Obamamandius

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

As the ultimate rorschachian figuration, Obama has been claimed and disclaimed by elements from all across the spectrum desperate to be seen as relevant or percipient. Few, however, comprehend his actual signification. Last year at Cobb, I spelled out precisely what would be required of the presidential heir apparent.

Last night, I happened to catch some of Real Time on my way to shuteye and saw Andrew Sullivan venture about as close as anyone has here-to-date in grasping the signification of an Obama presidency. Baraka is an idealized construct of elite governance. This is why he has garnered the support of U.S. elites and elements from throughout the establishment. quoth Sullivan;

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can......Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Remember, when everything is said and done, and all the rorschachian self-affirmations are complete, all that will remain, and all that has ever mattered from the outset with this perfectly honed candidacy - has been the imperative to maintain the global rule of dopamine hegemony.

Global Rorschachian

In english Al-Ahram, Gamal Nkrumah writes one of the strangest, most disjoint assessments of a political figure that I've ever seen. It's a mess which perfectly exemplifies the unique rorschachian qualities that Baraka Obamamandius brings to the face of global hegemony.

Barack Obama is a deft politician. He makes sure that all and sundry understand that there is much to be gained from peering into the deep recesses of his mind. Obama is not, contrary to what many of his detractors would have us believe, about obscurantism. There is a world of difference between an obscurantist attitude and a multifaceted and manifold mind.

There is nothing nebulous about Obama. He is also a heart-throb with a head for political foresight. He is not about entertaining his audience, as many American politicians, particularly black ones, have been prone to do. The phenomenon of a magnetic politician driving America in a new direction is nothing new. Comparisons have been made between Obama and John F Kennedy. However, steering America away from the warpath is no walkover task, as the latter learned the hard way.

However, the political climate in America today appears to be ready for change, even though those who espouse anachronistic opinions hold out.

"...And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me -- us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand."

"Ask not what your country can do for you"

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Too Late To Break Silence Now...,

The jig is up and there won't be any do-overs except in Michigan. Barack Obama's rorschachian phenomenon is finished and it was brought to an untimely end by his willful failure to break silence on the nationalist symbol rattling by which he's now been prosecutorially skewered. Thing is, he should have seen this coming a mile away. Beginning with the lapel pin and hand over heart probes, most definitely as against the strategery embodied in duplicitous attempts on Mdme Obama's proud comment, but no....,

Obama just laid back in a faux news rope-a-dope, not because it was a brilliant or prophetic political strategy, but because HE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING!!!!

The tragedy of the thing is that he had all the practical, moral, political, and symbolic resources he would ever need, the proverbial book of Wu Dan at his ready disposal.

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

All he had to do was open it and use it. Having done so, he would've obtained both practical and symbolic control of the moral higher ground. Barack has failed by his inability to smoothly command and control the moral higher ground in the moment.

We now know that Obama is no Ali. Having probed him repeatedly and found his feet of clay, the nationalists have closed in for the kill, which they obtained with the deposition like questioning to which he was subjected by Major Garrett. Barack's going to be swiftboated now and will find himself defending his flanks against neverending trifling litigious examinations of his claim to have not been present whenever Pastor Wright preached fire and brimstone.

Had he only been present to the prophetic anointment emanating from a true prophet who braved all odds to break silence - things very well may have turned out differently. Barack may well have had it in him to be king....,

rodgers rorschachian: what do you see?

forbes |  Rodger also authored a 141-page autobiography titled “My Twisted World,” which was sent to a local news station. He describes the events of his life since birth, blaming an obsession with World of Warcraft for lack of social development in middle and early high school; blaming his father for not teaching him how to woo women; blaming his mother for not re-marrying into the rich, upper class after his parents separated; and blaming his own social awkwardness for getting in the way of his making friends and meeting women. Despite his seemingly-affluent lifestyle, he felt less rich than and inferior to others in the circles in which he traveled, lamenting that his father was not a more successful director. In college, he starts playing the Megamillions Lottery obsessively, spending hundreds of dollars at a time in the hopes of becoming a multi-millionaire, which he thinks will allow him to finally “get a woman.” He visited a shooting range for the first time at age 21 after he failed to win the lottery when there was a $120 million jackpot.

He expresses jealousy of people in sexual relationships; he seems more hateful of and angry at specific men — friends and social acquaintances — than at particular women. Women are vaguer to him, objects of desire; he sees them as both superior to him and inferior at the same time. The jealousy gets more and more deranged as the manifesto goes on. As he becomes a fan of Game of Thrones, he expresses a desire to a friend to “flay” a couple he sees in a mall food court; he seems especially enraged when men of other races are dating white women. (This despite his being of a mixed background; his father is British and his mother is Malaysian).

He feels the jealousy and sadness that all of us feel at some point when we are alone, without a romantic partner, except his loneliness manifests as a desire to cause violence for people who are happy. He starts acting out by spilling beverages on people he dislikes: coffee on a couple making out in a Starbucks, ice tea on a couple he saw in a mall whom he followed with his car. When he was 20, after two women at a bus stop didn’t smile back at him when he drove by, he turned his car around and splashed them with his Starbucks latte, taking pleasure in it staining their jeans, driving away quickly before they could get his license plate. And months later, when he spotted a happy group of “popular college kids” — “typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular” and “beautiful blonde girls” — playing kickball in a park, he went to a K-mart and bought a Supersoaker, which he filled with orange juice and sprayed them, driving away when they chased him, an ominous foreshadowing of the devastation he would wreak later with a real gun.

At 21, he called his parents ranting about his loneliness and virginity. They insisted he see a psychiatrist. The next month, he bought his first gun.

Ethnic Nationalists Losing It

On the heels of affirmative action mafia daughter Geraldine Ferraro's deep Archie Bunker moments - one of the architects of Nixon's southern strategy and an avowed ethnic nationalist - loses his cool with an uppity negress.



Projective casualities continue to mount in the face of overwhelming rorschachian ambiguity....,

peasants incensed by the head negroe-whisperer in charge's scripted rorschachian funk-faking...,

theroot |  Thursday’s ABC town hall with President Barack Obama was anticipated with bated breath.

Many were looking forward to an honest conversation about race and about the current tensions between the black community and police officers in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead.

Unfortunately, many activists left disappointed, even angry, at what they witnessed and heard.

Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died after being choked by New York City police in 2014, stormed out of the taping of the town hall, saying that she had been “railroaded” by the network, denied the opportunity to ask the president a question, something she said she had been promised.

Garner said she felt that she had been “used for ratings,” and a few activists in the room agreed that the event seemed to be manipulative.

“It felt manipulative and disingenuous, and if we’re really trying to have a town hall about race in this country, it’s going to have to look much more like a truth-and-reconciliation process. It can’t be an hour and 15 minutes with the president taking up the most space, with people asking what he thinks of things instead of demanding that he do things,” Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, told The Root Friday.

“The town hall was clearly a curated event for ABC to quell protesters and organizers. It had nothing to do with actual future for black people, and I think that for us, we want to push POTUS in his last few months as the president to take executive action, to defund law-enforcement agencies that have consistently violated the civil and human rights of black people,” she added.

Pastor Traci Blackmon of the Christ the King United Church of Christ, and the acting executive minister of justice and witness of the United Church of Christ, wrote an extensive Facebook post after the town hall, describing her own disappointment.

The Trinity of Hell - A Kneegrow Said It

Today I encountered a completely new milestone in my continuing examination of the rorschachian reflections of the collective American psyche evoked by Baraka Obama's presidential candidacy. Rush Limbaugh has been working for some time to push the envelope of permissible, racialized political speech related to the Obama candidacy via proxy. Here to date, he's done this by having his engineer Mr. Snerdley function as his official Obama spokesman. Snerdley has been all too glad to clown for Limbaugh. Today however, Limbaugh took his racialized political strategery to levels never previously experienced by providing a national broadcast showcase for commentary by the exceedingly idiosyncratic James David Manning. Without further ado - the first installment of A Kneegrow Said It. Given the course of the campaign for the presidency, I expect many more such exploratory probes of what's permissible in the American political mainstream;

Like Glasses for Not Sees....,

This interview underscored the extent to which ABC, Fox News, and conservative talk radio have functioned as agents of racial arson. From the outset, it was clear that this was a manufactured controversy, and one which exceeded the pale of hardball politics. The mainstream and corporate media enterprises responsible for the nakedly deceitful, exploitative, and propagandistic abuses of viral audio and video - now exposed by this interview - should have some explaining to do. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting....,

It is now an established fact that Baraka's candidacy is yielding a bounty of unintended consequences in its unprecedented capacity as a collective rorschachian emetic

Gorbachev to the Candidates On Warsocialism

There has been unusual interest throughout the world in the U.S. presidential race.

Skeptics, of whom there are quite a few, say the campaign is just a marathon show that has little to do with real policymaking. Even if there's a grain of truth in that, in an interdependent world the statements of the contenders for the White House are more than just rhetoric addressed to American voters.

Major policy problems today cannot be solved without America - and America cannot solve them alone.

Even the domestic problems of the United States are no longer purely internal. I am referring first of all to the economy. The problem of the huge U.S. budget deficit can be managed, for a time, by continuing to flood the world with "greenbacks," whose rate is declining along with the value of U.S. securities. But such a system cannot work forever.

Of course, the average American is not concerned with the complexities of global finance. But as I talk to ordinary Americans, and I visit the United States once or twice a year, I sense their anxiety about the state of the economy. The irony, they have said to me, is that the middle class felt little benefit from economic growth when the official indicators were pointing upward, but once the downturn started, it hit them immediately, and it hit them hard.

No one can offer a simple fix for America 's economic problems, but it is hard not to see their connection to U.S. foreign policies. Over the past eight years the rapid rise in military spending has been the main factor in increasing the federal budget deficit. The United States spends more money on the military today than at the height of the Cold War.

Yet no candidate has made that clear. "Defense spending" is a subject that seems to be surrounded by a wall of silence. But that wall will have to fall one day.

In yesterdays International Herald Tribune - From Russia with alarm, questions for the candidates. Obamamandius is challenged to become the least parochial, most broadly encompassing president in U.S. history. The singular nature of this challenge calls for a unique capacity to maintain that rorschachian quality onto which myriad folks project their interests and priorities and come out the other end with at least a little something they can articulate in their post hoc rationalization of the many things this administration will be called upon to do.

Pharaonic Splendor and Rorschachian Symbolique

An impromptu and overdue analysis of the several points of view expressed hereabouts over the past few....,

Gary Younge writing in monday's Guardian had the following to say about Obama;

Obama has himself created a new constituency that is expanding the Democratic base, just like Jackson did. Its roots are not in race, class or single issues but age and ideology. The bulk of his support comes from young and independent voters. In South Carolina, we will see if African Americans will follow. Politically, the connections are looser and far less radical; but electorally they may prove more effective.

The article covers a lot of ground and I will do it a jarring disservice by not attempting to recapitulate most of that terrain. I found it particularly interesting for a very specific reason. It has a quick and dirty synopsis of political group identification - past and present - and the extent to which the social networking structures comprising political group identity have shifted over time.

Personally, I don't believe Obama has created any new constituencies. Rather, I believe that Obama embodies a rorschachian ambivalence which enables a broad cross-section of Americans to project into him their own particular hopes and priorities. People see in Obama exactly and exclusively - what they want to see. To me, it is this and this alone that makes his candidacy interesting.

Ed Dunn wrote everything that Younge wrote in a tiny fraction of the verbiage;

Trust me, I know how much of an influence Harold Washington had on me as a child in Chicago when he won the mayor office. It made me feel like I can be anything I wanted to be if I put in work because I saw a Black man do it. Blacks are told all their lives what they can’t do, what they can’t be, they will get killed if they stand up for what is right and when I saw Harold Washington go for that mayor office, that was my hero. And if Barack Obama running for office, standing there on a podium talking about uniting America, moving America in the right direction makes him an inspirational hero to any Black kid out there, that’s the only real reason that matters why African-Americans should have unconditional support for the man. Let that man Barack Obama be a hero and inspiration to our kids, screw all that political, ideology issue nonsense you spouting that is just worthless rhetoric.

To me, it is not about the presidential candidates or issues I've heard the past 20 years such as taxes, abortion or moral values. To me, it is about correcting the economic failures of the Bush administration that may be irreversible and change the entire course of this country.

I think Congress as well as the President office need to clean house and get rid of the special interest that exploited the American economy into a zero-sum game theory manner.

Spoken like a veteran, veteran entrepreneur, and a patriot - I believe Ed sees the situation through a quintessentially American lens - "yes we can"!

The unabashed youngeian chorus came from MIB and Submariner who made no bones whatsoever about identifying with Obama, seeing their own values, perspectives, and group identification personified in Obama and just loving it;

Obama's candidacy doesn't represent change in the ideological, or generational sense. Instead, he projects a middle-class identity that's ignored by pols in both major parties. The Senator presents himself as 'one of us'; not as a benevolent elitist (Democrats) or a proto-fascist authoritarian (Republicans).

For argument's sake, accept my earlier analysis as correct. Wouldn't Obama then symbolize the power to change society for the better lies within each of us, as does the prerogative and direction of its use?

Perhaps my views are slightly Darwinian, but I believe 'change' is a constant to which the most intelligent people adapt quickest in order to survive, if not prosper, regardless of circumstances. In this respect, Obama is an idea in which each of us has a vested interest -- that jes grew a few of the Afrosphere is constantly talking about. And a radical departure from the standard ivory tower conceit displayed by our pols.

You hit the bull's-eye, MIB.

Barack Obama is the kind of politician that you and I won't see again until we're old men wearing Depends and bound to wheelchairs.

do Xyb0rg and Nulan really believe that Powell could add more to the Pharaonic splendor or majesty of a Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House?

Fascinating....,

Spence brought the moral and reflective chorus;

i've been thinking about obama vs. edwards. as i noted early in the game there was a time in which you couldn't find the words "poverty" or "inequality" in obama's platform...where edwards began on these issues.

one of the things that left-leaning pundits noted in response to obama's approach was there has been no time in which bi-partisan agreement led to systemic change. rather a president RESPONDING TO A SOCIAL MOVEMENT ends up dragging the minority party with him...slapping them upside the head while doing so.

in all of the discussions about a black president, only one person has gotten to the crux of the matter--grace boggs. when we FIRST began to fight for beo's the idea was NOT that they be CEO's in blackface, but that they were the candidates who had the best chance of remaking society into something sustainable and humane.

with laserlike emphasis on what Obama has said and done - I suspect that if Prof. Spence engaged you in a socratic exchange on Obama, it might go a little something like this;

How many of you know Obama's record and positions?:

-- Supported the first Gulf War (See "The Audacity of Hope").

-- Supports not a swift end to the Iraq occupation, but only the withdrawal of "combat troops" by 2010 (most Americans in arms there are either mercenaries or support troops), and maintaining a strong military presence within Iraq of indefinite duration

-- Opposed Rep. John Murtha's 2005 call for a prompt withdrawal from Iraq

-- Called for the possible invasion of Pakistan (though he believes in "talking")

-- Repeatedly stated that all military options should remain on the table regarding IRAN, lending implicit support to the administration's belligerent stance

-- Has stated publicly that impeachment of either Bush or even Cheney is unacceptable. "Just, you know, vote the bums out," he has said (Google it) -- even when they are dismantling constitutional protections and rigging elections

-- Does not support universal, single-payer health care, and is campaigning to the right of Clinton and Edwards on this issue

-- Opposed the filibustering of Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination

-- Voted to renew the Patriot Act

-- Has received a "C/Underachiever" rating from CBC Monitor, putting him in the bottom third of Congressional Black Caucus members on voting record. By comparison, Harold Ford, Jr., William Jefferson, and Artur Davis got F's, while Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee got A's

If you support Obama, please ask yourself how many of these positions you agree with? (if I've put words in the good brother's mouth, I'm confident he'll correct me)

Then came the hardline from Mahndisa Rigmaiden and E.C. Hopkins - neither one of whom seemed to get particularly caught up in Obamathusiasm;

I don't trust politicians because they generally ARE NOT agents of change.

I think politicians are simply figureheads for a larger agenda over which they have no control.

I've developed macro-sociological beliefs that that have led me to be about as distrustful of the stated, prima facie intentions of our politicians as our brilliant sister Mahndisa is. And, I believe, in the long-run of twenty-five years or more, it really doesn't matter which politicians are put in the White House. I believe the U.S. social system has evolved so that only certain types of politicians are electable during any given social, political, or economic context, and that things such as who is/was the U.S. President for four or eight years are almost insignificant attributes of the social system.

The macro-sociological approach is a top-down, bird's eye, social engineer's approach. Its key weakness is it requires the thinker to use simplified abstractions, often based on ambiguous social statistics, which are often based on flawed data acquisitions. The individual or "Dunbar groups" (I'm using this term to indicate small social networks of approximately 150 folks who interact with one another regularly) of the society are often ignored in part or in full when this method is used to evaluate how a law or policy change will likely influence a social system.

So, I don't really spend much time thinking about whether Obama will change anything. I really don't believe Obama, or any other politician, can change anything, at least not in a truly iconoclastic or unpredictable way, that wasn't going to change with or without that politician. I believe the U.S. social system determines (or predetermines) who we, members of the ruled herd, can choose for U.S. President, and I believe it determines (or predetermines) the dynamics that almost all of us will erroneously perceive as significant, politician-led change. And, I believe the U.S. President plays only a minor role in this illusion, this stage production. The U.S. President will merely be a mask-wearer and an actor, someone thrown on the stage to play a part. The script, however, has been and will continue to be written by the power elite. And the power elite will continue to control the stage on which the U.S. President and the rest of us will deliver of performances.

I stated my position on sunday - and nothing that's happened over the intervening three days has caused me to change my perspective;

I sincerely believe that we American people will absolutely elect the leadership that we deserve.

The most interesting deliverable I anticipate from Obama's bid for the presidency, is that it will provide us with a rich, deep, and wide body of data more clearly delineating our just deserts as a people and a culture at the twilight of industrial civilization....,

UPDATE: Comes now Bro. Mahkeru to weigh in with a sentiment rather closely mirroring my own;

I personally believe that the American Power Elite, given the plethora of events it is struggling to control, is at one of its most vulnerable points in history. The missing element is a mass-based democratic movement, which can raise consciousness and challenge those vulnerabilities.

If a mass-based democratic movement does not emerge before the American superstructure begins to collapse, then I expect the Neo-Cons to have a free run to implement their fascist programs by deflecting attention to and blaming the “cultural others”—Blacks and Browns—for their demise.

I'm not so sure that they want a Darwinian threshing floor right here at home though Makheru. I believe that Pax America has not even begun to hit its true globalist imperial stride in the pending resource wars. It's going to need manpower in the millions to accomplish the force projection requirements of the next decade and beyond.

rorschachian juggling of the absurdities of uhmurkan necropolitics internationale, worldwide...,

whitehouse |  "But regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what's clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.

"In the meantime, all Americans should recognize the anger, frustration, and grief that so many Americans are feeling -- feelings that are being expressed in peaceful protests and vigils.  Michelle and I share those feelings. Rather than fall into a predictable pattern of division and political posturing, let’s reflect on what we can do better.  Let’s come together as a nation, and keep faith with one another, in order to ensure a future where all of our children know that their lives matter."

Rising Star A Fitting Epitaph For Rorschachian Hon.Bro.Preznit Obamamandius

Counterpunch |  Garrow’s mammoth biography is a tour de force when it comes to personal critique, professional appraisal, and epic research and documentation. His mastery of the smallest details in Obama’s life and career and his ability to place those facts within a narrative that keeps the reader’s attention (no small feat at 1078 pages!) is remarkable.  Rising Star falls short, however, on ideological appraisal. In early 1996, the brilliant left Black political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. captured the stark moral and political limits of what would become the state and then national Obama phenomenon and indeed the Obama presidency.  Writing of an unnamed Obama, Reed observed that:

“In Chicago…we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program – the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance.”

Garrow very incompletely quotes Reed’s reflection only to dismiss it as “an academic’s way of calling Barack an Uncle Tom.”  That is an unfortunate judgement. Reed’s assessment was richly born-out by Obama’s subsequent political career.  Like his politcio-ideological soul-brothers Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (and perhaps now Emmanuel Macron), Obama’s public life has been a wretched monument to the dark power of the neoliberal corporate-financial and imperial agendas behind the progressive pretense of façade of telegenic and silver-tongued professional class politicos.

Reed’s prescient verdict more than 12 years before Obama became president brings more insight to the Obama tragedy than Jager’s reflection five years into Obama’s presidency. Obama’s nauseating taste for supposedly (and deceptively) non-ideological “get things done” “pragmatism,” “compromise,” and “playing it safe” – for “accepting the world as it is instead of trying to change it” (Jager) – was not simply or merely a personality quirk or psychological flaw. It was also and far more significantly a longstanding way for “liberal” Democratic presidents and other politicos to appear “tough-minded” and stoutly determined to “getting things done” while they subordinate the fake-populist and progressive-sounding values they mouth to get elected to the harsh “deep state” facts of U.S. ruling class, imperial, and “national security” power. A “pragmatic,” supposedly non-ideological concern for policy effectiveness – “what can be accomplished in the real world” – has long given “liberal” presidents a manly way to justify governing in accord with the wishes of the nation’s ruling class and power elite.