An excerpt of Larry Pinkney’s article entitled An Obama Presidency: More of the Same Only Worse – Part 1 (The Black Commentator, October 30, 2008) was quoted in Obamania: a collective, frightening madness by Gabriele Zamparini.
Published in uruknet.info (Middle East news) on November 10, 2008.
Published in thepeoplesvoice.org (USA) on November 11, 2008
By Gabriele Zamparini
Hangover. How long is it going to last? For some newborn babies, all their life:
The U.S. election has triggered a new generation of mini Barack Obamas with parents in Kenya and the United States naming their newborns after the new president-elect.
That’s not a new phenomenon. Naming babies after saints, prophets, kings, popes and charismatic leaders is as old as the human civilization. Sometimes the babies live long enough to survive the fortune of their original. During the ’30s of last century, in Germany and Italy the names Adolph and Benito were quite popular; the same for Joseph in Russia and around the world among Communism followers. More recently, people started to name their babies after show-business’ celebrities, actors, singers, football players or just someone who appears on TV!
Back to Obama, in Uganda a cow was named after the US president elect:
“Why on earth would you call a cow after Obama?” I asked her. “Because I like this cow so much,” she shot back. “Anyway, this cow reminds me of Barack Obama.” Anita thought for a couple of seconds while Obama chewed the grass. “Obama is black like me, so maybe he’ll respect us black people…”
Idolatry and hope. Since the dawn of the time, we humans create gods to explain what we can’t through reason and repose in them our hopes. Cults and religions, gods and idols are as powerful today as they were thousands years ago. Sometimes our times can be much more irrational than our ancestors’.
The imperial cult in ancient Rome was essentially a propaganda tool focused on leaders, a cult of personality. After the emperor’s death, the apotheosis of the emperor would strengthen this cult.
Fast-forward two thousands years and we are assisting to the apotheosis of Barack Obama, even before he sits on the imperial throne; miracles of our Global Village’s propaganda.
There is no doubt that a black man at the White House has a huge impact full of historical, political and emotional meanings. The same would be true of course if Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice had been elected. But as someone wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” – not the White House.
Barack Obama is young, handsome, charming and above all, he’s cool; the perfect qualities for the modern cult of personality. We shall never forget however, empires don’t elect presidents they select emperors. Corporate America – with its money and influence – has selected Barack Obama as next emperor of the US global empire.
The Obama Campaign got more than $ 660 millions and money is generally accepted as a medium of exchange. Or – as Ralph Nader wrote to Obama:
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
Mono-thought society. The corporate media have been joined by most of the progressive media in the celebrations of the new cult. Conservative and liberal intellectuals have been echoed by most of the progressive voices in a depressing, terrifying show of uniformity and banality. The very few, isolated voices of dissent have been silenced by hysterical cries and even leftists and anarchists are still shouting hymns to the new god…
……
“Under an Obama presidency those non Blacks who stand in opposition to Barack Obama’s de facto pro Wall Street backers and their blood-sucking policies will be branded as racists and traitors, while those Blacks who oppose Obama’s policies will be ignored and/or branded as fringe radicals and traitors” wrote a few days ago BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney
……
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Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)
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