[CitizensTruth] Buying Brand Obama

[Kris Knight]

Well said, Connie!!!  I had a slightly different metaphor that I  
thought of, having been raised more familiar with animals than ocean  
liners...I have described Obama's task as being similar to a new  
person to the team, standing on a wagon, with TWO small leather reins  
in his hand, and a team of 12 huge, incredibly strong horses harnessed  
in,  and he is expected to get them to go somewhere as soon as  
possible, through steering, a dearth of vocal commands and a  
tremendous lot of balls.  If you've ever seen this feat, even with a  
driver who the horses know, it is extraordinary.  Especially when one  
or more of these huge horses have other things in mind.

I think we also need to remind ourselves of all that is going on that  
we cannot see, and we need to use current knowledge of the power of  
our own thoughts/intention to help steer the direction of life around  
us, both far and near.  If all you do is keep up to date with what you  
think is reality through conventional media and conversation groups,  
you are merely participating in yet another form of fundamentalism and  
narrowmindedness.  What is mostly conversed about through this  
conversation group is a very, very narrow part of the spectrum of  
reality, and let us remind ourselves of this.  C'mon, we're bigger  
than that, folks.  Or at least, reality surely is.  If we are truly  
truth seekers, I think it is incumbent upon each of us to seek and  
intend for the largest and the finest outcomes we can each imagine.   
While at the same time keeping our fingers on the pulse of diverse  
viewpoints.

On May 5, 2009, at 1:56 AM, Connie Smith wrote:


>

>

> "Brand Obama" my foot.  The article-writer below worked 2 decades  

> for "Brand New York Times" -- while Obama helped poor people and  

> taught constitutional law.  Let's wait and see who turns out to be  

> the better man.

>

> Given his humanitarian-saturated upbringing, what Obama's probably  

> doing is duct-taping some societal structures for the short-term so  

> that they collapse (as they must) SLOWLY, instead of suddenly and  

> catastrophically -- and maneuvering to prevent his assassination,  

> which would certainly occur if he just fired all the nazis outright,  

> like JFK did.

>

> If you were in office, and if you were smart, you would proceed in  

> the same way.

>

> I myself have been immune to being a fan of ANYBODY.  As a young  

> newspaper reporter immediately out of school, I spent time with  

> celebrities like The Doors and The Lettermen and Robert Goulet and a  

> number of others who had big followings, but it was so clear to me  

> they were "just people" that I've forever been immune to any kind of  

> charisma.  However, I am attracted to good character.  (And that has  

> panned out very well in my life -- I am apparently a good judge of  

> it.)

>

> And I've never been susceptible to brand-names OF or ON anything --  

> only interested in the quality "of the product."  Obama's character  

> and quality have been clear and consistent (consistent as humanly  

> possible) since first observing him here in Illinois politics in  

> 1997. He is obviously not a product nor a brand, but a well-rounded  

> and highly intelligent human being.

>

> The criticisms of him strike me as short-sighted knee-jerk reactions  

> to a ship's captain who has had to take over AFTER the Titanic  

> struck the iceberg.  The wobbly emergency efforts to keep us from  

> suddenly sinking, and a long, slow turn (instead of an immediate  

> shift of the helm and a tip-over as a result) are scary but possibly  

> wise moves -- possibly the only relatively safe ones that can be made.

>

> When the pilot headed the commercial airliner for the Hudson River  

> in January, it seemed like a horrible move -- especially to everyone  

> on board!  But he did the best that could be done under the extreme  

> circumstances. There were some injuries, but the job was very, VERY  

> well done.

>

> I predict that Obama's wisdom-beyond-his-years will eventually bring  

> us to the softest landing possible.  And I feel it's really ignorant  

> of people who are not in the cockpit of this out-of-control country  

> to attack him when he's doing all he CAN do -- for this nation and  

> for the world.

>

> That sense of service is where he came from and that's where he will  

> take us -- with the injuries that do occur obviously being the fall- 

> out from the previous NON-wise, NON-intelligent, NON-service- 

> oriented assholes who ruled and wrecked since the turn of the century.

>

> Those years of long and horrendous momentum CANNOT just be brought  

> to a screeching halt in only 3 months!

>

> Connie

>

>

>

>

> ----- Original Message -----

> From: andrew ritter

> To: truth seekers

> Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 8:44 PM

> Subject: [CitizensTruth] Buying Brand Obama

>

> Buying Brand Obama

>

> by Chris Hedges

> Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us  

> feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the  

> Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased  

> by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us  

> with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle  

> East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are  

> entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he  

> is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the  

> manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into  

> doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

> What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His  

> administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in  

> taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed  

> effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best  

> forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound  

> crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense- 

> related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial  

> projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000  

> troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has  

> expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on  

> cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number  

> of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has  

> refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not  

> consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans.  

> And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war  

> crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle  

> Bush's secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.

> Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically  

> individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old  

> engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex  

> continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our  

> politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different,  

> but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the  

> core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush.  

> The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied  

> folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation  

> in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand  

> with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin  

> Klein were the precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate  

> themselves with risqué art and progressive politics. It gave their  

> products an edge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make  

> passive consumers mistake a brand with an experience.

> "The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women's  

> and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to  

> be called political correctness successfully trained a generation of  

> activists in the politics of image, not action," Naomi Klein wrote  

> in "No Logo."

> Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a  

> brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the  

> Senate, lacked any moral core and could be painted as all things to  

> all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender  

> to corporate interests. He was happy to promote nuclear power as  

> "green" energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and  

> Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would not back a  

> bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He  

> opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of  

> 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676,  

> sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported  

> the death penalty. And he backed a class-action "reform" bill that  

> was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. The law,  

> known as the Class Action Fairness Act, would effectively shut down  

> state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits and deny  

> redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of  

> defying powerful corporate challenges.

> While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks  

> before Obama took office, "the Obama team let it be known that it  

> would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs' and other  

> hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel," according to  

> Seymour Hersh. Even his one vaunted anti-war speech as a state  

> senator, perhaps his single real act of defiance, was swiftly  

> reversed. He told the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004, that  

> "there's not that much difference between my position and George  

> Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's  

> in a position to execute." And unlike anti-war stalwarts like  

> Kucinich, who gave hundreds of speeches against the war, Obama then  

> dutifully stood silent until the Iraq war became unpopular.

> Obama's campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads  

> and marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of  

> National Advertisers' annual conference in October. The Obama  

> campaign was named Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008  

> and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the  

> professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer's dream. President Obama  

> does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is  

> the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the  

> advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel.

> Celebrity culture has leeched into every aspect of our culture,  

> including politics, to bequeath to us what Benjamin DeMott called  

> "junk politics." Junk politics does not demand justice or the  

> reparation of rights. Junk politics personalizes and moralizes  

> issues rather than clarifying them. "It's impatient with articulated  

> conflict, enthusiastic about America's optimism and moral character,  

> and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain language and gesture,"  

> DeMott noted. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes -  

> "meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that  

> strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic  

> advantage." It redefines traditional values, tilting "courage toward  

> braggadocio, sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self- 

> disrespect, identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of  

> brains." Junk politics "miniaturizes large, complex problems at home  

> while maximizing threats from abroad. It's also given to abrupt  

> unexplained reversals of its own public stances, often spectacularly  

> bloating problems previously miniaturized." And finally, it "seeks  

> at every turn to obliterate voters' consciousness of socioeconomic  

> and other differences in their midst."

> An image-based culture, one dominated by junk politics, communicates  

> through narratives, pictures and carefully orchestrated spectacle  

> and manufactured pseudo-drama. Scandalous affairs, hurricanes,  

> earthquakes, untimely deaths, lethal new viruses, train wrecks-these  

> events play well on computer screens and television. International  

> diplomacy, labor union negotiations and convoluted bailout packages  

> do not yield exciting personal narratives or stimulating images. A  

> governor who patronizes call girls becomes a huge news story. A  

> politician who proposes serious regulatory reform, universal health  

> care or advocates curbing wasteful spending is boring. Kings, queens  

> and emperors once used their court conspiracies to divert their  

> subjects. Today cinematic, political and journalistic celebrities  

> distract us with their personal foibles and scandals. They create  

> our public mythology. Acting, politics and sports have become, as  

> they were during the reign of Nero, interchangeable.

> In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant  

> emotional gratification, we do not seek reality. Reality is  

> complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to  

> handle its confusion. We ask to be indulged and comforted by  

> clichés, stereotypes and inspirational messages that tell us we can  

> be whoever we seek to be, that we live in the greatest country on  

> Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical  

> qualities, and that our future will always be glorious and  

> prosperous, either because of our own attributes, or our national  

> character, or because we are blessed by God. Reality is not accepted  

> as an impediment to our desires. Reality does not make us feel good.

> In his book "Public Opinion," Walter Lippmann distinguished between  

> "the world outside and the pictures in our heads." He defined a  

> "stereotype" as an oversimplified pattern that helps us find meaning  

> in the world. Lippmann cited examples of the crude "stereotypes we  

> carry about in our heads" of whole groups of people such as  

> "Germans," "South Europeans," "Negroes," "Harvard men," "agitators"  

> and others. These stereotypes, Lippmann noted, give a reassuring and  

> false consistency to the chaos of existence. They offer easily  

> grasped explanations of reality and are closer to propaganda because  

> they simplify rather than complicate.

> Pseudo-events-dramatic productions orchestrated by publicists,  

> political machines, television, Hollywood or advertisers-however,  

> are very different. They have, as Daniel Boorstin wrote in "The  

> Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America," the capacity to appear  

> real even though we know they are staged. They are capable, because  

> they can evoke a powerful emotional response, of overwhelming  

> reality and replacing reality with a fictional narrative that often  

> becomes accepted truth. The unmasking of a stereotype damages and  

> often destroys its credibility. But pseudo-events, whether they show  

> the president in an auto plant or a soup kitchen or addressing  

> troops in Iraq, are immune to this deflation. The exposure of the  

> elaborate mechanisms behind the pseudo-event only adds to its  

> fascination and its power. This is the basis of the convoluted  

> television reporting on how effectively political campaigns and  

> politicians have been stage-managed. Reporters, especially those on  

> television, no longer ask if the message is true but if the pseudo- 

> event worked or did not work as political theater. Pseudo-events are  

> judged on how effectively we have been manipulated by illusion.  

> Those events that appear real are relished and lauded. Those that  

> fail to create a believable illusion are deemed failures. Truth is  

> irrelevant. Those who succeed in politics, as in most of the  

> culture, are those who create the brands and pseudo-events that  

> offer the most convincing fantasies. And this is the art Obama has  

> mastered.

> A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is  

> left to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure  

> bits of data and trivia are used to bolster illusion and give it  

> credibility or are discarded if they interfere with the message. The  

> worse reality becomes-the more, for example, foreclosures and  

> unemployment skyrocket-the more people seek refuge and comfort in  

> illusions. When opinions cannot be distinguished from facts, when  

> there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, in  

> science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when  

> the most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes  

> a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they  

> want to believe. This is the real danger of pseudo-events and why  

> pseudo-events are far more pernicious than stereotypes. They do not  

> explain reality, as stereotypes attempt to, but replace reality.  

> Pseudo-events redefine reality by the parameters set by their  

> creators. These creators, who make massive profits peddling these  

> illusions, have a vested interest in maintaining the power  

> structures they control.

> The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian  

> Warren Susman termed character. The new consumption-oriented culture  

> demands what he called personality. The shift in values is a shift  

> from a fixed morality to the artifice of presentation. The old  

> cultural values of thrift and moderation honored hard work,  

> integrity and courage. The consumption-oriented culture honors  

> charm, fascination and likability. "The social role demanded of all  

> in the new culture of personality was that of a performer," Susman  

> wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self."

> The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is  

> about performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a  

> perpetual state of childishness. But the longer we live in illusion,  

> the worse reality will be when it finally shatters our fantasies.  

> Those who do not understand what is happening around them and who  

> are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they did not expect or foresee  

> search desperately for saviors. They beg demagogues to come to their  

> rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the Obama Brand. It  

> effectively masks the wanton internal destruction and theft being  

> carried out by our corporate state. These corporations, once they  

> have stolen trillions in taxpayer wealth, will leave tens of  

> millions of Americans bereft, bewildered and yearning for even more  

> potent and deadly illusions, ones that could swiftly snuff out what  

> is left of our diminished open society.

> © 2009 TruthDig.com

> Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges  

> graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two  

> decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the  

> author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us  

> Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American  

> Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.  His most  

> recent book,Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph  

> of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for pre-order.

>

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Kris Knight of WellAware Life Enhancement Center
Phone:  1-608-ALL-LIFE
welaware at merr.com






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