost, and the local acceptability of these fission-powered stations, make them the most desirable of all energy sources. So why in the world do we still persist in the falsehood that they are uniquely dangerous?"

The Crisis of Confidence

President Jimmy Carter's Crisis of Confidence Speech, July 15, 1979, which was described as his “malaise speech” from pollster Patrick Caddell’s own public opinion surveys for Carter, was roundly attacked by Republicans and Democrats alike. The media condemned Carter for “blaming the American people” for what they perceived to be his own leadership shortcomings. His presidency, in fact never recovered from it and 16 months later, Carter was defeated handily by Ronald Reagan. Rather than addressing the serious energy crisis and the crisis of confidence, identified by Pat Caddell, President Reagan offered the false vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” (Reagan's favorite Biblical theme from the “Sermon on the Mount” (The Gospel of Matthew, 5:14-16). Americans were led by the mass media to accept Reagan's false vision rather than addressing the looming energy crisis, and the situation has continued to degenerate since that time.

Ronald Reagan's fictional alternatives -- voodoo economics and the pretense there was no energy crisis -- were supported with devastating effectiveness by the doublethink images staged by his media maestro Michael Deaver, who shaped Reagan's public image for 20 years, transforming American politics. In this brave new world, fabricated images staged by pathological liars, kleptomaniacs, assassins, and mass murders controlled by investor driven politics would annihilate political reality, untill the day of reckoning.

Almost 30-years later, “Carter's words sound more like prophesy than political bombast. Though some of his observations can be disputed ... ('Our political and civil liberties will endure,' for example), his warnings have never been more appropriate than they are today in 2008.” Jim Stiles, Editor and Publisher, The Zephyr, Noab, Utah.

The economic delusions of capitalism -- going from bubble to bubble -- have always had their ups and downs since the origin of capitalist stock markets. Kevin Phillips explains in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006),

The evidence of the last four centuries is that financial innovation and intensity regularly breed debt-and-credit crises, burst bubbles, and the like. In his still unsurpassed 1978 study, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Charles Kindleberger listed two dozen between 1920 and 1974-1975. Their parenthood was principally Dutch, British, and (later) American, because these nationalities dominated global finance, central banking, markets, and trade during those years. The first modern financial mania collapsed in 1720 (the South Seas bubble) and the most recent, the high-tech (Nasdaq) bubble, splattered between 2000 and 2002. K. Phillips, American Theocracy at 286.

Digital image of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster The Free Information Society

The last bubble burst gave birth to a new phenomenon, significantly enlarging prospects for the ultimate global financial meltdown. We now have the "serial bubble" new bubbles deliberately pumped up to forestall the crash of old bubbles. There is now the credit bubble, the mortgage finance bubble, the hedge-fund bubble, and the systemic liquidity (money-supply) bubble, explains Phillips, infra at 284. American financial innovation has established the monster capitalist delusion: ever expanding credit for everyone, the new financial services colossus, all produced on freshly printed paper managed by the central bankers, virtually without new value building fundamentals! Appropriately enough, Duncan MacDonald, a lawyer for the most pernicious Citibank, told The New York Times in 2004, "I didn't imagine that some day we might have ended up creating a Frankenstein." The New York Times, Nov 21, 2004.

As turmoil in credit markets exploded to possible losses approaching $1 trillion, according to a report by The International Monetary Fund, April 8 (Bloomberg), there is now recognition of a ``collective failure'' to predict the breadth of the crisis. In an effort to build market confidence the Bank of England reported May 1, markets are too pessimistic (Guardian.co.uk), in the face of the bottom dropping out of the financial market liquidity reported by the Bank. This financial crisis, described as "the most severe since the 1930s," by George Sorors, can hardly be called a surprise, however, given the clearly evident reckless behavior of the capitalist juggernaut, during the Bush Administration. On the contrary, Soros observes "the risks inherent in the absurdities" of loan contracts created by bankers in the current crisis, defy any explanation based on the doctrine of innocence applied to this situation. Indeed, we have learned from the rise of disaster capitalism, described by Naomi Klien, these disasters are not unanticipated; some slick operators plan and await them with relish as a feeding ground for monstrous opportunism.

The genesis of the present financial crisis, is derived from the practices by banks who sold off their riskiest mortgages by repackaging them into securities called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs channeled the cash flows from thousands of mortgages into a series of tiered or tranched, bonds with risks and yields tuned to different investor tastes. As Soros explains:

Credit standards collapsed, and mortgages were made widely available to people with low credit ratings (called subprime mortgages), many of whom were well-to-do. "Alt-A" (or liar loans), with low or no documentation, were common, including, at the extremne, "ninja" loans (no job, no income, no assets), frequently with the active connivance of the mortgage brokers and mortgage lenders. Soros, infra, at xvi.

The credit markets explosion of possible losses approaching $1 trillion, represent just the tip of the iceberg involving other such creative credit forms, which have an estinmated nominal value of $42.6 trillion, equal to almost the entire household wealth of the United States. Soros, infra, at xviii-xvix. Subjecting this wealth of the nation to the unregulated rise of disaster capitalism, reveals the horrifying dimensions of the financial risks that are now in play.

In addition to the threatened financial meltdown, "Climate change could force 1 billion from their homes by 2050," according to a report issued by Craig Johnstone, the UNHCR deputy high commissioner, published in The Independent, April 29, 2008. These financial and ecological threats are the fruits of The Frankenstein Civilization, a deliberately planned, ideological war against the People, supported by mass media in tyrannical opposition to the consent of the governed.

The American political leadership oligopoly, paralyzed by an ancient frame for the Democratic Assembly and driven by the pathological delusions of decadent capitalism, are manifestly incapable of solving any of the critical crises in contemporary American life: climate crisis, financial crisis, democracy crisis, and leadership crisis. The People, themselves, who hold the exclusive power to choose the officers of American Government, must at this time do what is needed to remove from power those responsible for imposing on the United States of America, The Frankenstein Civilization, and thereby, rescue our civilization from its failures.

This is certainly not a question of having to choose between the lesser of two evils, (e.g., Gore v. Bush, or Obama v. McCain), when the choice offered to voters is dictated by investor driven politics narrowly limited to sustain the “iron grip of the entrenched moneyed interests who are strangling our government.” This is the time for a new political choice that only a new political party guided by genuine spiritual enlightenment striving for the unattainable can offer.

Americans have faced these challenges before. The end of British Monarch and the birth of the United States of American, was introduced by Tom Paine, who came out of nowhere to lead the people in their unique Revolution. The end of slavery in the USA and the birth of the Republican Party in the USA was introduced by Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, upon the moral vision of a true patriot expressed at Springfield, Illinois June 16, 1858: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Twelve years earlier, then a little known politician and small town lawyer, Lincoln had been the champion of the lessor of two evils, when he supported General Zachary Taylor's nomination for president by the Whigs on June 9, 1848, in Philadelphia. William Lee Miller, Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography 202-208 (Knopf, 2007). Changed circumstances produced a thunderstroke in Lincoln's moral outlook! As the presidential election of 2008 approaches the American people face a similar challenge of the most dire dimensions: either Change or Die, as Alan Deutschman writes, or Change and Thrive, as Lovers of Democracy propose. The politics of expediency dictated by tyrannical moneyed interests must be overthrown!

Updated 5:10 AM DST; Saturday, September 19, 2009