by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
Dec. 17, 2009
As I noted in my last BuzzFlash Commentary published a couple of weeks ago, the previous Sunday I had been walking on a street in New York City when two stickers on the back of an old SUV caught my eye. One said “McCain 2008.” The other showed the Obama “sunrise” logo with the old Soviet hammer and sickle symbol imposed upon it. That’s a clear message, no? Obama is a communist, no, rather a commie, and likely a Kenyan Muslim one to boot. Of course when folks of this car-owner’s ilk, the “teabaggers” and such, aren’t calling Obama a communist, they are calling him a “Nazi.”
In that last column, I mused about what Obama would have already done and would be doing if he were actually a (presumably secret) communist. A couple of the readers’ comments on my Commentary said essentially that what I listed was a left-liberal, not a revolutionary, agenda. They were quite correct. As I was careful to point out at the beginning of that Commentary, I was using “communist” in the context of the program of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) back in its heyday, in the 1930s and the 1940s until just after the end of World War II when it was quickly deep-sixed as any kind of a political force as the U.S. moved quickly from the hot war (finally) against fascism to a resumption of what would eventually become the 75 Years War against the Soviet Union.
That party was not a revolutionary party, except possibly in the most theoretical, way-down-the-road sense. In its present, it was a “parliamentary road to socialism” party that spent much of its street energy in helping to organize and lead the great industrial unions that arose in the 1930s, organize and lead the burgeoning civil rights struggle, and on the electoral side pushing FDR and the New Deal as much to the left as they could manage. And so in that column, I offered my thoughts about what Obama would be doing, as a secret communist, in the present office of the Presidency, under the Constitution and working within the present U.S. political system. Similarly in this Commentary, I am speculating on just what Obama would have already done and would be doing as a secret Nazi, not attempting to foment a Nazi takeover of the government, at least not presently, but in and with such policies in the same Constitutional context.
And so I am making the assumption that if Obama were a Nazi, as many signs at Dick Armey’s and Glenn Beck’s tea/9/12 demos proclaim (when they are not proclaiming that he is a communist), he would be one of the American sort. To see what justification there might be to their charge, let’s take a look at just what sort of politics and policies he would be advocating, indeed fighting for, were he indeed a secret Nazi. In this context, “Nazi” would not mean openly advocating the establishment of a fascist dictatorship. (Indeed Hitler did no such thing before he took power as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Indeed, part of the deal that Hitler made with German President Hindenburg was that he would govern under the Weimar Constitution. He lied, but that’s another story.) Obama the secret Nazi would be putting forward an agenda that would be very right-wing, xenophobic, nationalist, blaming the “liberals” and one or more easily identifiable sectors of the population, in Hitler’s case of course “The Jews,” for all of the nation’s troubles, “law and order” type.
First off, of course, he would be continuing the Cheney/Bush battle to establish the “Unitary Executive.” The latter is that concept that Cheney in particular made up out of whole cloth. He imagined that he could find it in Article II of the Constitution that defines the powers and authority of the Executive Branch and in the context of Article I that defines the powers and authority of the Legislative Branch. Of course that thoroughly defies Original Intentionism and Strict Constructionism of which reactionaries are so fond when it suits their purpose. But only Cheney and his very own legal minions can so find it. Since Obama is a Democrat, he likely would be calling the “Unitary Executive” something else. But to establish such a non- Constitutional concept of the Presidency would be his aim. He would certainly not be deferring to the Congress in general and in particular to the other party and one particular “Independent” in Congress as he has done time and again.
Second of all, on foreign policy, in a break with his immediate predecessors, he would have made it very clear that he disapproves of the withdrawal arrangement that Bush/Cheney made with the Iraqi government. He would be telling the nation and the world that he totally agrees with Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh and Grampy McSame (as Stephanie Miller deliciously still calls him) before they suddenly changed their tune on the matter when Bush caved to the Iraqis that we should be in Iraq until “victory” was achieved. “Victory” would of course be however one might define it, which they never actually did except that McSame did talk about staying there for 50-100 years.
Obama would, of course, have been putting troops into Afghanistan at an even greater rate than he already has done, right from the outset of his Presidency. He would never be talking about a “timetable for withdrawal” and thus would be on the same page as his Secretaries of State and Defense, whoever they might be were he a secret Nazi (perhaps the same personages. Who knows?) (These two present worthies are of course contradicting the President on the timetable thing, but why should we quibble about such details.) He would have as little concern about where the troops and money for both efforts would come from. Much like Bush/Cheney did.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he would hardly be talking about teamwork and he would hardly be talking about changing the policies of the immediate past from “you’re either for us or agin’ us” to “let’s see if we can work things out together” (within the limits of American imperialist interests, of course). He would indeed be reemphasizing the former approach. He would be dealing with North Korea only with threats. The same for Iran. He would no more be planning for war on Iran than Bush did. But he wouldn’t be letting on to that and Cheney’s secret war would be being continued apace. (Actually we don’t know what has happened to that effort. Could be that Obama, Nazi, Communist, or neither, is continuing it. According to Seymour Hersh, that effort reported directly to Cheney rather than going through the military chain-of-command at the Pentagon, it still might be underway, independent of U.S. government policy.) Obama never would have made the “Cairo Speech” on and to Islam.
Obama would have been as bellicose in his Inaugural Address as he was in his Nobel Acceptance Speech and so he definitely never would have had the opportunity to receive the latter. Obama would be boycotting the Copenhagen climate-change talks (which seem to have broken down anyway), would not have had to worry about getting a very backward Congress to go along with any kind of meaningful attempts to combat global warming and might have even appointed Sen. “It’s all a hoax (and anyway I’ll be dead before Oklahoma becomes a Permanent Dust Bowl)” Inhofe as Energy Secretary.
On the domestic side, he would have continued the Big Banks Bailout that Bush/Cheney started (much as Obama really did) but he would have found a way to blame all the economic disasters experienced because of Reagan/Bushonomics on “the liberals” much as Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh did and have continued to do. GM and Chrysler both would have been allowed to go bankrupt making the Great Recession even worse than it already is. There would have been no stimulus package of any kind other than more tax cuts for the wealthy. You know, just the kind that got into the deep deficit doo-doo in the first place, again making the Great Recession even worse than it is. But there would have a constant drumbeat from the Administration and the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda about how “it is all the fault of the liberals” and the GOP’s Right Wing base would believe it, just as they do now.
On abortion rights, gay marriage and gun rights, were Obama a secret Nazi he would make Bush look like an utter weakling on those issues. On the latter, for example, tanks and artillery, anyone? After all, the 2nd says unregulated, indeed unfettered rights to any kind of weapon you can think of, doesn’t it? Finally (well not really finally, but this Commentary is getting long enough already) if Obama were a Nazi he would be focusing like a laser-beam on what he would identify as the most perfidious of all the possible causes of the nation’s current difficulties, the Illegal Immigrants. Yes indeed, like the late Tony Snow before him, Lou Dobbs might have been summoned from the precincts of cable “news” to become Press Secretary, that is if he had not been named Secretary of Immigrant Persecution, oops, I mean Homeland Security.
This is what Obama would have been doing were he a secret Nazi. But golly gee, you might be asking, doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the current GOP agenda? I will leave that one for you to answer yourself.
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of 30 books. In addition to being a Columnist for BuzzFlash, Dr. Jonas is also a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine; a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad; a Senior Columnist for The Greanville POST, http://www.cjournal.info/; a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, http://lists.psalience.org/mailman/listinfo/ths; a Contributor to The Planetary Movement; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century (POAC); http://www.oldamericancentury.org/index.htm.
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If President Obama Were a Communist by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
When will the Revolution begin?
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