A Reflection on Obama's rhetorical continuity with the ideologically distorted American elite Narrative, by: Andrew Taylor

Obama's mythopoeic narrative of American 'history' is
straight out of George Orwell. He exploits no radical
counter-narrative. His spiel is all about 'restoring' the USA to its
past glory as the great light to the world. The victims of
US slavery and imperialism are woven into a story where
Puritans and 'Indians' birth a unified, just nation...The millions of
dead and wounded in Vietnamese, Korean, Iraqi and Afghan locales
are invisible, as if such horrors could not have existed.

Obama spins a specious fantasy about some mystical unity that
binds the Americans together in a polity of winsome checks and
balances:

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are
patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people,
all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all
of us defending the United States of America.

There is not a black America and white America and Latino
America and Asian America -- there is the United States of
America...

And again:

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America -
there's the United States of America...


We are told that from time to time America fails to live
up to its moral preeminence and 'makes mistakes'. But then,we are
informed, the indomitable "best intentions" of the US spirit lightens
the minds of her people and she returns to her original probity:

"I know my country has not perfected
itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and
equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and
there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to
our best intentions."

Obama tells us with noblesse oblige that America is the land where
the people are better than their leaders:

"Americans... still believe in an America
where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do."

Obama's rhetoric about America is the old centrist elite
story that liquidates 'divisive' questions of Class and fails to
"brush history against the grain." While running for president
Obama sometimes had to insist that despite his peace stance, the
enemies of freedom might not assume he was abandoning the military
commitments of Dubya:

"I think it is important for Europe to understand that even though
I am president and George Bush is not president,Al Qaeda is still
a threat."


It is an American political fairy-tale in fundamental continuity with the old elite bourgeois imperialist story. And whether told by Wilson,Kennedy, Reagan or Obama it is a very dangerous story:

"If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which
it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all
else is lost."

I believe, on the contrary, that liberty is in peril whenever the people are lulled into trusting ruling class governments to protect the common welfare.